A mummified head has been confirmed to belong to Henri IV, the French king who was stabbed to death by a Catholic fundamentalist 400 years ago.
The head has been identified using a combination of anthropological, paleopathological, radiological and forensic strategies by a multi-disciplinary team of 20 experts, who report their findings in Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal.
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One of France’s most popular monarchs, also known as the “Green Gallant” for his allure on women, Henry IV is credited with ending the wars between Catholics and Protestants.
Following the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestants, he was forced to convert to Catholicism, allegedly declaring, “Paris is worth a Mass,” before becoming “good King Henry”.
Despite his popularity, he was assassinated on May 14, 1610, at age 57, by Catholic fanatic Francois Ravaillac, who slashed him twice in the throat while the royal coach was stopped in traffic congestion.
Henry IV’s embalmed body was solemnly buried with the other kings of France in the basilica of Saint-Denis, north of Paris.
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In 1793, however, his head was chopped off by revolutionaries and tossed in a pit along with other mutilated remains dug up from royal graves.
Lost for a couple of centuries, the head resurfaced in 1919, and was later auctioned off and displayed in private collections.
“The human head had a light brown color, open mouth, and partially closed eyes,” the researchers wrote. The team, led by Philippe Charlier, a forensic medical examiner and osteo-archaeologist at the University Hospital R. Poincaré, noticed that “the preservation was excellent, with all soft tissue and internal organs well conserved.”
However, it was not possible to recover uncontaminated mitochondrial DNA sequences to carry a genetic test.
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Thus the researchers turned to a combination of scientific methods to identify the royal head.
While radiocarbon dating yielded a date of between 1450 and 1650, which matched Henry’s lifespan (1553 to 1610), several features on the mummified head were consistent with the image of the king as it was represented in portraits.
