Tuesday, April 8
Disturbing Relics Week: Saintly Skulls and Canonized Crania
Saint Agnes's baseball-sized skull at Sant' Agnese in Agone, displayed in a little chapel off the left-hand transept. (Via Flickr.).
Otranto Cathedral, with reliquaries behind the high altar containing the 800 skulls from the severed heads of a band of Puglian Catholics martyred by Ottoman soldiery in the year of Our Lord 1480. They are commemorated in the Martyrology on August 14.
The Holy Head of St. Catherine of Siena, probably the only dismembered sanctoral body part to have its own webpage, complete with java.
St. John the Baptist's head (er, one of them...unless it's one of Erik von Daniken's mediaeval spacemen) in Amiens, France. (Source.)
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
