Religion: The Martyrs’ Heads

At a Brussels auction last year, Antique Dealer Victor van Uytrecht noticed two handsome 18th century bronze busts of Roman soldiers in coats of mail. He bought them and took them back home to Namur. There, Van Uytrecht’s partner and stepson noticed that one of the heads seemed a bit loose. When he tried to tighten it, the bust came apart. Inside was a wooden box, bound with red silk bands and heavy seals, inscribed Cap. S. Felicis. M.

The dealers promptly called in a neighbor priest, who identified the box as a reliquary and the inscription as meaning Caput Sancti Felicis Martyr (the head of St. Felix, Martyr). When church officials cut the ribbons and opened the box, a yellow skull wrapped in red silk stared out at them.

Scientific tests of cloth and bone proved to the church’s satisfaction that it was in deed St. Felix’s head. The skull hidden in the other bust was identified as that of his friend and fellow 4th century martyr, St. Nabor. Tradition tells that the saints were Moorish soldiers in the army of the Emperor Diocletian, stationed in what is now Milan in about A.D. 303. Under repeated torture they refused to renounce their Christian faith. At last they were both beheaded, and their remains were eventually buried in Milan’s oldest Christian cemetery. Turned over to the keeping of the Franciscans, the heads and bodies remained together until the Napoleonic wars, when the headless bodies ended up in Milan’s ancient St. Ambrose Church. How and when the heads found their way to Belgium no one knows.

Last week a solemn procession wound through the streets of Milan. In a flower-decked automobile rode the heads of the two soldier saints with an honor guard of artillery troops in dress uniforms, and behind them came Milan’s Cardinal Montini. In the church dedicated to the two martyrs, the heads were laid to rest in a glass reliquary with a special Mass.