HEART-BURIAL, the burial of the heart apart from the body. The practice began very early in ancient Egypt and in mediaeval Europe heart-burial was fairly common. Some of the more notable cases are those of Richard I., whose heart, preserved in a casket, was placed in Rouen cathedral; of Henry III., buried in Normandy; and of Edward I., at Jerusalem. Since the i7th century the hearts of deceased members of the house of Habsburg have been buried apart from the body in the Loretto chapel in the Augustiner Kirche, Vienna. The most romantic story of heart-burial is that of Robert Bruce. He wished his heart to rest at Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and on his death-bed entrusted the fulfilment of his wish to Douglas. The latter broke his journey to join the Spaniards in their war with the Moorish king of Granada, and was killed in battle, the heart of Bruce enclosed in a silver casket hanging round his neck. Subsequently the heart was buried at Melrose abbey. Of notable i 7th century cases there is that of James II., whose heart was buried in the church of the Convent of the Visitation at Chaillot near Paris, and that of Sir William Temple, at Moor Park, Farnham. The last ceremonial burial of a heart in England was that of Paul Whitehead, secretary to the Monks of Medmenham club, in 1775, the interment taking place in Le Despenser mau soleum at High Wycombe, Bucks. Of later cases the most notable are those of Daniel O'Connell, whose heart is at Rome, Shelley's at Bournemouth, Kosciusko's at the Polish museum at Rapper schwyll, Lake Zurich, and the marquess of Bute, taken by his widow to Jerusalem for burial in 1900; Thomas Hardy's heart was buried in his first wife's grave at Stinsford, Dorset, in Jan. 1928. The viscera of the popes from Sixtus V. (159o) onward have been preserved in the parish church of the Quirinal.
See Pettigrew, Chronicles of the Tombs (1857).