I have just checked the Name of the Rose and discovered that I was barking
up the wrong tree. William of Baskerville is the one who refers to the
skull (not 'head') of the Baptist and is indeed making a joke at the
expense of the more extravagant claims of the cult of relics. Please
ignore my last posting!
Martin Howley
On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Martin Howley wrote:
> Dear all:
> Perhaps I got this wrong; but I understood the writer of an
> earlier posting (I think John Howe) to have suggested the head of the
> Baptist referred not to a relic but rather to a head-shaped reliquary. If
> there were statues for cults of the Baptist at different stages of his
> life this, head reliquaries which also represented him at those stages
> would not be such a heterodox notion. Did I misinterpret the sense of this
> earlier posting, then?
> Cheers,
> Martin Howley
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