My favorite works in the Accademia in Venice are the paintings by Carpaccio showing the life of St Ursula

for a look, see http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/c/carpacci/1ursula/2/

if you click on each picture, it will enlarge

You can see St Catherine of Siena's shrunken head in the Dominican church in Siena, if that helps?! Not sure how she lost it!

Actually Vedette, they walked up from below the Ile de la Cité. The guards got tired of walking and decided to carry out the execution of the site of the Chapelle du Martyre (9 rue Yvonne-le-Tac), he picked up his head, carried it to a fountain (Impasse Girardon off rue Girardon) to wash it off & proceeded north about 2 miles until he finally fell down. The Basilique St-Denis covers the site where he succumbed.

I wrote about it here:
http://www.virtualtourist.com/vt/18308/6/1423/

If you follow the route on a map you'll see he zig-zagged a bit. Quite an accomplishment for a headless man, wouldn't you say??

But I've read St-Denis is based on Dionysus. There are no early records of this saint.

In regards to St Catherine of Siena, when she died they removed her head from her body (apparently it wasn't hard to do due to some of the, um, decomposition) and sent it to Siena, her hometown. Another town recieved a finger? Perhaps another one received another finger or toe? The body lies in Rome.

There was a fascinating thread on her - I'll try to top it.

Actually, I'll just post the link:
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34420442

I think Martin Luther observed that if you added up all the bones in European churches claimed to be relics of one of the twelve Apostles you'd have enough to construct a battalion of apostles. Add all these other martyrs with their ssociated fantastic stories and I wonder how many we'd have?

I recall the Vatican ordering a spring-clean of saints some years ago, and quite a few were demoted, among them St Christopher I think, leaving travellers technically saintless. Or was another saint drafted in his place?

The current Pope has created more saints than any other, I believe.

Thanks everybody, it really gets interesting. There are alot of relics in the churches? Shrunken heads?

There must be a list of parts does anyone know?

some of the most beautiful church artifacts from medieval times are reliquaries, small containers made of gold and precious stones to hold various body parts (bits, sometimes) of saints, or objects associated with Jesus.

I just googled this topic and came up with these websites which look helpful

http://www.catholic-pages.com/dir/saints.asp


http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12734a.htm that one's about relics

http://www.catholic.org/saints/

I've just learned that St Isidore of Seville is the proposed patron saint of Internet users

St Stephen was stoned to death so he is always depicted with a stone on his forehead.

John the Baptist: hairy suit
Mary Magdalene: long blond hair (go figure) and red outfit
John the Apostle: the youngest of the four when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are shown.

Really, you get to know who all the saints and religious figures are after looking at enough art. hey were always depicted with these symbols since the majority of their audience was illiterate.

Almost any church will have relics in individual chapels. Larger churches and cathedrals will have reliqueries, entire rooms with display cases holding impressive jeweled golden urns with small glass windows displaying the particular piece. Especially impressive--arm-shaped reliqueries holding arm bones.

At the Church of St Anthony in Padua, there is perhaps the most impressive relic display for one particular person--an entire wall of trophy-like containers with the body parts labeled: jawbone, tongue, fingerbones. . . I think they still reasemble his major skeletion bones every few years and put them on display in a glass coffin-like display.

I visited the Church of St Rita in Nice and wondered about all the depictions with this thin object sticking out of her forehead. Apparently her husband drove a nail into her head. Now she is considered the patron saint of abused wives.

linking this thread to Helpful Information Italy and
Paris Superthread

Not a Saint presently resting in Europe (though he may have been European), the body of Saint Francis Xavier is currently encased in an ornate glass casket in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, India. Every ten or twenty years, they open the casket for a few weeks for public veneration resulting in a massive pilgrimage by catholics the world over, all eager for a glimpse of his mortal remains which, from what I've seen on the Net, are remarkably well preserved.

It is said that hundreds of years ago, upon hearing of his death, that one of his devoted followers, refusing to believe that he was dead, leapt up after seeing his body and in what must have been a misguided moment fuelled by grief, bit off one of his toes. The severed body part now has a glass casing of its own and draws it's own crowds.

I truly believe that it is bizarre stories - whether true or not - such as these, that make some Saints more memorable than the countless others that no one talks about.

Did someone already mention St. Sebastian, he of the many arrows stuck in his body?

yes, he's mentioned above

always depicted as a hunky young man, because for centuries it was the only acceptable way for artists to depict a male nude

St. Rita of Cascia is a patron of abused wives but not because her husband drove a nail through her head. After hearing a sermon by St. James of the Marches, she prayed to God to give her her own crown of thorns. From that point on, her forehead bore a fetid wound. Depictions of her in art sometimes include a thorn in her forehead. Her body is elaborately displayed in the Basilica of St. Rita in Cascia, Umbria.
Both St. Catherine of Siena, who died in 1380, and St.Catherine d'Ricci, who died in 1590, claimed that Christ slipped a ring off of his own finger and onto their own.

Beatchick: Thanks for the correction!

A few Christmases ago, I was given a rather irreverant book: Saints Preserve Us! : Everything You Need to Know About Every Saint You'll Ever Need,
by Sean Kelly, Rosemary Rogers.
Somewhat sacreligious, sarcastic and rather funny in places, it's definitely NOT a book for those who are pious. I thought of it because I remember the description of St Rita with her fetid wound. Supposedly, the other sisters in her community gave her a lot of space, because the wound festered for years...

And I can't remember who the patron saint of poultry is...

Visit Chartres Cathedral, and notice the little "casket" on the left side, approximately in the middle of the cathedral...it contains the veil of the Virgin Mary, "Voile de la Vierge".

In 858, after the church had been pillaged and burnt by raiding Vikings, Charles the Bald, Charlemagne's grandson, presented the church with the Sancta Camisia, the veil believed to have been worn by Mary when she gave birth to Jesus. (Some sources indicate, however, that it was the veil worn at the Annunciation.)
The increasing importance given to Mary through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries combined with the belief that relics provided a tangible link to the saints made Chartres an increasingly important pilgrimage center.
In 980, the famous scholar Fulbert came to teach in the cathedral school from Reims where he had been a pupil of Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II. Fulbert was bishop of Chartres until his death in 1028, and it was during his reign that the cathedral was once again destroyed, this time by fire, on September 7, 1020. Fulbert solicited funds to build a replacement in Romanesque style.
On the night of June 10, 1194, most of the city of Chartres was destroyed by fire, and the cathedral was badly damaged. It was believed all had been lost, most significantly the Sancta Camisia. However, days later, three priests emerged from the crypt, where they had taken refuge along with the relic. This was taken as a miracle and a sign from the Virgin to build an even grander cathedral.

Another Mary, Mary Magdalene, was originally interred at Vézelay, France, then her body was moved after many years to Saint-Maximin,in Provence. There are many stories of Bishops, Priests, etc. , taking part of her body, and one in which a Bishop gnawed at her arm, supposedly to give him strength.

kamahinaohoku I have a copy of "Saints Preserve US!" It's a hoot.

Ferreolus is the patron saint of sick poultry. He's also on call for those with rheumatism.

He too was beheaded. "Saints Preserve us!" says no one really knows what he has to do with under-the-weather chickens.

vedette, mon ami, you are quite welcome!

laurensuite, is that Fulbert the same as Canon Fulbert who was uncle to Heloïse (of Heloïse & Abelard)?

I'm not Catholic but I find this to be a fascinating subject & this thread to be MOST interesting!

Hi Beatchick
It can't be the same Fulbert (I noticed the name myself) because H and A were a couple of centuries later