Things You Didn't Know About Hitler That Will Blow Your Mind

A decapitated saint and a talking head

When the Vikings were raiding England in the ninth century, a saint named Edmund turned himself over to the invaders rather than have his people be overrun, according to Ælfric of Eynsham’s “Lives of Saints.” Ælfric was an English abbot who wrote hagiographies, homilies and biblical commentaries in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Edmund tried to convert the Viking invaders, and in response they tortured and beheaded him, throwing his head into the forest. Contemporary Christian burial customs dictated the head must be buried with the body for sake of wholeness, anticipating the resurrection of the dead at the Last Judgment. A witness who had seen the beheading had an idea where to look, so a search party traveled the woods calling out for Edmund, eventually hearing the head itself respond “Here, here, here!” They find Edmund’s head — which was speaking to them — miraculously being guarded by a wolf, which kept the carrion animals at bay. After the head was recovered, Edmund was given a martyr’s burial.

Years later, Edmund’s body is exhumed from the local churchyard to be moved to a nicer location. Ælfric wrote that his body looked almost entirely healed, and that the head had seemingly reattached to the body, with just a thin red line around his neck, to show where he had once been beheaded.

A forgotten saint haunts a blacksmith’s dreams

Ælfric wrote of another saint, Swithun, whose gravesite had been forgotten by his community. To ensure his veneration and remembrance, Swithun first appeared in a vision to a local blacksmith, telling him where to find Swithun’s grave and how to know it’s his: There is an iron ring on the coffin lid, he told him, and if you can pull it open, then all this has been true. The blacksmith was too scared to follow through, however, and an increasingly frustrated Swithun had to visit him three times before the smith finally went to the grave.

Political turmoil in the local church prevented Swithun’s body from being moved inside the church, so his spirit took another approach. He began appearing to others in the community, telling diseased people to visit his tomb to be healed. Eventually, the king notices the healings and tells the bishop to re-inter Swithun’s body within the church.

After Swithun’s body is moved, more and more people come to the tomb for healing, Ælfric wrote — so much so that the walls were lined with the crutches and stools that had belonged to those who had been healed of their physical ailments.