At 08:20 AM 8/31/99 -0700, you wrote:
>The ongoing discussion on body parts and reliquaries has fascinated me. Can
>any of the erudite historians who have responded help with a related, not
>hagiographic, question? When the coffin of the French queen Isabelle of
>Hainaut (d. 1190) was opened for the last time in the nineteenth century,
>her bones were not in order and her head was missing. The coffin had
>previously been opened in 1699 during work on the choir of Notre-Dame de
Paris.
>
>Did the missing head most likely result from of a French royal practice of
>placing body parts in various churches, chapels or convents? Or, since she
>is described as "religiosissima," and two of her grandchildren were sainted
>(St. Louis and St. Isabelle) does a possibility exist that her head was
>placed in a reliquary at some point, even though she was not formally
>recognized as a saint? As an added problem, since Isabelle of Hainaut died
>in childbirth contemporary canon law would have complicated arrangements for
>her funeral and entombment had she not been of such exalted rank.
>
>I have been unable to locate a copy in the U.S. of Charpentier's 1797 book
>on Notre-Dame (Description historique et chronologique de l'e'glise
>me'tropolitaine de Paris, etc.), which might answer some of these questions.
>If anyone in the U.S. or Canada on the list has access to it, I would be
>grateful to know its whereabouts.
>
>Aline Hornaday
Elizabeth A. R. Brown has published various articles on royal
funerary/divisio corporis/fate of the remains thar are now avail. in a
Variorum rpr.
Michael F. Hynes
Columbia University
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