Jan 30 2025
Incorruptible Skepticism
Everything, apparently, has a second life on TikTok. At least this keeps us skeptics busy – we have to redebunk everything we have debunked over the last century because it is popping up again on social media, confusing and misinforming another generation. This video is a great example – a short video discussing the “incorruptibility’ of St. Teresa of Avila. This is mainly a Catholic thing (but also the Eastern Orthodox Church) – the notion that the bodies of saints do not decompose, but remain in a pristine state after death, by divine intervention. This is considered a miracle, and for a time was a criterion for sainthood.
The video features Carlos Eire, a Yale professor of history focusing on medieval religious history. You may notice that the video does not include any shots of the actual body of St. Teresa. I could not find any online. Her body is not on display like some incorruptibles, but has been exhumed in 1914 and again recently. So we only have the reports of the examiners. This is where much of the confusion is generated – the church defines incorruptible very differently than the believers who then misrepresent the actual evidence. Essentially, if the soft tissues are preserved in any way (so the corpse has not completely skeletonized) and remains somewhat flexible, that’s good enough.
The case of Teresa is typical – one of the recent examiners said, “There is no color, there is no skin color, because the skin is mummified, but you can see it, especially the middle of the face.” So the body is mummified and you can only partly make out the face. That is probably not what most believers imagine when the think of miraculous incorruptibility.
This is the same story over and over – first hand accounts of actual examiners describe a desiccated corpse, in some state of mummification. Whenever they are put on display, that is exactly what you see. Sometimes body parts (like feet or hands) are cut off and preserved separately as relics. Often a wax or metal mask is placed over the face because the appearance may be upsetting to some of the public. The wax masks can be made to look very lifelike, and some viewers may think they are looking at the actual corpse. But the narrative among believers is often very different.
It has also been found that there are many very natural factors that correlate with the state of the allegedly incorruptible bodies. A team of researchers from the University of Pisa explored the microenvironments of the tombs:
“They discovered that small differences in temperature, moisture, and construction techniques lead to some tombs producing naturally preserved bodies while others in the same church didn’t. Now you can debate God’s role in choosing which bodies went into which tombs before these differences were known, but I’m going to stick with the corpses. Once the incorrupt bodies were removed from these climates or if the climates changed, they deteriorated.”
The condition of the bodies seems to be an effect of the environment, not the saintliness of the person in life.
It is also not a secret – though not advertised by promoters of miraculous incorruptibility – that the bodies are often treated in order to preserve them. This goes beyond controlling the environment. Some corpses are treated with acid as a preservative, or oils or sealed with wax.
When you examine each case in detail, or the phenomenon as a whole, what you find is completely consistent with what naturally happens to bodies after death. Most decay completely to skeletons. However, in the right environment, some may be naturally mummified and may partly or completely not go through putrefaction. But if their environment is changed they may then proceed to full decay. And bodies are often treated to help preserve them. There is simply no need for anything miraculous to explain any of these cases.
There is also a good rule of thumb for any such miraculous or supernatural claim – if there were actually cases of supernatural preservation, we would all have seen it. This would be huge news, and you would not have to travel to some church in Italy to get a few of an encased corpse covered by a wax mask.
As a side note, and at the risk of sounding irreverent, I wonder if any maker of a zombie film considered having the corpse of an incorruptible animate. If done well, that could be a truly horrific scene.