This article was first published in Fortean
Times
Uncorruptible—That’s What You Are
By Dwight Longenecker
The Peoples’ Pope Preserved
In March 2001 they dug up the body
of Pope John XXIII. He’d been dead
for thirty seven years. The present Pope decided John XXIII needed
a new resting place since there were so many people who wanted
to reverence his tomb in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica in
Rome. Furthermore, Pope John XXIII, son of peasants and known
as ‘the peoples’ Pope’ is on the road to being declared a saint.
One of the steps in the process is for the potential saint’s
body to be exhumed for suitable identification.
Although Popes’ bodies are not fully embalmed they are ‘preserved’ with
formalin to help keep the body for the few days of public viewing.
Funeral director Joseph Watts commented to the New York Daily
News, ‘He was embalmed right away, it was done by doctors,
nothing but the best, and he was placed in the perfect place,
the Catacombs.’ According to Watts, who has visited the tomb,
the preservation of the pope’s body was probably the result of
a number of factors. ‘The embalming fluid was formaldehyde-based
with other chemicals…he was also in a triple-sealed casket-----a casket, an outer case, another outer case of cypress wood-----and that was in a marble crypt… There was no water or anything that
could disintegrate [the body].’ Vincenzo Pascali, from the University
of Rome said he doesn’t think Pope John’s preservation is very
unusual. ‘It's more common than you might think. The body of
the Holy Father was well protected. Oxygen couldn't get into
the coffin and any in there would have been used up very quickly…[in
the caskets] they used materials like lead and zinc which oxidise
and slow the decomposition process,’ he added.
With her usual reserve, the Catholic Church
denied that there was anything miraculous about the preservation
of the Pope’s remains.
The Vatican Information Service never used the words ‘miraculous’ or ‘incorrupt’ regarding
the body of John XXIII. After the exhumation the Vatican Information
Service headlined its story with great caution, simply saying, "Body
of Blessed John XXIII is Remarkably Well Preserved." This
is in keeping with the usual Catholic official policy which does
not rule out supernatural occurrences, but also does not declare
an event miraculous until every natural explanation is exhausted.
Preservation Precedents Because
of the stories of incorruptibility people presumed to be saints were
often exhumed and re-interred. The custom soon developed for exhumation
to be part of the process for a person to be declared a saint by
the Catholic Church. Throughout the Middle Ages various saints’ bodies
were considered to be incorrupt and the presence of an incorrupt
body could be a magnet for many pilgrims with their offerings and
donations to the church. Despite the damp climate, medieval Britain
was especially liable to nurture saintly characters whose bodies
didn’t decay. Among the English saints with incorrupt bodies were
Cuthbert, Werburgh, Waltheof and Guthlac. Amongst them were two royal
sisters, Etheldreda and Withburga, a king-- Edward the Confessor,
a bishop-- Hugh of Lincoln and an Archbishop of Canterbury, Alphege.
At the Reformation all their shrines were destroyed and the incorrupt
bits of body dispersed. In a quirk of history however, when her shrine
at Ely Cathedral was destroyed, the saintly Queen Etheldreda’s hand
was preserved by a devout Catholic family. The still incorrupt hand
was enshrined some four hundred years later when a little Catholic
Church was re-established in Ely. An apocryphal story relates how
the present Queen, on a tour of the cathedral met the crusty Irish
priest of the little Catholic Church. She asked him if it wouldn’t
be a ‘nice gesture’ to return the hand St Etheldreda to the cathedral
and he asked her if it wouldn’t’ be a nice gesture for her to return
the cathedral to the Catholic church.
The accounts of saints’ bodies not decaying despite
being buried for years continues right through to the present
day. In a fascinating book Joan Carroll Cruz chronicles the stories
with the kind of believing ‘objectivity’ which Catholics are
famous for. In the book she relates some of the more amazing
and gruesome details surrounding the incorruptible bodies of
saints. The book abounds in details of preserved hearts, severed
limbs, corpses that sit up and wink and healing perfumes that
seep from holy bones. She tells how the body of St Teresa of
Avila didn’t rot even though it was buried in wet mud; and how
the bodies of St Paschal Baylon, St Francis Xavier and St John
of the Cross all remained fresh and intact despite being covered
in sacks of quicklime for months. Cruz tells of Blessed Peter
of Gubbio, a fourteenth century monk, and Venerable Maria Vela,
a sevententh century nun, whose voices were heard chanting with
their brothers and sisters long after they were dead. St Clare
of Montefalco was a holy nun from the thirteenth century who
said to her sisters, ‘If you seek the cross of Christ, take my
heart; there you will find the suffering Lord.’ After her death
not only did her body remain incorrupt, but the sisters removed
her heart and they found clearly imprinted on the cardiac tissue
were figures representing a tiny crucifix complete with the five
wounds of crucifixion.
Another extraordinary saint is Blessed Maragret
of Metola. Magaret was blind, dwarfed, hunchbacked and lame,
but that didn’t stop her from living a life of heroic service
to the poor. She died in 1330, but in 1558 her remains had to
be transferred because her coffin was rotting away. At the exhumation
the witnesses were amazed to find that like the coffin, the clothes
had rotted, but Margaret’s crippled body hadn’t. With typical
understatement, Cruz reports, ‘The body of Blessed Margaret,
which has never been embalmed, is dressed in a Dominican habit,
and lies under the high altar of the Church of St Domenico at
Citta-di-Castello, Italy. The arms of the body are still flexible,
the eyelashes are present, and the nails are in place on the
hands and feet. The colouring of the body has darkened slightly
and the skin is dry and somewhat hardened, but by all standards
the preservation can be considered a remarkable condition having
endured for over six hundred and fifty years.’
Incredible
Incorruptibles
It is easy enough to dismiss such stories as
medieval miraculous nonsense, but two things make this untenable.
First of all, the phenomena are among the most well-documented
of any so-called miraculous occurrences. Among Fortean ephemera
these prodigies are not only still visible, but the exhumations
were witnessed with oaths and affidavits by ordinary working
people as well as respectable professionals. Secondly, the accounts
of incorruptible bodies are not a medieval phenomenon. They are
a kooky part of Christian history from the first century right
through to the twenty first.
The two most amazing modern accounts are
of St Bernadette and St Charbel Makhlouf. St Bernadette was the
shepherd
girl who saw the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lourdes. She went into
a convent and died in 1879. She was buried in the crypt of the
convent chapel. In 1909 a commission investigating her saintliness
exhumed her body. The bishop and two doctors were the official
witnesses. They were joined by two stonemasons and two carpenters.
All of them swore beforehand to tell the truth of their findings.
They found that the saint’s body was incorrupt. A nun who had
witnessed the burial thirty years before noted that the only
change was that the dead nun’s habit was damp.
Bernadette was re-buried and exhumed again
in 1919. As before, both civil and religious witnesses were gathered
under oath. The doctors who examined the body wrote, ‘when the
coffin was opened the body appeared to be absolutely intact and
odourless…there was no smell of putrefaction and none of those
present experienced any discomfort.’ On a third exhumation in
1923 the body was still found in the same condition. At that
point the body was opened and the internal organs were found
to be supple. After forty six years, the doctor reported, ‘the
liver was soft and almost normal in consistency.’
St Charbel Makhlouf was a Maronite monk
from Lebanon. He died in 1898. In his life he seemed unremarkable
except for his quiet and intense devotion to Christ. After his
death for forty five nights strange lights appeared over his
grave. Because forty five days is the traditional length of time
for a body’s decomposition, the monastic authorities called for
his exhumation. His body was found perfectly fresh despite the
fact that recent rains had reduced the cemetery to a quagmire
and the body was found floating in a muddy pool. Charbel’s body
was re-clothed and transferred to a wooden coffin, but a strange
blood-like oil kept exuding from his body—so much so that the
clothes had to be changed twice a week. In 1927—twenty nine years
after his death his still incorrupt body was examined, found
to be totally flexible and incorrupt. It was then re-buried in
a niche in the ancient abbey church. In 1950 pilgrims to the
shrine noticed liquid seeping from the tomb. The coffin was opened
again and the body was still incorrupt and exuding the sweat
like substance which was collected and from which many miraculous
cures were reported. The body remained incorrupt for sixty seven
years, finally decaying in 1965.
Preposterous Preservations
Cruz reports no less than 102 stories
of incorrupt bodies of Catholic saints. With so many supposedly
incorrupt
saints it is no wonder the devotees of Pope John XXIII suspected
that the preservation of his remains might be a sign from heaven.
Although the Catholic authorities do not deny the possibility
of miraculous preservation of bodies, neither do they place much
stock in it. According to Rome, the strange phenomena may confirm
holiness, but on its own the un-natural preservation of bodies
does not prove holiness. The authorities quite sensibly look
to see what the person’s life was like.
Indeed, the phenomenon of un-naturally preserved
bodies raises as many questions as it answers. If un-natural
preservation is a sign of saintliness why aren’t all saints supernaturally
preserved? Compare two very similar saints: Bernadette and Thérèse
of Lisieux were both nineteenth century French girls who went
into a convent and died of consumption at an early age. Bernadette’s
body was incorrupt. Thérèse’s body, at her exhumation, was reduced
to a skeleton in the normal way. Why should one saint be incorrupt
and not the other?
The Catholic authorities are right to be
cautious in equating incorruptibility with holiness. Indeed, the
Catholic
authorities were embarrassed when, in 1985, Cardinal Shuster’s
body was discovered to be incorrupt after thirty one years in
the grave. Many think Shuster was anything but a saint since
he was a friend of Mussolini and supported fascism and Italy’s
war with Abyssinia. Neither does the phenomenon of incorrupt
bodies necessarily prove the claims of Catholicism. A famous
yogi in California called Paramahansa Yogananda died in 1952
and his unembalmed body didn’t decay and emitted a beautiful
fragrance. Maybe there are many incorrupt bodies of holy Protestants,
Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, but we’ll never know because these
religions don’t have the unusual custom of digging up their suspected
saints.
There are other quirky problems surrounding
the phenomenon of incorrupt bodies of saints. While there is definitely
something weird happening it is also true that the faithful have
perpetuated the miracle stories and have sometimes helped the
miracles along. In her defining book, Cruz is very honest in
admitting that some of the incorrupt bodies were later embalmed.
Some have been incorrupt for hundreds of years only to decay
once they were moved—making one suspicious that the airtight
original container may have helped preserve the body. Other incorrupt
bodies have been spliced together with bits of string and wire.
In some cases the darkened faces and hands are covered with silver
or wax, ostensibly for cosmetic purposes, but could it be that
they are really covering a skeleton?
Despite the irrational elements and the
faithful ‘helping’ the
miracle along there is enough evidence of remarkable occurrences
surrounding the incorruptibles. St Isidore and St John of the
Cross are two final examples which illustrate the unsettling
events and show that despite all other explanations the incorruptibles
are probably one of the best documented examples of the miraculous.
St Isidore was a farm labourer who died in the year 1130. He
was buried directly in the earth without tomb or coffin. Forty
years later, prompted by a dream, they exhumed his body to move
it to a more worthy tomb. An eyewitness recorded that Isidore’s
body ‘looked like it had just died although it had been lying
in the earth for forty years.’ In 1622 the body was exhumed a
second time before many witnesses. Once again it was perfectly
fresh and emitted ‘a heavenly odour’. One of the witnesses was
the King’s minister who signed the document attesting what they
had all seen.
When St John of the Cross died in 1591 he
was buried in a vault beneath the floor of the church. When the
tomb
was opened nine months later the body was fresh and intact, and
when a finger was amputated to use as a relic the body bled as
it would from a normal person. When the tomb was opened for a
second time nine months later the body was still fresh despite
the fact that it had been covered with a layer of quicklime.
In 1859 and 1909 the body was exhumed again and still found to
be fresh and incorrupt. The last exhumation of the relic was
in 1955 when St John of the Cross’s human body, after nearly
four hundred years was still ‘moist and flexible’ although the
skin ‘was slightly discoloured.’
As with most Fortean phenomena, the existence
of incorrupt bodies has not been studied seriously by the scientific
community. As the phenomena exists outside Catholicism it may
be that the incorrupt bodies are proof of the possibility that
spiritual practice has physical effects. In a devoutly religious
person the spiritual practice of prayer and meditation is merged
with the physical discipline of asceticism and abstinence. As
a result the physical and the spiritual become inter-mingled.
Perhaps in some cases this inter-penetration of the spiritual
with the physical so overwhelms the person’s body as to preserve
it from natural corruption. If we take seriously the possibility
of the psycho-physical relationship we may begin to explain why
some bodies do not decay despite the fact that the individual
has died of a noxious disease, was not embalmed and was buried
for decades in damp conditions with other corpses that rotted
naturally. When we understand how the mind and body work together
we may also start to understand why some saintly characters wind
up being both dead as a doornail and fresh as a daisy.
2482 words
Info Box 1: Where to See the Incorrupt Bodies:
St Cecilia: the
saint is buried beneath the high altar of the Basilica of St
Cecilia in Rome. While the body is not on display, a sculpture
by Stefano Moderno portrays the saint’s body as it was discovered
at the second exhumation in 1599.
St Etheldreda – The incorrupt hand of St Etheldreda can be viewed in St Etheldreda’s
Catholic Church in Ely, Cambridgeshire.
St Edward the Confessor - Thirty six years after his death in 1066 Edward the Confessor’s
body was found to be incorrupt. In 1163 the king was exhumed
again and the body was still incorrupt, but in a third exhumation
in 1269 a skeleton was found. Edward the Confessor’s tomb is
in Westminster Abbey.
St Clare of Montefalco – the saints’ incorrupt body as well as her strange heart are enshrined
at the Church of the Holy Cross in Montefalco in Italy.
St Rita of Cascia – The incorrupt body of this ‘patron saint of hopeless cases’ can
be seen at the Basilica of St Rita in Cascia, Italy. She died
in 1457.
St John Vianney – The body of the parish priest of the village of Ars can be seen at
the Basilica at Ars in France.
St Catherine Labouré – This saint who saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary was incorrupt after
being buried in a damp vault for fifty six years. Her still incorrupt
body is on display at the chapel in Rue du Bac in Paris.
St Bernadette - the incorrupt body can be viewed in its glass casket in the chapel
of the convent of St Gildard in Nevers, France. The face and
hands have been covered with a mask of wax.
Info Box 2: Preservation Processes
Egyptians mummified bodies by removing the brain
and internal organs, filling the cavities with resin and aromatic
spices, drying the body with natron then they wrapped the body
in linen and sealed it with resin. Poorer subjects had their
abdomens injected with cedar oil, were dried in natron then wrapped
in linen.
The Incas preserved bodies with a combination
of aromatic oils and slow drying
Tibetan lamas were disembowelled, the cavity
was packed with lacquer-saturated padding. The body was then
wrapped in lacquered silk and placed in a lotus position in a
hot salt-filled room. After several days of drying it was cooled,
covered with gold leaf and put on a throne with the other gilded
lamas.
Alexander the Great’s body was preserved
in honey.
Sir Gerald de Braybroke, who died in 1422 was
preserved in an aromatic fluid which tasted like mushroom ketchup
spiced with Spanish olives.
In 1723 the well-preserved body of a naval
commander was discovered steeped in rum, ‘as befitted one of his
calling.’
More recent methods of embalming used saltpetre,
tar, salt, camphor and cinnamon. By the nineteenth century embalmers
used formaldehyde in a solution with glycerine. Today this mixture
is injected into the veins of the corpse. Even with modern embalming
methods most bodies decay to a skeleton within a year.
