In 2013, researchers excavating a cave in Reims, France dug up a 357-year-old lead coffin. Inside, they found a strikingly well-preserved body, wearing leather shoes and swathed in religious cloaks.
They also found something else—another, much smaller lead box, in a familiar shape. When they opened it up, there was a human heart inside.
ATLAS OBSCURA COURSES Learn with Us! Check out our lineup of courses taught by world-class experts from around the world. See Courses
As National Geographic reports, the body was that of a 17th-century noblewoman, Louise de Quengo, who died in 1656. The heart belonged to her husband, a knight named Toussaint de Perrien.
Historians already knew that European aristocrats were occasionally buried apart from other parts of their bodies, generally for political and religious purposes—to maximize prayer sites, or, if the deceased feared for family, to pay fealty to their country.
According to new research from France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, Louise and Toussaint are the only dead couple on record to have done it for love.
“Toussaint de Perrien died in 1649—seven years earlier than Louise—and was buried 125 miles away” from her home in Reims, National Geographic writes. But first, his heart was cut out and stashed in the lead container. Louise hung onto it until she died, too, and then she literally took it with her grave.
There’s another piece to the puzzle: when researchers performed a CT scan of Eugene’s body, she, too, was missing her heart. They figure Toussaint probably has it. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.
