Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

On eating the heart of the Sun King, Louis XIV

Since time immemorial it has been the custom of certain cultures to bury the heart of deceased kings or rulers separately from their body. This practice has spanned centuries and reflected a variety of different religious, political, and cultural beliefs. For example, ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the seat of the soul and placed it after death in a “canopic jar” near the mummy so it could help the person navigate through the afterlife.

Kingdoms and empires of the Middle Ages often followed a similar practice, sometimes reflecting the connection between the sovereign’s birthplace to where he ruled later in life. There were also more practical or political considerations, such as an opportunity to create an additional site for remembrance, worship, or pilgrimage. This was particularly obvious in the case of saints, but also for royalty in the extensive monarchies of Spain and France, Scotland for Robert the Bruce, English kings Henry I and Richard the Lionheart, and several English queens.1

Even more recently it was the practice of the ruling houses of continental Europe, especially of the Habsburgs, to place their deceased kings and emperors in imperial crypts but keep the hearts in separate containers.1 Among non-royal celebrities we find the great composer Frédéric Chopin resting in a cemetery in Paris, while his heart is venerated in Warsaw. But nothing can prevent the sleep of the royal dead from being disturbed, as happened during the French Revolution, when the tombs of William the Conqueror in Rouen and Henry IV of France at Saint Denis were desecrated and looted.

In the case of Louis XIV, who died at age seventy-seven from gangrene, the body was divided at autopsy into three parts (body, heart, and entrails), a tradition for French kings that had started several centuries earlier. The body was placed in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the viscera in Notre Dame Cathedral, and the heart in the Jésuit church on Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris. During the French Revolution, the heart was stolen, and according to one version was sold to a landscape painter who ground it down to make a popular red pigment called mummy brown, which later became a particular favorite of the Pre-Raphaelites. According to another version, it was sent to the l’Église du Val-de-Grâce in Paris. But eventually it came into possession of Lord Harcourt, the archbishop of York, who would sometimes exhibit it to his guests at his residence at Nuneham.

It was there, according to a particular version, that in 1848 the theologian Reverend William Buckland was invited to dinner. He was a distinguished but quirky paleontologist who had studied and described dinosaurs like the megalosaurus, imported animals into England, and created a personal zoo, keeping the animals for entertainment and research. He prided himself on being able to recognize the origins of fossils by tasting them, and when presented with the heart of Louis XIV, shriveled to a small pumice stone, he tasted it and accidentally swallowed it. If verified, it would be an undignified exit for of the earthly remains of the sovereign before whom all Europe had once trembled.

Notes on some royal separate burials of heart and body

  • Henry I, King of England—His heart was buried at the Rouen Cathedral of Notre Dame in Normandy, while his body was interred in Reading Abbey (1135).
  • King Richard the Lionheart—His heart was also buried at the Cathedral in Rouen, but the king himself was buried in Fontevraud Abbey (1199).
  • Robert the Bruce, King of Scots—His heart was initially intended for burial in Jerusalem but ended up at Melrose Abbey in Scotland (1329).
  • Eleanor of Castile, Queen of Edward I of England—Her heart was buried at Blackfriars in London, while her body was interred in Westminster Abbey (1290).
  • Otto the Great, Holy Roman Emperor—His heart was buried at Memleben, while his body was buried at Magdeburg (973).
  • John II Casimir Vasa, King of Poland—His heart was buried at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, while his body was interred at Wawel Cathedral in Kraków (1672).
  • Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand—One of the last examples of a heart being interred separately, following his assassination in 1914.

GEORGE DUNEA, MD, Editor-in-Chief

Winter 2025

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