Unexplained
Who was stashed in the wardrobe?
He’d kept it wrapped in an old towel in a box at the back of a wardrobe in his attic.
A mummified head, over 400 years old – and which, he claimed, had once belonged to a king.
In 2008, Jacques Bellanger, a retired tax collector, was living in Angers, France.
He’d brought the mummified head home in 1953. And kept it wrapped up and stashed away ever since.
All those years, he’d believed it belonged to Henri IV, King of France. Now he wanted proof. Henri IV had lived 400 years earlier. In life, he’d brought peace to France by uniting the country’s Catholics and Protestants after years of conflict.
But that peace had resulted in the king’s death. Many Catholics were unhappy with the compromises the king had sought between both sides.
And, in 1610, when Henri was 56, his royal coach was hijacked and he was stabbed to death by a religious fanatic.
After, the king was buried in state with his ancestors in Paris’ Saint Denis Basilica.
But King Henri IV was not to rest in peace. In 1789, France erupted into revolution.
Nobles and aristocrats, even the royal family, were executed.
And the dead weren’t spared. Revolutionaries stormed the Saint Denis Basilica, dug up the royals’ tombs and threw the bodies into a mass grave. Including King Henri IV. Then, in 1817, that mass grave was opened, and the bodies of the kings recovered.
But it seems King Henri IV’S head was gone. No-one knew who’d taken it. Then, in 1953, Jacques Bellanger had bought a head from an antiques dealer.
It was examined by experts, who used computer technology to recreate Henri’s face.
Henri IV was famous for the mole over his right nostril.
Soon, they’d found it! They also found the nose had been broken when the owner was young – just like Henri IV.
They discovered a healed facial stab wound.
Henri IV had survived an assassination attempt where he’d been stabbed in the face –exactly where the healed stab wound was found. It seemed conclusive that the
head belonged to
Computer technology was used to recreate Henri’s face