Unhallowed hands, this urn forbear;
      No gems, no Orient spoil,
    Lie here concealed; but what’s more rare,
      A heart that knew no guile.

But in the year 1829 some unhallowed hand stole the urn, and the whereabouts of Whitehead’s heart remains a mystery to the present day.  In recent times an interesting case of heart burial was that of Lord Byron, whose heart was enclosed in a silver urn and placed at Newstead Abbey in the family vault; and another was that of the poet, Shelley, whose body, according to Italian custom after drowning, was burnt to ashes.  But the heart would not consume, and so was deposited in the English burying ground at Rome.

It is worthy, too, of note that heart burial prevailed to a very large extent on the Continent.  To mention a few cases, the heart of Philip, King of Navarre, was buried in the Jacobin’s Church, Paris, and that of Philip, King of France, at the convent of the Carthusians at Bourgfontaines, in Valois.  The heart of Henri II., King of France, was enshrined in an urn of gilt bronze in the Celestins, Paris; that of Henri III., according to Camden, was enclosed in a small tomb, and Henri IV.’s heart was buried in the College of the Jesuits at La Fleche.  Heart burial, again, was practised at the deaths of Louis IX., XII., XIII., and XIV., and in the last instance was the occasion of an imposing ceremony.  “The heart of this great monarch,” writes Miss Hartshorne, “was carried to the Convent of the Jesuits.  A procession was arranged by the Cardinal de Rohan, and, surrounded by flaming torches and escorted by a company of the Royal Guards, the heart arrived at the convent, where it was received by the rector, who pronounced over it an eloquent and striking discourse.”

The heart of Marie de Medicis, who built the magnificent palace of the Luxembourg, was interred at the Church of the Jesuits, in Paris; and that of Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV., was deposited in a silver case in the monastery of Val de Grace.  The body of Gustavus Adolphus, the illustrious monarch who fell in the field of Lutzen, was embalmed, and his heart received sepulchre at Stockholm; and, as is well known, the heart of Cardinal Mazarin was, by his own desire, sent to the Church of the Theatins.  And Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV., directed in her will that her body should be buried at St. Denis near to her husband, “of glorious memory,” but her heart she bequeathed to Val de Grace; and she also decreed that it should be drawn out through her side without making any further opening than was absolutely necessary.  Instances such as these show the prevalence of the custom of heart burial in bygone times, a further proof of which may be gathered from the innumerable effigies or brasses in which a heart holds a prominent place.

FOOTNOTES: 

[51] See Timbs’ “Abbeys, Castles, and Ancient Halls of England,” i., p. 300; and “Enshrined Hearts of Warriors and Illustrious People,” by Emily Sophia Hartshorne, 1861.