Forget flowers, the greatest gift for 18th century romantics was the heart of a deceased lover

By Jolene Zigarovich, University of Northern Iowa

Every Valentine’s Day, we’re inundated with hearts. We purchase cards with hearts and heart-shaped balloons. We wear clothing with hearts and adorn ourselves with heart-shaped jewellery. We ingest heart-shaped foods and candies and send heart emojis in texts.

While we may fall victim to Valentine’s Day commodification and heart-logo mania, there was a time in our not too distant past when actual human hearts were cherished, preserved, worn or placed in special urns and enshrined.

My research into 18th century preservation practices led me to a favourite book that details these heart histories of the famous and infamous: historian Charles Bradford’s quirky tome, Heart Burial (1933).

Amazingly sweeping and entertaining, the book narrates the heart journeys of many – primarily western – military, religious and political figures. One such figure, the diplomat Sir William Temple (1628-1699), is buried next to his wife in Westminster Abbey.

But in his will, he directed his heart “be buried in a silver box under a sundial in the garden of Moor Park, near Farnham, Surrey, opposite his favourite window-seat overlooking the garden he had loved so well”.

One haunting entry describes William King (1684-1763), the principal of St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, who requested his heart be placed in a silver urn and deposited in St Mary’s Hall Chapel. There, the book says: “A curious sound of tapping [can be] heard before midnight … said to be caused by the beating of his heart.”

In 2015, five 17th-century embalmed hearts in heart-shaped and engraved urns were found buried under the Convent of the Jacobins in Rennes, France.

Archaeologists identified one of the hearts as that of Toussaint de Perrien who, in a loving gesture, had his heart placed in a cardiotaph (a heart-shaped lead urn) and buried with his wife, Louise de Quengo.

Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/forget-flowers-the-greatest-gift-for-18th-century-romantics-was-the-heart-of-a-deceased-lover-222115