It's strange, maybe even miraculous, when a dead body remains untouched by
decomposition. But is there any truth to these claims? Here's the scoop on
incorruptible saints and why some say their bodies have stood the test of time.
Central to the Christian faith is the concept of mortality, the result of
the "original sin" that transpired with Adam and Eve's fall in the Garden of Eden. To gain
liberation from these "sins of the father" visited on all descendants of Adam and Eve,
early Christians believed Jesus Christ died on the cross and was resurrected on the third day.
He represented both the ultimate sacrifice and the overthrower of "original sin" and death.
Besides Jesus' miraculous resurrection, he also raised individuals from the dead
during his lifetime, including Lazarus, who famously spent three days stinking
up his tomb before Jesus transformed him into a living human being. For some early Christians,
a natural extension of such miracles would be incorruptibility after death, a sign of holiness.
"Bodies don't do that. So for someone's body to have done
that, that must mean this was a special person."
A corpse must prove immune to "the usual forces of putrefaction" to meet the requirements of
incorruptibility. This means the body must be in a natural state with no other
explanation for the preservation, such as embalming or environmental conditions that
arrest decay. In other words, bog bodies and naturally occurring mummies need not apply.
According to Joan Carroll Cruz's The Incorruptibles, a distinction exists
between miraculously preserved bodies and those that have accidentally or deliberately
experienced arrested decay. For example, Smithsonian notes that the most famous
artificially preserved bodies are ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Archaeologists believe the
inspiration for Egyptian mummification came from finding bodies naturally preserved in
Egypt's arid environment. But Egyptian mummies are a relatively late arrival on the scene.
The oldest mummies in the world come from South America and date to over
7,000 years ago. Known as the mummies of Chinchorro, researchers believe they drew
knowledge of cadaver preservation from naturally desiccated ancestral peoples in Chile's Atacama
Desert. Similar conditions in northwestern China protected the 4,000-year-old Tarim
mummies. In each of these cases, the lack of bodily decay can be explained.
That's what sets incorruptibles apart from regular mummies — natural phenomena can't
always explain away these well-preserved remains. What's more, they display bizarre
characteristics not present with mummies and other preserved cadavers. In Cruz's book,
she notes their alleged lifelike appearances, flexibility, and retention of "blood and clear
oils." Many also reportedly contain a sweet scent, defying normal decomposition processes. Instead,
incorruptibility appears to usurp science and reality, with corpses arrested beyond
physical decay. Early Christian groups concluded they represented miracles from God.
Incorruptibility didn't have to last forever to catch the
attention of church leaders. As Britannica notes,
"Incorruptibility does not imply that the body cannot subsequently rot."
In order for a body to be called "incorruptible,"
supernatural preservation simply had to occur at some point in the corpse's
purported history. This criterion worked for exceptionally preserved body parts, too.
Incorruptibles often underwent treatments thought to help preserve what God had already done. These
might include acid baths and encasement in wax effigies. When it came to body parts,
they were displayed separately – for example, St. Vincent de Paul's heart or St. Anthony of Padua's
jaw and tongue. Whether incorruptibility marked a miracle or not, the bodies and
body parts of saints received "great esteem" from Eastern Orthodox and Catholic faithful.
Even wear and tear didn't affect an incorruptible's status because miracles
didn't have to continue indefinitely for the body to be categorized as supernatural. According to
Joan Carroll Cruz's The Incorruptibles, repairs took place as a matter of course. For example,
Cruz notes work done on Saint Rita's body over the years,
including using string and wax to improve her appearance. The repairs were noted in
medical investigations from 1743 and 1892, and church authorities took these treatments
in stride as necessary upkeep for maintaining the treasure of reliquaries in tiptop shape.
You may wonder how the faithful stumbled across bodies in arrested decay. Simply
Catholic says the discoveries stemmed from the process of canonizing saints,
a lengthy procedure requiring exhumation of their bodies for several reasons.
First, locating a potential saint's corpse assured church officials that
the individual in question had lived. Second, it permitted relics associated with the saint
to be discovered and distributed to various churches around the globe.
"God likes to draw attention to his saints. God is a proud dad."
Remember that the official stance of both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches was that
even a saints' former belongings and remains could hold miraculous powers. But canonization
for saints who had not faced martyrdom required clear evidence of post-mortem miracles, which
meant having the saint's remains on hand. Third, locating the potential saint's body permitted
proper enshrining in a chapel or church. During exhumations, church fathers sometimes happened
upon shocking discoveries, namely bodies or body parts extraordinarily well-preserved.
As an increasing number of so-called incorruptibles came to light,
some faithful were particularly swayed by this physical manifestation of the
miraculous. Modern-day examples of this process at work include the candidacy for sainthood of
Reverend Patrick Ryan by the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul located in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The Catholic News Agency reports that Ryan's exhumation came with the discovery of relics,
including vestments, a wooden crucifix, and a scapular that have been relocated along
with his remains to the basilica, although no evidence of incorruptibility existed.
The Catholic faith boasts dozens of so-called incorruptibles. Discover
places the number around 100, noting more than half can be found in Italy. Other destinations
for incorruptible sightseeing include Poland, Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, India, Germany,
Lebanon, and Peru. The disparity in numbers of incorruptibles isn't surprising when you consider
the modern aversion many feel toward them. According to Heather Pringle's The Mummy Congress:
Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead, many incorruptibles "have been sadly forsaken
over the years, even by the faithful." So, establishing an official count is impossible.
To the most devout, however, incorruptibility represents a tangible display of divine
intervention at work in the lives of God's faithful servants. Incorruptibles
also are thought to perform miracles posthumously, especially healings. So,
the bodies of the most famed incorruptibles remain on display in churches and chapels worldwide,
even as visitor numbers have dwindled over the centuries.
Since the mid-20th century, the Catholic Church has called on science to better
understand incorruptibles and aid in the preservation of contemporary figures'
cadavers. In so doing, they've blurred the line between the supernatural and the scientific.
"Has an ancient Catholic relic just given off
a bad omen? That's what some church faithful believe in Naples, Italy."
Perhaps Ezio Fulcheri of the University of Genoa best articulates the Roman Catholic
stance on incorruptibles today. In an interview with Discover, he argued,
"What is a miracle? It's something unexplainable,
a special event that may occur in different ways [...] but don't exclude [rare] natural
processes that are different from the normal course of things."
Like the Roman Catholic faith, the Eastern Orthodox church doesn't require incorruptibility
as a prerequisite for canonization as a saint. But it doesn't hurt, either. Like the Catholic faith,
incorruptibility is highly esteemed and associated with other miracles, including healings.
The topic of incorruptibles is a sensitive one to the Eastern Orthodox Church,
however. Although the church greatly esteems relics declared miraculous, fragrant,
and incorrupt, it gets more complicated when it comes to human bodies. Although an unnaturally
preserved cadaver may point to holiness, it can also happen for less-than-savory reasons.
"She's not in a refrigerated case. She is basically,
for lack of a better term, shelf stable."
The Third Synod of Moscow from 1666 declares via the Church
of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of America,
"Let no one dare henceforth to honor and revere the bodies of the dead which
even in these times are found whole and incorrupt
as being holy without a credible witness and Synodical Approval."
The statement goes on to argue that many undecayed bodies exist
due to transgressions or loathing of church teachings. Other causes might
include getting cursed by a priest or bishop or even ex-communication.
"We declare him excommunicate and anathema. We cast him into the outer darkness."
Kind of like the scene in Bram Stoker's Dracula
where Vlad renounces God and becomes a monstrously preserved immortal.
During the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Communists stormed the ancient
churches of the Eastern Orthodox faith, pulling incorruptibles and relics from
display cases. The Bolsheviks laid waste to long-held religious beliefs through rampant,
indiscriminate desecration. Then, in language rife with propaganda, they claimed the so-called
miraculously preserved bodies were all wax figures. Of course, this message suited
their need to neutralize the so-called "opium of the people," as Karl Marx called religion.
Bolsheviks weren't the only ones with a beef against incorruptibles. Writing
for The Herald, Bill Bain refers to them as
"Hamburgers of religious delusion."
The "hamburger" part references urban legends about McDonald's Happy Meals
that go for years unrefrigerated without a spot of mold. He argues in his piece,
"A recent U.S. scientific study into fast food's mysterious ambivalence to nature concluded that
the key to durable physicality wasn't any Judeo-Christian sky spy, creepy chemical
or powdered preservative — but simply a lack of moisture and specific atmospheric conditions."
Bain points to various explanations for incorruptibles such as airtight coffins
built from lead and zinc, burial in above-ground crypts, and "undocumented" embalming. What's more,
HowStuffWorks points out that some alleged incorruptibles have proven fraudulent.
A shift in the Catholic Church over the past few decades moved to examine incorruptibles
more scientifically. This move hopes to bring about a better understanding
of the phenomenon. One scientist at the spearpoint of this research is
Ezio Fulcheri at the University of Genoa. Instead of Incorruptibles,
he prefers to refer to them as the "mummies of saints." A devout Catholic, Fulcheri has even been
called in by the Vatican to preserve the corpses of modern-day individuals awaiting canonization.
The Vatican no longer lists incorruptibility among its official miracles. What's more,
the Roman Catholic church has admitted that in some cases,
bodies received help from the environment, although there's still the claim that God
engineered that perfect environment. Most famously, Cardinal Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini,
the guy who snagged the title Pope Benedict XIV, was a proponent of
using medical science to analyze supposed cases of incorruptibility objectively.
"A body could be perfectly preserved except for the
nose and the lips – and he says that's out. It's not considered a miracle."
Known as "the Enlightenment Pope," he concluded in his text On the Beatification and Canonization
of Saints that most mummies of saints had natural rather than supernatural explanations.
Among the media most effectively used to preserve incorruptibles is wax. Artists have used it to
great success in maintaining reliquaries. Consider the case of Saint Bernadette. After dying on April
16, 1879, her canonization process involved three medical examinations in 1909, 1919, and 1925.
After her final exhumation, officials placed a thin layer of wax over her face and hands,
and a famed fashion mannequin maker in Paris named Pierre Imans designed the wax prosthetics.
The wax "fixed" a few unsightly details noted in her third exhumation, including a blackish
skin tinge. It also improved her nose, described as "dilated and shrunken," as early as her first
examination. Church records show that Bernadette's body remained mostly
incorrupt at its first exhumation. But afterward, nuns washed her body,
likely contributing to the noticeable decay and mold noted at the second and third check-ins.
Atlas Obscura reports the Blessed Anna Maria Taigi can still be seen in San Crisogono, Rome,
today. You can attribute her lifelike appearance to wax portraiture over bone. And no one can
deny the doll-like appeal of Saint Victoria, constructed around a skeleton of a catacomb
martyr with cutaways revealing her relics – aka bones. Separating the wax from reality proves
difficult with Saint Silvan. Martyred in the fifth century, he lies in a state of peaceful
repose in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Considering his great age, we're guessing he's more wax than not.
Although saints like Bernadette and Anna Maria Taigi have gotten a little help from
wax over the years, it's generally accepted their bodies were once incorrupt without any
explanation. That means they didn't have the benefit of embalming or conditions
specifically favorable to fleshly preservation. But not all mummies of
saints fit this bill. As the Roman Catholic Church actively encouraged the scientific
examination of its many reliquaries, some researchers found this out firsthand.
As scientists opened glass coffins and peeled back layers of clothing with care, it quickly became
evident the followers of these saints had embalmed them to make a better case for canonization. For
example, when University of Genoa researcher Ezio Fulcheri examined the body of Margaret of Cortona,
he found several long incisions streaking her thighs. He also noted deeper cuts in her chest
and abdomen that had been stitched together post-mortem. Pringle writes in her book,
"Those who preserved St. Margaret had done so remarkably thoroughly,
excising her internal organs and drenching her skin in fragrant lotions."
Besides Margaret of Cortona, saints embalmed by their followers include Clare of Montefalco,
Blessed Margaret of Castello, Catherine of Siena, Rita of Cascia,
and Bernardine of Siena. Like Margaret, they bear obvious signs of embalming: organ removal,
post-mortem incisions, and stitching. All of these so-called incorruptibles date to the
period between 1297 and 1447, and all were mystics with devoted followings.
Unlike most of the incorruptibles who at one point or another had a little cosmetic work done,
if not full embalming, Saint Zita remains a fascinating mystery, according to Heather
Pringle's The Mummy Congress. Located in a side chapel in the San Frediano Basilica,
her body lays on a brocade bed, and she's viewable through a glass shrine.
Pringle describes seeing her more than 700-year-old cadaver this way:
"Her gaunt face was smooth and her hands soft and supple-looking. Her lustrous nails gleamed."
When examined by researchers, they found no signs of human tampering to preserve the saint's body.
Scans confirmed the presence of all of her organs, and researchers found no signs of incisions. No
resins or unguents were detected on her skin, making her incredible preservation inexplicable.
Other saints that fall into this category include Ubald of Gubbio,
Blessed Margaret of Savoy , and Saint Savina Petrilli. After examining Zita, Ezio Fulcheri had
no explanation other than environmental factors. He hypothesizes that Zita's entombing in burial
vaults beneath church floors may have something to do with their frozen-in-time features today.
Making a pilgrimage to see a saint's body isn't always possible. For example,
visiting Saint Francis Xavier's mummy requires a trip to Goa,
India, so sacred body parts represent the next best thing. Notably, Francis Xavier's
465-year-old preserved arm sometimes travels. In 2018, it made a whirlwind tour of Canada.
"It's more than just reading about him. It's something that's still
physically present. Like it's literally his arm."
Another body-part honorable mention is Saint Anthony's tongue. After the popular saint died
in 1231 of edema, his body decayed, which church officials realized during his first exhumation in
1263. Oddly enough, though, his tongue looked totally fine and proved flexible and wet,
as if the famed church orator were about to take another stab at it. Church leaders soon declared
the tongue preserved because of his perfect teachings, and today, the saint's tongue and
lower jawbone rest in elaborate gold reliquaries at the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua, Italy.
Another saint whose corporeal preservation proved hit or miss,
Vincent de Paul's heart is about all we have left from the man except for a pile of bones.
The skeleton now sits beneath exquisitely sculpted layers of wax, giving him a lifelike appearance,
and a golden reliquary at the Sisters of Charity in Paris houses his heart.
Naysayers have plenty of criticism for macabre relics. One of their most compelling stances
deals with individuals who are well-preserved but were less-than-saintly. These include the Italian
Archbishop Cardinal Schuster, whose corpse proved incorrupt 31 years after death. Yet,
he had a reputation as a fascist and bosom buddy of Benito Mussolini. Some
people think that's more than enough reason for his corpse to decay.
There's also Rosalia Lombardo of Sicily, who perished as a toddler. Her heartbroken father
hired the best embalmer money could buy, worth every penny. The embalming process
left her astonishingly lifelike. Housed in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,
the haunting appearance of the little "sleeping beauty" draws visitors from all over the world.
And we can't forget about individuals like the Iron Age Tollund Man, found in Denmark's Silkeborg
bog in 1950. His body looks so fresh that his discoverers thought they'd stumbled across a
contemporary murder scene. But as they examined the corpse, they realized that from his head to
his toes, the man embodied a time capsule — one that dated to between 375 and 210 B.C.
"This may be a murder case, but it is a very cold one. So you need an archeologist, not the police."
His perfect preservation, which includes bodily organs, resulted from the unique
environmental factors of the bog, including a lack of oxygen, a dearth of bacteria,
and cool temperatures year-round. While his remains would be the envy of any wannabe saint,
his pagan lifestyle breaks the canonization mold.
Modern-day attempts to preserve the bodies of saints, both past and present, have come at
the ultimate cost. A team of researchers assembled by the Vatican in the 1970s to
improve upon the mummification process worked with such dangerous chemicals that all but one
member died from cancer, and, understandably, no one has the nerve to continue their work.
From 1975 to 2008, the team preserved 31 bodies of "saints, beatified,
and servants of God." They worked on everything from centuries-old mummies
of saints to specific body parts in a battle to beat decomposition. But their struggle
against the forces of nature backfired as team members soon started dropping
like flies. The team included anthropologists, radiologists, medical surgeons, pathologists,
and microbiologists. Yet, stunningly, they failed to recognize the danger they faced.
The preservation of Pope John XXIII's corpse attests to their meticulous skill. To retain
his incorruptibility, the team suspended his body for months at a time in baths of
various chemicals, including methanol, ethanol, camphor, phenol, nitrobenzene,
benzoic acid, and even turpentine. They bandaged him in linen soaked in ethanol
and mercury bichloride and finished with a thin wax mask for good measure. But working
with such dangerous chemicals proved fatal, a shocking price to pay for corporeal immortality.