The blessed Christina from Spoleto: a case of 15th century artificial mummy from Umbria (central italy)

The study of the artificial mummy of the Blessed Christine (c. 1432-1458) from Spoleto (Umbria, central Italy) showed a young, very obese women, with an anthropological age of 20-25 years and a stature of 1.45 m. The body was eviscerated by a transversal cut at the bottom of the neck, a jugulo-epigastric incision, with longitudinal section of the sternum, and a semicircular incision of the epigastric region. Excerebration was obtained by an ovoidal opening of 6x3.5 cm in the squama of the occipital bone. Finally the body was defleshed by several incisions in the arms and limbs and the body cavities were filled with a sort of padding mixed with powder plants, with no suture. We are in the presence of a very complex embalming method, which witnesses a long-practised and diffused custom