Joan of Arc metamorphosed into a cat in her tomb

[Maciamo]

BBC News : Joan of Arc remains 'are fakes'

Bones thought to be the holy remains of 15th Century French heroine Joan of Arc were in fact made from an Egyptian mummy and a cat, research has revealed.

In 1867, a jar was found in a Paris pharmacy attic, along with a label claiming it held relics of Joan's body.
...
France's national heroine - canonised in 1920 - was convicted of heresy and witchcraft and burned alive in 1431, aged just 19.

The "relics" were said to have been found at the stake in the Normandy town of Rouen where Joan was burned.

The remains consisted of a charred-looking human rib, chunks of what appeared to be blackened wood, a 15-centimetre fragment of linen, and a cat thigh bone.

In medieval Europe it was common practice to throw black cats into the pyres of supposed witches.

Recognised as genuine and sacred by the Church, the "remains" are now housed in a museum in Chinon belonging to the Archdiocese of Tours.

How will the Vatican take the news, once science proves them wrong again ? I suppose they could say that its postmortem witchcraft from Joan this time.

[^ lynx ^]

lol, how come I never heard of this story?

[Aristander]

I read about this several months ago and got a good laugh out of it then. I did not know that the cat bones were supposedly from a black cat thrown on the pyre. I figured they were some more of the fake relics that have been venerated by the Catholic Church for 1500 years.
There are enough pieces of the "True Cross" to build a 3 story mansion at various shrines all around the world.

[^ lynx ^]

This is all what they found:



Image from: Time.com

[Regulus]

Not to get myself drawn into a long thing about relics - I just wanted to clear up the whole "true cross' issue. There had been so many estimates of how much volume of pieces that were claimed to have existed that a writer decided to try to actually count the pieces and the respective volumes. I believe that his name was De Fleury. After looking up and doing measurements of all the pieces known to be in existence, he came up with what would amount to be about one third of what the cross probably would have been.

The wild claims of whole buildings, etc, (and there are many variations) most probably came from early Reformation and later secular anti-clerical propaganda.