Totally amazing! Completely astounded by St. Silvan! Other than the wound on his neck, it almost looks like he could get up and start walking around! All the way from the fourth century!
St. Silvan is a statue, dating from the 19th c from the looks of it.
Only St. Clare’s bones survive. The body of St. Therese became a skeleton. The face of Padre Pio is covered with a silicone mask. Bernadette’s face and hands are covered with wax masks. The Cure d’Ars face is a wax mask. Bl. John XXIII was embalmed. The display of a statue or covered face or an embalmed body inside a crystal or glass reliquary-casket is very misleading, as it implies incorruptibility. The bodies of the ancient Italian female saints are clearly mummified, probably as they were emaciated at death, with little remaining fat or muscle and their bowel emptied of contents due to diarrhea, vomiting, starvation, penance.
Here are some references:
Doctors’ statements re the body of Bernadette: this is the most important, as she is the main saint referred to as incorrupt:
catholicpilgrims.com/lourdes/bb_bernadette_body.htm
Bernadette died of TB at age 34, and was very emaciated at death, as her picture in her casket shows.
Also the following link, which includes others:
skeptoid.com/episodes/4126–which
Two books, both available cheaply on
www.bookfinder.com (under $4.00 each, including shipping):
Nickell, J., Looking For A Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions and Healing Cures (Prometheus Books, 1993). Available for under $4.00 including shipping under
bookfinder.com.
Pringle, H., The Mummy Congress : Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead (Hyperion, 2001). Also available for under $4.00, including shipping, through
bookfinder.com
Includes other references to false attributions of incorruptibility.
bluepanjeet.net/category/series/the-incorruptibles.
Also check the article in
wikipedia.com.
There is a long list of saints, etc., supposedly incorrupt, in the Wiki article. Many of these include only descriptions from ancient times. Some have images, many of poor quality, which may been preserved as described above. If you check each name online, you also find descriptions of bodies found “incorrupt” on first exhumation, but later were found to have disintegrated, probably as the surrounding air/atmosphere changed. Bl. Pier Frassatti was originally ‘incorrupt’ , later found to be decomposing.
Why don’t Protestants, etc have incorruptibility? Protestants don’t canonize. They don’t dig up their dead–repeatedly. As another poster has mentioned, there are reports of lack of decomposition of bodies accidentally exhumed, but their preservation is felt to have been a natural phenomenon.
The attribution of incorruptibility needs to be verified by the use of modern technology and science.
