In Part 1, I left off with John the Baptist. So now, I will begin the beginning by beginning with the end…the end of the end being at the end and…perhaps…the beginning of the next installment. What more famous severed head is there in history than that of the Great Forerunner? One of the three women who funded Jesus’s ministry, Joanna, wife of a Herodian official named Chuza, and grand-daughter of Theophilus…who funded the Gospel of Luke project, is credited with having located the head of John the Baptist and placed it…

 …in a reliquary, burying it on the Mount of Olives.

Of course, this would leave the head buried in Jerusalem, just ready to be found again. But there was no end to the crazy stories about the head of John the Baptist. During the reign of Constantine, when his mother Helen had decided to fix up the holy places in Jerusalem, two monks on pilgrimage had a dream in which John showed them where his head was. They recovered it, and carried it around in a sack. Then a common potter came to possess it, and then he, at the time of his death, decided to gift it to his sister. A rather strange family heirloom! As mindboggling as it is, the head of John the Baptist kept changing hands until it came to be owned by a monk named Eustacius, who healed people with it although he seems to have let those cured by the Cured Head of John the Baptist believe that it was he himself who carried out the healings. When this false pride became known, Eustacius left the region in a hurry, burying the head in his cave before leaving. A monastery magically grew up around this cave. The head was found again, and placed in the Church of St. John by Uranius of Emesa. Somehow, it supposedly ended up in in Constantinople. It then turned up in Comana. In 850, it made its way back to Constantinople. At some point the skull was broken, resulting in different pieces, with different parts travelling all over the place, and more pieces being taken from it as souvenirs.  Crusaders found it at Constantinople in 1204, and while they were looting the imperial palace, it was found yet again, missing part of the jaw. Off it went to France, ending up in Amiens…

…apart from who knows how many stories there are about the head of John the Baptist, there has certainly been no end to the obsession with the most famous human head in human head history…

Christianity, very early on, developed an obsession with dead bodies and body parts. And it comes as no surprise that the head…that was the most important body part of them all! Of course, the Most Desired Head In All of Christendom had to be John the Baptist. It is also the case that if you dug around in Palestine, you would find bodies a plenty…and skulls too. All you had to do was find one and decide what Biblical Character’s skull you found…take your pick. And with all the causalities on both sides of the Wars of the Crusades…Christian and Muslim, removing a head was easy enough, then you could make it out to be John the Baptist if you saw fit. It will come as no surprise that different locations in the world all claim to have the head of John the Baptist. It would hardly be surprising if the Templars claimed that they had the head of John the Baptist. However, this would certainly not support a charge of idolatry, seeing how we’re talking about one of the holiest relics in the Christian world. For the Inquisitors, the head could not be allowed to be the head of John the Baptist. That said, the following Templar image…

…could be a representation of the head of John the Baptist. It is clearly the case that most faithful and loyal disciple of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, became closely associated with the human skull…

But the Apostle of Apostles wasn’t the only one whose image became intimately linked to the human skull…

…so too St. Jerome, one of the greatest Doctors of the Church and the brilliant man who produced a brilliant translation of the Bible…the Latin Vulgate.
The witness who described the Templars as in possession of a head reliquary that opened up to reveal a woman’s skull contained inside is particularly interesting. Why? Well, I wonder how rare such a thing might be. Now for a labor of love…

St. Alexander; St. Dorothy; St. Louis of Toulouse; St. Sylvester; St. Eustace.

St. King Dadislas I of Hungary; St. Blaise of Sebaste; St. Theobald; St. Yrieix; St. Charlemagne.

St. Martin of Tours; St. John the Chaplain (Dalmatia); St. Thekla; St. Baudime; St. Sigsimund.

St. Andrew; St. Scholastica; St. Ursula; St. Juliana; St. Martine Stefano Fidelis.

St. Paul; St. Januarius; St. Deusdedit I; St. Catherine of Alexandria; St. Catherine of Dijon.

St. Margaret; St. Benedict; St. Frederick; St. Rossore.

St. Dorothy (3x); St. Anne; St. Agnes.

Mary Magdalene (4x); and St. Martha. And my favorite…

…the head reliquary of St. Orosia (Eurosia). And I show the following image because it…

…yes! St. Lucius. And this shot shows how you pull the top of his head off to see the skull inside it. And, with my love of cephalophore saints, I went out of my head when I found…

St. Justus’s Cephalophoric Reliquary!
Now I’m glad that one of the witnesses in the Great Knights Templar Frame-up mentioned the 11,000 virgins. And that’s a lot of virgins! Well, to have all in one place.

Ursula was betrothed to a pagan ruler named Conan Meriadoc. When she went to meet him for the first time, she took an army with her. Fierce warriors, yes? No! An army of 11,000 virgins. But before she would seal the deal, she decided to take a vacation in Europe. Arriving at Cologne, she found an army of Huns…and they weren’t young virgins! Ursula And Her Virginal Squad were wiped out. This legend served many purposes. But! It also gave collectors of relics…and the Templars seem to be the foremost souvenir hunters…the opportunity to declare any skeleton of a young person to be of these 11,000 virgins, although I’ll bet that, if one takes into account just how many bits of skeletons circulated in Europe and ended up in reliquaries, the number of virgins would number 1,000,000. Well, approximately. And I’ll bet that’s even more than the number of nails from the Holy Cross of Christ one would find visiting the churches and cathedrals of Christendom. 11,000 virgins?

Medieval math…what comes after 11,000? What! 11,001? Wrong! The correct answer is…1,000,000. Well, approximately. And given what happened to the Virgin Army, I’m puzzled by…

…what these two Ursulaic Virgins think is so funny. But if one doesn’t have a piece of bone for a reliquary, but still wanted to be gruesome, then one could just make a bust…

…with a bloody, slit throat. How about a whole-body reliquary…

…like that of St. Foy? And you could have a super-duper big reliquary…

…that could hold the bones of St. Maurus; St. Timothy; and St. John the Baptist.
Now, most of the reliquaries shown above contain skulls or parts of skulls. But other body parts count too…

The hand of St. Blaise; the foot of St. Blaise; the arm of St. Pantaleon; the arm of St. Tomas; the arm of Lachtin; the arm of St. Bernward.

The arm of St. Thomas Aquinas; the finger of John the Baptist; the finger of St. Catherine; a foot of one of the Innocents of Bethlehem; the leg of St. Vincent.

The right arm of John the Baptist; the arm of St. Valentine; the arm of St. George; the wrist of St. Paul.

The jaw of Mary Magdalene. And…

How about…

…the heart of St. Teresa of Avila; the heart of St. Camillus; or the incorruptible heart of St. John Vianney? How about…

…the blood of St. Januarius? Or maybe…

…the dehydrated, powdered blood of Saint Munditia, who will appear again shortly. Or even…

…the blood of Saint Aurelius…there in the vial in front of him. This one is somewhat disturbing…

…the Eyes of St. Roseline de Villeneuve. It’s fairly rare to be able look a saint in the eyes!
Now it is worth looking at the question of skulls…

St. Filician; St. Viatlis; St. Erasmus; St. Agnes; St. Helena. Yes…St. Vitalis…patron saint of genital diseases. Please don’t tell me how he got that title.

St. Sebastian; St. Valentine; some Holy Skulls; St. John Plessington…English priest and guy who, or so it seems, bumped his head.

St. Thomas Aquinas; St. John Chrysostom; St. Irene; St. Ivo; St. Adalbert.

Pope St. Clement; St. Aloysius; St. Gregory the Enlightener; and St. Ursula.

St. Jean de Brebeuf; John Chrysostom with ear exposed so you can talk to him; St. Wenceslaus; St. Wenceslaus in action. Wait!

I almost forgot Leopold III…with a very bizarre head-dress. And this Saintly Skull comes with its very own…

…crown…secular, not heavenly…crown. So it goes for Saint King Erik of Sweden. And now for a Skull-Saint who tried playing I’ll Punch Your Face with Regan MacNeil…

…St Prospero. And don’t forget that even bits of skull are worth venerating…

Pope St. Mark, St. Ananias (disciple of the Lord), and Pope St. Celestine I. You could also make less anthropomorphic, yet still highly ornate…Skull Cases…

St. Elizabeth of Hungary; St. Blaise; St. James; St. Anastasios the Persian; and St. Oswald.

Head reliquary in the shape of a Skull Case with relics of St. Blaise, St. Achilleus, St. Stephen, and St. Nereus. Oh! I almost forgot!

…the Skull-Case of St. Anastasia Pharmakolitria. Welcome to…

…Otranto! In this shot, it is hard to see the decorations behind those glass panels. So, I suppose, close-up shots might be more helpful…

On August 14, 1480 an Ottoman attack against the city of Otranto ended in a…

…Muslim victory. This resulted in harsh punishments meted out to the Christians…

…813 inhabitants of the city in southern Italy were killed after refusing to convert to Islam after the city fell to the Ottomans. And their remains were put on display in the church. At this time, the Vatican is planning to canonize all the bones in the church of Otranto. As this website has clearly shown, weird things can always get weirder…

…or as I prefer to say, interesting things can always get interestinger! This skull was found to be among the other 812 skulls in One Of The Most Disturbing Church In The World. Researchers were at a loss as to how to explain the holes, obviously made with a drill of some sort. The best theory so far maintains that someone drilled these holes in the skull in order to obtain Skull Dust. In the Medieval period, Skull Dust was used in medicines that treated such conditions as epilepsy. Isn’t that some form of cannibalism? Hmm. Skull Dust from the skull of a saint or martyr was the best medicine of all. Even better than mom’s chicken soup! Keep Otranto in mind, as it will appear again shortly. As disturbing as it may seem, churches full of skeletal remains aren’t a rarity.

The Sedlec Ossuary church, located in what now known as the Czech Republic, has used pieces of 40,000 skeletons for decoration.

The Skull Chapel of Czermna, Poland…24,000 skeletons. But who’s counting?

The Church of Santa Maria, in Wamba, Spain.

The Capuchin Crypt, Rome…located under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, which includes the skeletal remains of 3,700 monks. Get ready for this one…

The Church of Hallstatt in Austria. The dead from the neighboring cemetery are disinterred after decomposition, and the bones are removed for deposit in the church. The skulls are painted with decorations, and the names of their former owners, and in some cases…dates, are painted onto the skulls…no anonymous saints here! Now for creepy time…

The skull of Mary Magdalen; the jaw and tongue of St. Anthony of Padua. Here is another angle of the Horrible Mary Magdalene Skull just in case you aren’t already sufficiently creeped out…

That’ll give you nightmares! And don’t take this the wrong way! I really dig Mary Magdalene. But I knew this ridiculous image reminded me of something I saw when I was quite young. The relics of the Greatest Disciple? Not exactly…

…the Spooky Space Kook from Scooby-doo.

What else can one say?

Exactly! Now I’m sure that you think that the Spooky Space Kook is one digression too far! There couldn’t be anything spookier or kookier than that. Oh, no? It’s time for mummified heads!

St. Lawrence; St. Oliver Plunkett; an unidentified nun; St. Catherine of Siena. What is better than a mummified head?

The whole mummy! St. Catherine of Bolgna; St. Virginia; St. Zita; St. Nicolosa.

St. Spyridon; St. Dona Maria Colonel; St. Dionysios; and St. Rosaline.

St. Gerasimos; St. Stephanos of Sinai; St. Paula Frassinetti; and St. Francis Xavier.

And St. Antonius. I would never forget…

…St. Leonis Bembo. Why? Because his name is so similar to Betty Boop’s friend…

…Bimbo. And I never dreamed that I could work Betty Boop and Bimbo into an essay about Pazuzu, Baphomet, and Christianity’s obsession with dead things. Shake it, baby!
But you can keep mummified remains of people other than saints, even when the bodies are in pretty bad condition for sacred mummies…

…such as those on display in St. Michan Church, Ireland. Sometimes it seems that Christians don’t understand R.I.P. Perhaps we should change it to R.O.D, Rest on Display.
If 11,000 virgins can become 1,000,000…metaphorically speaking, then if you dug your way into a Christian Catacomb, you would find scads of skeletons. You could then dress them and cover them with jewels, make up a bunch of plausible sounding names, assign them to the skeletons of choice, and then you end up with the Army of Bejeweled Saints!

St. Giustina; St. Bonosa; St. Munditia.

St. Benedictus; St. Felix; St. Severinus; St. Deodatus…drinks are on him…apparently.

St. Maximus; St. Pancratius; St. Coronatus; St. Irenaeus; St. Valentinus.

St. Getreu; St. Albertus; St. Luciana; St. Benedictus.

St. Konstantius; St. Victorinus; St. Alexander; St. Severina.

St. Clemens; St. Faustus; St. Theodosius; St. Konrad.

St. Vitalian; St. Faustine; and St. Vincentus…who just woke up and would appreciate it if you would close the curtains. And my favorite…

…another St. Benedictus! And I must admit, that I mentioned to St. Pancratius, over lunch of course, that this whole Bejeweled Catacomb Saint Skeleton thing was rather morbid and a down-right fraud, this was his response…

Oh, yeah? Same to you! Let’s see if I invite you to lunch with me and Tlazy again! In full regalia, but without the excessive ornamentation…

…St. Ambrose of Milan. Not Ambrose of Alexandria, who will figure prominently in the next installment of the Search for the Panther serial essay. Unfortunately, as much as I know we all hate this, we have to pay some bills. So here is a word from our advertising sponsor…

Now I’d like to say…

Sorry!

Can I speak now? Ok. Now I must say that I’m so very proud of my own two daughters…MaryBelle and Adrasta…they’re cute as buttons, and so I’m forcing them to join me in my endless business ventures. I must admit that I’m a little worried about my annoying step-daughter…

…Darla. Ok, although it’s true that she’s kind of cute…and has a pretty good fashion sense…still, she’s not as well-adjusted as my two girls. And I think she’s a bit on the strange side. But if you have any problems with her, like people suddenly disappearing from the neighborhood and never being seen again…talk to her father! It is also worth saying that the executive producer forced me to add that last bit about Saint Tektonikus, whose sainthood…as well as her…

 knighthood…is purely honorary. And I told her she didn’t need all that make-up for that shot! Where was I? Oh, yes…I will resist the urge, for now, to go into the supposed Incorruptible Bodies of Saints…except for…

…St. Inocenia of Guadalajara. Why? Because if you catch her in the right mood, she’ll open her eyes and smile for the camera! I don’t suppose she’s a mechanical device, or something. And...

…St. Juste of the Metal Mask! Although one must careful to differentiate this saint from…

…the quite unsaintly Vortigern…enemy to King Arthur and his father…Uther Pendragon. And I never thought that I’d get a chance to work Vortigern into an essay about Pazuzu, Baphomet, and Christianity’s obsession with dead things…not to mention…Betty Boop and Bimbo!
And I thought for a moment that one could build a John The Baptist if one wanted to…

First…pick a head. Then…

...take this arm. Then…

…pick a hand.

Then add a finger, a tooth, and, in the box on the far right, various bone pieces and another tooth. But I suppose I could also build a Mary Magdalene…

First…a Spooky Space Kook head. Then an extra jaw. Don’t forget a tooth…and if you’re having trouble with a little Morbid Saintly DIY…I’ll give you a hand.

Then a leg bone and a foot. Of course, some sources interpret the name…Magdalene…to derive from the Hebrew word for…hair-dresser, and it is fascinating that one of the Jewish Talmudic sources includes the statement that Yeshu ben Pandera’s mother was named Mary (Miriam), who had long hair…a common element in representations of Mary Magdalene…and another tradition states that Yeshu’s mother was named Mary, who was a hair-dresser. It would appear that Jewish sources were confusing Miriam of Nazareth with Mariam the Hair-dresser. And if she was indeed the Lady With The Most Beautiful Long Hair that would leave even Rapunzel jealous, I have included a small hair from a relic container purporting to contain just that…a hair of Mary Magdalene.
It would seem that the Knights Templar were in fact, at the very least, collectors of dead parts of, in reality, none of the people they, or the rest of Christendom, say they are…or is it…were? But I now end at the end of the ending of this installment. I how glad I am! Not for the same reasons you are. Why am I glad? Because it’s time to follow through on a promise I made in Part 1…discussing the problem with names.