Goddess of Mayhem

biomedicalephemera:

cabbagingcove:

Sainte Valérie, by Jaques Laudin II
St. Valerie of Limoges was one of many Catholic early Christian saints who was a cephalophore - a martyr who carried their head in their hands. Many of these cephalophores supposedly spoke, prayed, or walked somewhere, after being beheaded.
Painting circa 1700, via Wikimedia Commons.

“Cephalophore” is an interesting word - it means “head-bearing”, and has the same Greek root as “cephalopod,” which means “head-foot”.
For a while, there was a family of molluscs with distinct heads, and a family of filiform mushrooms that were called “cephalophores”, but both uses of that term in taxonomy are obsolete by a couple centuries.
ETA: Cephalophores are recognized by the Catholic church as saints, but they were well-known before the Reformation, and even before the real organization of the Catholic church, so they’re more early Christian than Catholic, I guess.

cabbagingcove:

Sainte Valérie, by Jaques Laudin II

St. Valerie of Limoges was one of many ~~Catholic~~ early Christian saints who was a cephalophore - a martyr who carried their head in their hands. Many of these cephalophores supposedly spoke, prayed, or walked somewhere, after being beheaded.

Painting circa 1700, via Wikimedia Commons.

“Cephalophore” is an interesting word - it means “head-bearing”, and has the same Greek root as “cephalopod,” which means “head-foot”.

For a while, there was a family of molluscs with distinct heads, and a family of filiform mushrooms that were called “cephalophores”, but both uses of that term in taxonomy are obsolete by a couple centuries.

ETA: Cephalophores are recognized by the Catholic church as saints, but they were well-known before the Reformation, and even before the real organization of the Catholic church, so they’re more early Christian than Catholic, I guess.