9. Tissue surrounding the gigantic heart of St Philip Neri was removed and is still on display today.
While some saints have a definitive plan for life and moment of conversion, the Florentine saint Philip Neri (1515-95) flip-flopped for some time before deciding to become a priest. After brief flirtations with tutoring and business, he decided that preaching to the wicked was the right thing for him after all, and he began harassing bankers and the like in his hometown about their behaviour. He seems to have made the right call, for in 1544 he had an ecstatic vision in which a globe of fire entered his mouth and swelled his heart to an enormous size.
Don’t believe him? Well, an autopsy after his death in 1595 proved that he had a whopping great heart in his chest. Vision aside, he had a reputation as a lovely man, who stayed in good humour despite the depressing nature of his work shouting at feckless bankers and helping the miserably destitute, so it was no surprise to anyone that his heart was as literally massive as it was metaphorically. Two of his ribs were found to be broken, and a protective layer of tissue had developed, to accommodate it. This containing tissue was removed and carefully preserved. Yuck.
