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Incorruptibles

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Anonymous

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The uncorruptables??

I read about these people in a old forteantimes, can't remember which issue. It was
about these people in either Central or Southern America where after they died they
didn't decompose or only partially decomposed. The natives put them on display in
a little makeshift museum. Was it just a marketing ploy to attract tourists or is it the
real deal. I've heard that some saints were uncorruptable, can't come up with any of
the top of my head, but does anybody have any info or point me in the right direction.
All replies are welcome.
 
Have you got the latest FT? No. 159. It's full of them. :)
 
Nope, I don't have a subscription due to lack of funds, and they don't sell FT in
bookstores or really any other stores in this area. I think the issue was maybe june/july
99, have any scientists a reason why uncorruption occurs. Also does anybody know
where I could find FT in the Chicago and northern Indiana area, I can't find them
anywhere. Thanks
 
US and Canada subscriptions: Contact
IMS. 3330 Pacific Av. Suite 404, Virginia beach, VA 23451-2983, USA.
Tel: 1 888 428 6676
Fax: 1 757 428 6253


(Query to FT: do I get a commission for this?!)
 
I get all my FT from a Barnes & Nobles in Burlington, Vermont. I don't know if all B&N carry it, but check around.
They had it for a while, then the stopped carrying it... and I freaked out... and then magically it was back. But of course I've been at college all year and only pick it up every few months on vacations.
I need a subscription, but I too am low on $$.

Last one I got was March's... ech, I really need a subscription.
 
Can't your local paper shop order it in for you? Or am I living in an episode of Miss Marple here? :(
 
Re: The uncorruptables??

Nicholas said:
I've heard that some saints were uncorruptable, can't come up with any off the top of my head, but does anybody have any info
Click to expand...

Incorruptibles are the bodies of saints that miraculously do not decay -- even after decades or even a century or more. The bodies often lie in public view in churches and shrines. Saints include: St. Clare of Assisi, St. Vincent De Paul, St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. John Bosco, Blessed Imelda Lambertini, St. Catherine Labouré, and many others. Even the body of Pope John XXIII is reputed to be remarkable well preserved. The case of Blessed Margaret of Metola is recounted in the Fortean Timesarticle, Saints Preserve Us: "She died in 1330, but in 1558 her remains had to be transferred because her coffin was rotting away. Witnesses were amazed to find that like the coffin, the clothes had rotted, but Margaret's crippled body hadn't."

Check out:
https://www.liveabout.com/top-religious-mysteries-and-miracles-2594792
 
I have a strange fascination with incorruptibles - probably because my dad was an undertaker and our car (a Volvo estate, handy for corpse transportation) smelt of embalming fluid.

Does anyone remember the article a couple of years back about the South American village where the bodies didn't rot and no-one could figure out why? Is there any more news on this?

Also, why in some countries are graves emptied and ossuaries used? It seems a bit odd, or is that my English squemishness concerning bodies being moved after burial?
 
Fashionably late response...

I don't have the time to hang out here as much as I used to.

The use of ossuaries is most common in countries where space for burials is limited and cremation is uncommon. Exhuming corpses and recycling the burial plots is a more efficent use of land that could be used for farming etc, especially if there is a limited amount of appropriate land (sufffient soil.etc to allow for the hole to be deep enough). For that reason it occurs where there is largely rocky or sandy terrain.

I don't have any new info about the S American village though, although I suspect it would come down to the chemistry of the soil as much as anything else.
 
I went on holiday to Kefalonia in Greece when I was a child and I saw an incorruptible. I can't remember the name of the chap, but he'd been cannonised and they only opened his coffin when there were only Greek people about (evidently not wanting a corpse to become a tourist attraction). Unfortunately, I was mistaken for a Greek and I was still in the church when they opened the coffin. I was about 6 at the time but I found it extremely interesting and not scary at all. He was brown like old, wrinkly brown paper, and there was a cloth over his feet which the faithful kissed. He was buried when he died, and they had to move him, and when they exhumed the coffin several years later, he hadn't disintegrated. He's paraded around the nearby village every year in a glass coffin.

Thanks for explaining ossuaries. I've seen photos of a church somewhere in Eastern Europe where they decorated it with bones, so that there was candle stands and and altar all made from bones. And I think there was once something in FT about somewhere in Paris which is similarly decorated. I was wondering if, because the body bits are used to decorate a church, it's not seen as shocking or disrespectful to the dead.
 
What an amazing experience.

There's a fascinating website with examples of holy incorruptibles you might find interesting:

The Incorruptibles are saints whose bodies are miraculously preserved after death, defying the normal process of decomposition. St. Cecilia is probably the first saint known to be incorrupt, but the bodies of these saints can be found in many places throughout the world.

They are not like mummies, for their skin is soft and their limbs pliable, nothing at all like the dry, skeletal remains of mummies. Under usual circumstances, nothing at all has been done to preserve the bodies of these saints. In fact, some of them have been covered in quicklime, which should have easily destroyed any human remains, yet it has no effect of these saints. Many of them also give off a sweet, unearthly odor, and others produce blood or oils that defy any scientific explanation.

Modern science relegates the incorruptibles to the status of mummies, pretending it understands and can comfortably categorize these saints. How then do the scientists explain the fact that a year and a half after the death of St. Francis Xavier, a medical examiner placed a finger into one of the saint’s wounds and found fresh blood on his finger when he withdrew it? Or that when a finger was amputated from St. John of the Cross several months after his death, it was immediately observed that blood began to flow from the wound? Or the case of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, whose arms have frequently bled over the last 400 years?

xBlessedImeldaLambertini.jpg.pagespeed.ic.xamLBfxqXe.jpg

The Incorruptible Saints​

No, these saints are in a class by themselves. Even though incorruptibility does not automatically confer sainthood upon the subject, it is still properly appreciated by the Church as a supernatural occurrence. The truth is that these occurrences cannot be understood outside of Divine intervention on behalf of these saints, as the laws of nature have been suspended on behalf of the incorruptible saints. Perhaps it is that God is visibly showing us his pleasure with these saints? Still, it is a physical manifestation of God’s love, and the incorruptible saints console us by their presence, seeming to plead with us to likewise make ourselves pleasing to God in all ways.

A List of Incorruptible Saints​


Saint Agatha
Saint Agnes of Montepulciano
Blessed Andrew Franchi
Blessed Angela of Foligno
Saint Angela Merici
Blessed Angelo of Acri
Blessed Angelo of Chivasso
Blessed Anthony Bonfadini
Blessed Anthony of Stroncone
Blessed Antonia of Florence
Saint Benedict the Moor
Saint Bernadette Soubirous
Saint Bernardine of Siena
Saint Catherine of Bologna
Saint Catherine of Genoa
Saint Cecilia
Saint Charles Borromeo
Saint Charles of Sezze
Saint Clare of Assisi
Saint Clare of Montefalco
Saint Crispin of Viterbo
Saint Didacus of Alcala
Saint Eustochium
Saint Fernando III
Saint Frances of Rome
Saint Francis de Sales
Blessed Francis of Fabriano
Venerable Francis Gonzaga
Blessed Gabriel Ferretti
Blessed Gandolph of Binasco
Blessed Helen Enselmini
Saint Ignatius of Laconi
Saint Ignatius of Santhia
Blessed Imelda Lambertini
Blessed James of Bitecto
Saint James of the March
Blessed James Oldo
Blessed James of Pieve
Blessed James of Strepar
Saint Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (The Curé of Ars)
Blessed Jane Mary of Maille
Blessed Jane of Signa
Saint Jane of Valois
Saint John Bosco
Saint Joseph of Cupertino
Saint Louis Bertrand
Blessed Lucy of Narni
Blessed Margaret of Castello
Saint Margaret of Cortona
Blessed Margaret of Lorraine
Blessed Mark Marconi
Venerable Mary of Agreda
Blessed Mary Assunta Pollotta
Saint Mary Joseph Rossello
Blessed Mary Magdalene Martinengo
Blessed Matthia Nazzarei
Blessed Nicholas Factor
Saint Pacifico of San Severino
Saint Paschal Baylon
Blessed Philippa Mareri
Saint Pope Pius X
Saint Rose of Viterbo
Blessed Sebastian of Aparicio
Saint Seraphin of Montegranaro
Blessed Salome of Cracow
Saint Sperandia
Saint Veronica Giuliani
Saint Vincent Pallotti

Sister Wilhelmina

Saint Zita

Saint Albert the Great
Saint Alphege of Canterbury
Blessed Alphonsus of Orozco
Saint Andrew Bobola
Blessed Angelo of Borgo San Sepolcro
Blessed Anna Maria Taigi
Saint Anthony Maria Zaccaria
Saint Antoninus
Blessed Arcangela Girlani
Saint Benezet
Blessed Bernard Scammacca
Blessed Bertrand of Garrigua
Saint Camillus de Lellis
Venerable Catalina de Cristo
Saint Catherine Labouré
Blessed Charbel Makhlouf
Saint Catherine dei Ricci
Saint Catherine of Siena
Saint Coloman
Saint Cuthbert
Saint Dominic Savio
Saint Edmund Rich of Canterbury
Saint Edward the Confessor
Saint Etheldreda
Blessed Eustochia Calafato
Saint Ezequiel Moreno y Diaz
Saint Francis of Paola
Saint Francis Xavier
Saint George Preca
Saint Germaine Cousin
Saint Guthlac
Annibale Maria di Francia (Founder of the Rogationist and Daughters of Divine Zeal)
Saint Herculanus of Piegaro
Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Saint Idesbald
Saint Isidore the Farmer
Blessed James of Blanconibus
Venerable John of Jesus Mary
Saint Jane Frances de Chantal
Saint Jeanne de Lestonnac
Blessed John of Chiaramonte
Saint John of God
Saint John of the Cross
Saint John Southworth
Saint Josaphat
Saint Julie Billiart
Blessed Karl of Austria
Saint Louise de Marillac
Saint Luigi Orione
Saint Lucy Filippini
Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat
Blessed Mafalda of Portugal
Blessed Margaret of Savoy
Saint Maria Goretti
Venerable Maria Vela
Saint Martin de Porres
Blessed Mary Bagnesi
Saint Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi
Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart
Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres
Venerable Mother Maria of Jesus
Saint Nicholas of Tolentino
Blessed Osanna of Mantua
Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
Blessed Paula Frassinetti
Saint Peregrine Laziosi
Blessed Peter Ghigenzi
Saint Philip Neri
Saint Pierre Julien Eymard
Saint Rita of Cascia
Saint Romuald
Saint Rose of Lima
Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne
Blessed Sibyllina Biscossi
Saint Silvan
Saint Stanislaus Kostka
Saint Teresa of Avila
Saint Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart
Saint Ubald of Gubbio
Saint Vincent de Paul
Saint Waltheof
Saint Werburgh
Saint Withburga
Saint Wunibald

For more information about Incorrupt saints, we recommend the excellent book, The Incorruptibles, by Joan Carroll Cruz.

Continuously popular since it first appeared in 1977, The Incorruptibles remains the acknowledged classic on the bodies of saints that did not undergo decomposition after death. Many remained fresh and flexible for years, or even centuries. After explaining both natural and artificial mummification, the author shows that the incorruption of the saints' bodies fits neither category but rather constitutes a much greater phenomenon that is unexplained by modern science to this day. The author presents 102 canonized saints, beati, and venerables, summarizing their lives, the discovery of their incorruption, and investigations by Church and medical authorities.

The incorruptible bodies of saints are a consoling sign of Christ s victory over death, a confirmation of the dogma of the Resurrection of the Body, a sign that the Saints are still with us in the Mystical Body of Christ, and proof of the truth of the Catholic Faith—for only in the Catholic Church do we find this phenomenon. Impr. 342 pgs 33 Illus.

Source:
https://www.roman-catholic-saints.com/incorruptible-saints.html

Dansette said:
I was wondering if, because the body bits are used to decorate a church, it's not seen as shocking or disrespectful to the dead.
Click to expand...

Keeping death out of sight and as sanitised as possible is a relatively modern convention. In societies with a high mortality rate, death is quite literally part of life and people are far more up front about it.

Decorating churches with symbols of death such as skulls and bones (real or sculptured) was a way of reminding the living of their unavoidable mortality.
 
There's a village in Italy I think, I'm not sure exactly where, but the composition of the soil means that anyone interred in the region remains intact for several centuries... I don't remember any more details though
 
I've done a Google, and the saint was Agios Gerassimos, who died in 1579. You can see a photo of the church he's kept in here:

http://www.kefalonia-island.co.uk/agios.html

That's not him sat on the plastic patio chair! I can't find a photo of him, but I do remember by grandad got a postcard of it which my mum told him off for showing me - she thought it would give me nightmares, even though I'd seen the real thing! If you go to the church you can go into the cave underneath which he hacked out to live in. But I didn't see Nicholas Cage when I was there. ;)

Thanks for the incorruptibles website. It's fascinating. The thing is with Agios, have Greek Orthodox incorruptibles been reported as much as Catholic ones? Or have the Catholics cornered that niche?
 
Sorry, me again.

One of the Kephalonia websites I looked at said that there used to be a temple to Zeus on the mountain just behind Agios' church.

Hmmmm.....
 
I saw Bernadette Soubirous' (the Lourdes visionary) body in Nevers about 10 years ago, with only the little finger decayed. You weren't allowed take photos, but there were postcards on sale. I recall seeing (in FT?) two photos of her face - one taken at the turn of the century (1900s) and one more recent. The differences were so marked that it didn't look like the same girl at all... or was it just the lighting & b/w vs. colour?
 
hospitaller said:
or was it just the lighting & b/w vs. colour?
Click to expand...

Never having seen it in the flesh I obviously can't be sure, but that is certainly one of the bodies that IMO seems to have a suspiciously 'waxy' look to it.
 
According to The Unexplained (p.1512), all incorruptible bodies now displayed by the Church have a thin coat of wax applied, to keep the body appearing perfectly lifelike (negating the effects of the display, eg lighting &c)

Oh and Dansette, I tried tracking down that reference for the village but I cant find it anywhere :(
 
Originally posted by Dansette
I've seen photos of a church somewhere in Eastern Europe where they decorated it with bones, so that there was candle stands and and altar all made from bones. And I think there was once something in FT about somewhere in Paris which is similarly decorated. I was wondering if, because the body bits are used to decorate a church, it's not seen as shocking or disrespectful to the dead.
Click to expand...

<leaps into the thread a mere 2 months after the last post>

The Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec, Czech Rep has an ossuary of plague victims. In the late 18th century a woodcarver was given permission to create skeletal decorations.

More info at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040218195630/http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/silver_p/kutna-1.html

enjoy!..

- the gallery is very striking.
 
I saw it mentioned in a book about the Plague (In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made by Norman Cantor, I think) and made a note to look into it later...then I saw your post and did a Google.

Is the Paris one the Paris Catacombs (lots of stuff on Google)? I heard a programme about it on Radio 4 once - the security guard said that everyone leaving the place is frisked and every day they catch at least one person trying to smuggle a 'souvenir' out.
 
Its an odd coincidence (synchronicity in the FT forums?) but in one of the recent threads here:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/ft173.9696/

I posted a link to some details about a book on bone art:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060426150033/http://www.boneart.org/book/

which also contained pictures of Sedlec:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030906035514/http://www.boneart.org/kutnahora.html

I think the previous link had more comprehensive pictures but worth a look anyway (I'm not sure if the book has any other pictures).

Emps
 
Saponification

Emperor said:
I was watching a repeat of CSI and they mentioned incorruptibles. I'm not sur eif this has come up before in this context bu it appears that the bodies fat can turn to mortuary wax through the process saponification where pH is high (alkaline) and oxygen levels are restricted. I'm sire it isn't the expalntion for all incorruptibles but jam a bit of wax on to build up some features and apply some makeup and bingo!!
Click to expand...

New report:

Mysteries of bog butter uncovered

Wax found in Celtic bogs is the remains of ancient meat and milk.
17 March 2004

PHILIP BALL



Chemical detectives have traced deposits of fat in Scottish peat bogs to foodstuffs buried by people hundreds of years ago. The 'bog butter' is the remains of both dairy products and meat encased in the peat, say Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol and colleagues.

Those who live in the countryside of Ireland and Scotland and dig up chunks of peat for fuel have long been familiar with bog butter. While gathering the compressed plant matter, which can be burned in fires, diggers occasionally slice into a white substance with the appearance and texture of paraffin wax.

This is thought to be the remains of food once buried in the bog to preserve it. Waterlogged peat is cool and contains very little oxygen, so it can be used as a primitive kind of fridge.

The question is what type of food was buried in the peat. Local lore sometimes says that the waxy stuff is literally the remains of butter. For example, the seventeenth-century English writer Samuel Butler remarked in one of his famous poems that butter in Ireland "was seven years buried in a bog".

Grave wax

But there could be an alternative source for the waxy material: dead animals. In the eighteenth century, French chemists discovered that human corpses often contain adipocere, a substance also known as 'grave-wax'. So bog butter could be the remains of carcasses rather than dairy products.

To find out, Evershed and his colleagues took a close look at the fatty acids in bog butter. The chains of hydrocarbons in these molecules differ between those derived from dairy and those from meat. The chains in dairy products tend to be shorter than those in animal fat. And there are also differences in the relative amounts of normal and 'heavy' carbon they contain. Most of the carbon in organic material is carbon-12, but about one percent consists of the heavier isotope carbon-13. The exact amount of carbon-13 depends in part on whether the fat came from meat or dairy products.

The team verified some of these differences by analysing artificial bog butters, which were made in the 1970s from mutton fat and butter mixed with soil and water. They then looked at nine samples of bog butter provided by the National Museum of Scotland, some of which are 2000 years old. Six of the bog butter samples come from dairy products, and three are from animal fat, they report in The Analyst1. So ancient Scots clearly used the peat to store both types of food, they say.

But there remains some mystery: researchers still do not know for sure if the food was buried solely to preserve it. Perhaps chemical reactions in the soil helped to transform the foods to more palatable products in a kind of primitive food processing, says Evershed. He plans to bury some modern fatty foods in peat to find out if anything interesting happens to them.

References
Berstan, R. et al. The Analyst, 129, 270 - 275, doi:10.1039/b313436a (2004).
Click to expand...

https://web.archive.org/web/20040616074724/https://www.nature.com/nsu/040315/040315-5.html

Full text of that article is available:

Characterisation of bog butter using a combination of molecular and isotopic techniques

Robert Berstan , Stephanie N. Dudd , Mark. S. Copley , E. David Morgan , Anita Quye and Richard. P. Evershed
Article available free of charge:


Abstract:
The chemical analyses of bog butters recovered from peat bogs of Scotland were performed with the aim of determining their origins. Detailed compositional information was obtained from bog butter lipids using high temperature gas chromatography (HTGC) and GC-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results indicate the degree to which bog butters have undergone diagenetic alterations during burial to form an adipocere like substance, consisting predominately of hexadecanoic (palmitic) and octadecanoic (stearic) acids. GC-combustion-isotope ratio MS (GC-C-IRMS) was used to determine 13C values for the dominant fatty acids present, revealing for the first time that bog butters were derived from both ruminant dairy fats and adipose fats. The results are compared and contrasted with modern reference fats and adipoceres produced in vitro.
Click to expand...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/b313436a

Emps
 
Uncorrupt bodies

A couple of years ago I became interested in uncorrupt bodies. These corpses are almost always from Saints but while gathering info on Belgian uncorruptable saints, I also came across a whole bunch of corpses which were either beatified or who were just common people who stayed uncorrupt. I think I've got a pretty clear picture on the Belgian situation and even on the rest of Europe but it would always be interesting to find some more dead mummified corpses. All weblinks are welcome.

One of our Belgian bodies, we called her "Nieke zuip", Nieke the drunkard, even had stigmata during her life and she also helped to heal people after her death. Similar stories are also welcome.
 
mandragoire: Yep I think it is just religious corpses which tend to get re-examined after they are buried.

I also wonder if they tend to be more likely to be sealed in air tight coffins? There were a lot of partially preserved (someitmes 'liquified') corpses in the Spitalfields excavation and there were an awful lot of lead lined coffins there.

Anyway I had done a bit more digging after my first post on this which I hadn't posted.

As well as appearing CSI it also featured in a recent episode of "Cold Squad" - episode 42 "Murder Farm".

This site is possibly the best online resources for adipocere:

https://web.archive.org/web/20031123221031/http://adipocere.homestead.com/

There are also lots of good resources on the process of saponification (as animal fat + alkali is the natural way of making soap - as people probably picked up in Fight Club):

What is saponification?
The term saponification is the name given to the chemical reaction that occurs when a vegetable oil or animal fat is mixed with a strong alkali. The products of the reaction are two: soap and glycerin. Water is also present, but it does not enter into the chemical reaction. The water is only a vehicle for the alkali, which is otherwise a dry powder.

The name saponification literally means "soap making". The root word, "sapo", is Latin for soap. The Italian word for soap is sapone. Soap making as an art has its origins in ancient Babylon around 2500 - 2800 BC.

The oils used in modern handmade soap are carefully chosen by the soap maker for the character they impart to the final soap. Coconut oil creates lots of glycerin, makes big bubbly lather, and is very stable. Olive oil has natural antioxidants and its soap makes a creamier lather. Tallow, or rendered beef fat, makes a white, stately bar that is firm and creates abundant lather. Many other oils can be used, each one for a specific reason. Your soap maker will be glad to tell you which oils are used to make her or his soap.

The alkali used in modern soap is either potassium hydroxide, which is used to make soft soap or liquid soap because of its greater solubility, or sodium hydroxide, which is used to make bar soap. The common term for the alkali became simply "lye", which curiously is not short for alkali, but originated in the Anglo-Saxon language.

Soap made in cottages and on farms in earlier American times became known as "lye soap". That term is now pejorative and derogatory and denotes a harsh soap that would irritate your skin. The old soap got a bad name because it had an excessive amount of caustic. Weighing and measuring techniques were crude, and knowledge of soap chemistry was elementary or non-existent.
The true fact is that modern handcrafted soap, though necessarily made with lye to get true soap, has no lye in the final product. It has all been reacted with the oils to form soap and glycerin.

A curious fact about modern soap is that most common soap found in the grocery store made in mass-produced factories does have a small amount of excess alkali in it. Also, it has had all of its naturally-occurring glycerin removed so it can be sold as a separate commodity. Why? Greater profit. An important difference between most commercial soap and our Real Handmade soap is that the glycerin is left in Real Handmade Soap and thus it retains its natural moisturizing property.

~~Richard Hamner, Green Mountain Soap Company

Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/2004060...ap.com/folders/FAQ/what_is_saponification.htm

Saponification is "Clean" Chemistry
by Kevin McCue

Chemistry keeps us clean. There’s probably no more straightforward example than soap and the reaction that makes soap possible.

A few years ago at a Renaissance festival, I watched a man reenacting a traditional soap-making process. I was fascinated by the simplicity of the process, but also by the level of craft necessary to a make good soap. This medieval “chemist” had several kettles in various stages of soap production.

In one kettle, beef fat was slowly melting and rendering. In another kettle, already rendered fat was being slowly added in large chunks to a solution of caustic soda (a.k.a., lye or sodium hydroxide) and stirred with a wooden paddle. Not long after he added the last of the fat, he was able to pour off newly created “off-white” soap into molds.

A simple process, but a very impressive transformation; just think of how different the properties of reactants and products. Beef fat is, well, fat—soft, greasy fat. Lye is hazardous, very caustic, and will burn skin. The end product is soap—a relatively hard substance that safely removes oil from your skin and helps keep you clean.

Modern “bar” soap is very similar to the medieval sort if you disregard the dyes and perfumes that make it more attractive. Very simply, soaps are the potassium or sodium salts of fatty acids. The most common ingredient in a bar of soap is sodium tallowate—it is so named because it is made from animal fat, or tallow. Soap can also be made from nearly any fat or oil including vegetable, olive, and coconut oil because the reaction responsible is the same no matter what oil is used.

The reaction that makes this transformation possible is called saponification. Saponification is a powerful example of a chemical reaction and can in no way be confused with simple mixing of fat and lye—which would leave you burned and greasy if you tried to smear it all over your body.

What exactly is saponification? Fat and oils are also known as triglycerides. Trigylcerides are made of three fatty acids and a glycerol (figure). Strong alkalis, like sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or potassium hydroxide (KOH, react with triglycerides to form glycerin and fatty acid salts—soap!

Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/2004013...stsCorner/saponificationiscleanchemistry.msnw

Emps
 
The mention of bone art reminded me of an artist whose name I cannot now remember and it's bugging me. He was around probably in the 1600's/1700's and made tableux and dioramas out of the skeletons of new born babys and human veins and other body matters. I think there's only engravings of his work left and the one I remeber seeing is of a tiny skeleton holding the caul from a babys birth to its eyes like a handkerchief. I think his name begins with a 'V'. Can anybody remember?
 
There are several references to incorruptibles in my 'Fortean Timeline'. Most are in Europe, but there's also one from China.
 
There are also lots of good resources on the process of saponification (as animal fat + alkali is the natural way of making soap - as people probably picked up in Fight Club):
Click to expand...

There is a reference to the manufacture of soap in the Old Testement, can think of the reference right now but IIRC it involves goat fat and the ashes that remain after willow bark is burnt.
 
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