 In 2008, the mummified head of an old king was found in the attic of a civilian in France. But how did this man end up with this mummified head to begin with? And are we certain that it is the mummified head of a king of France? But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. Also a very special thank you to all of our patrons who genuinely do help us support this channel. We wouldn't be able to keep doing what we're doing without you. So thank you so much. Welcome to SOTaric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today we are going to be talking about the decapitated head of King Henry IV of France. The story will be divided up into two parts. This first part today, we're going to explore King Henry IV of France, who he was, and what happened to him. There was a lot of scandal around his life. Then on Monday, on Mystery Monday, we're going to look at the mummified head and look at all the different theories on if it is actually his head, why he lost his head, and how come if it is his head, his blood doesn't match the genetics of his ancestors who are still alive today? Huge story, right? Henry was born on the 13th of December in 1553 in Navarra, which is in the Pyrenees mountain by the south of France. He would go on to be the grandfather of King Louis XIV, the son king that we spoke about on Monday, and potentially the grandfather of the man in the iron mask if the man in the iron mask was Louis XIV's twin brother. In fact, King Henry IV would become the first of the House of Bourbon for the French dynasty. But again, they're all related. It's all the same family, always the same family. Henry's mother was a woman named Joan III, Queen Joan III of Navarra. At that time, Navarra was its own principality. So King Henry, when he was born, he wasn't King yet, he was heir to the principality of Navarra. Now I did say this was all the same family because you see Henry as well as the family on the throne of France at that time both descended from King Louis the Knight or Saint Louis. When Henry was born, his mother's uncle was the king of France. This was King Henry II, who was married to Catherine Merici. Now she herself will eventually get her own episode because what a scandalous and violent woman she was. Now King Henry II and Catherine Merici had four boys. They had more children. They had daughters as well, and one of the daughters will get into a little bit further on in the story. But during this time, France ruled by Salek Law. Salek Law said that the crown could only be passed down through the sons of the king. So therefore any children that a princess of France had, whether it be boys or girls, would not be eligible for the crown. Now again, Henry II and Catherine had four boys. So the likelihood of their cousin Henry down in Navarra ever inheriting the throne was highly unlikely. But obviously he did become the king of France, and what a story that was getting him from Navarra all the way to the throne. During this time there was obviously a lot of uproar because of the Protestant Reformation, and the Protestants in France were called Huguenots. Now the royal family was Catholic. Catherine de Menici, who was from a very, very, very powerful banking family in Italy, had close ties to the Pope. So their loyalty to the Catholic faith wasn't one of spiritual necessity. It was political. It's always political. Well, Henry, or Henri of Navarra, was born Catholic. His father was a Catholic, and at the time of his birth his mother was too. However, his mother, Queen Joan III, became a Protestant, and she ended up becoming a leader in the Huguenot movement. Queen Joan III of Navarra ended up declaring Navarra as a Calvinist region, whereas again the rest of France was Catholic. That was the state religion, was Catholicism. All this change in faith by Henri's mother caused a lot of tension between his mother and his father. In order to calm down that tension, they decided to send Henry up to Paris to live with his cousins and be raised by Catherine de Menici and his great-uncle, King Henry II. He stayed in Paris for about five years, but by the time he was 13, the religious tensions between the Huguenots and the Catholics grew so intense that he had to go back home to Navarra. Now, Henry took his mother's side. He started to fight and trained to fight for the Huguenots of France. And this decision for Henry to take the side of his mother would cause him a lot of hiccups throughout his whole life. It would eventually lead to his assassination many years later. Again, Catherine de Menici, she was quite a scandalous and violent woman herself. We could do like 10 episodes just on the origins of her horrible family from Italy. And yes, they were bankers. Hmm. Well, Catherine was so opposed to this new Protestant faith that she would actively take part in burning people at the stake, cutting their tongues off so they couldn't speak. I mean, this was not a woman who carried the love of Christ in her heart. Let's be honest. Intentions were high just everywhere in France. This wasn't just about some scuffles here and there between what flavor of Christianity one person picked over the other. This was like a literal battle happening all over the country. And the royal family was right in the middle of it. By 1562, France was legit in the French War of religions. In 1572, Joan III, Queen Joan III of Navarre, Henri or Henry's mother, died. She was very, very young. Many people believe that Catherine de Menici might have had something to do with her death. Perhaps she poisoned Joan. Who knows? We do know that the two women hated each other, even though they were family. Not by marriage, but family. When Queen Joan III died, two things happened. The first was that her son, Henry, became King Henry III of Navarre. So now he has his own territory. He himself is a Huguenot, is a Calvinistic man, just like his mother. And his cousins that he lived with are ruling France as Catholics. Another thing that happened to Henry right after his mother died is that he was arranged to marry his cousin, Margaret Valois. Now his cousin Margaret was the daughter of King Henry II and Catherine de Menici. Her brothers were the four brothers that stood in line to inherit the throne of France before Henry would become the heir presumptive. By these two cousins getting married, this was apparently some type of political movement to try to join the Catholics and the Protestants together. However, do keep in mind that it is suspected that his aunt Catherine potentially had his mother killed. So Henry makes his way back up to Paris to marry his cousin. Now with him came a bunch of really wealthy and powerful Protestants. They came into Paris for this grand affair, this grand wedding of their King of Navarre, marrying the princess of the King of France. Well, during the nuptials or soon after the nuptials, the Catholic military invaded this wedding. This became known as the Saint Bartholomew Massacre or the Scarlet Nuptials. At least 3,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris during this wedding festival. It is believed that Catherine de Menici was behind the whole thing. Now Henry was almost one of these casualties, however he just barely escaped with his life with the help of his cousin and new bride, Margaret. Now he pleaded with the court and he told them that he would convert to Catholicism. He stayed as a prisoner of Paris for a few years, but in 1576 he escaped and headed back to his principality of Navarre where he rejoined the Huguenot forces. Meanwhile, King Henry II of France ended up dying as a result of a jousting accident. He got a piece of wood in his eye and he got all septic and well, he died. The same thing kind of happened to King Henry VIII over in England except for it got into his leg and it stayed for a while and that's why a lot of people think Henry VIII went a little crazy because he had some poisoning from a jousting accident. I think it's just not not good. We should just never ever do that again. So this left France's the second as the king of France, Catherine de Menici's son, her oldest son. Now interestingly enough for the history buffs out there, especially the history buffs of the United Kingdom, Henry II was married to Mary Queen of Scots, the woman who would eventually get her head chopped off by Queen Elizabeth I. I am a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots. Well, for those who know, Francis II was always very sickly. He ended up passing away and without any heirs because they were like super young, like 17 years old. They didn't have any heirs. The crown then went to his next in line brother, whose name was Charles and he was only 10 years old. At this point, Catherine de Menici becomes his regent. She kind of helps him rule. Even though women aren't really supposed to rule in France, she kind of like works her magic and gets to kind of rule over France through her young son. Throughout all of her son's reigns, this became known as the age of Catherine de Menici because her son's work weren't ruling. They were just like a proxy. She was ruling. So as fate would have it, then Charles dies and now we got like two sons left, one whose name is Henry also who would become King Henry III for like a hot second. He's often Poland, like ruling somewhere in Poland so then her other son becomes the king but he supposedly possibly was gay and he was really young and he didn't have any heirs and then he died and once he died, it just kind of all of a sudden this Henry of Navarre now is the heir to the French throne and we have a huge problem because technically cousin Henry, Catherine de Menici's son, King Henry III who is still alive, he's ruling over him, Poland now comes back and we've got this heir presumptive with Henry III of Navarre down there and there's this other Henry and we have this war of the Henry's and the cousin Henry's end up kind of like coming together to try to get rid of this other Henry who's part of like a Catholic league. It's all very, very complicated. Basically it was just all part of the same bullshit war of religion that had been going all through all Europe during this time and of course as fate would have it, King Henry III, the son of King Henry II and Catherine de Menici ends up getting assassinated too. So literally, literally now this distant cousin down in the Pyrames who's a Huguenot who you've already tried to kill before with his marriage to the daughter is now technically the king of France. This ended as a stalemate for a few years because Henry was a Protestant. But on July 25th of 1593, Henry finally agrees to convert to Catholicism in order to be crowned the king. Now a lot of Huguenots were very upset about this. They felt like Henry had betrayed them. The way I see it though all these hundreds of years later is that he was trying to find some sort of compromise in order to eventually end this war on religion, which he would kind of do later on in his reign. In fact, in 1598 he signed the edict of knots which allowed for Protestants to have the same rights as Catholics. It's kind of crazy to think about now that there had to be an edict that was written in order for people to be treated as human beings. Now I know a little bit about this edict because when it was revoked many years later by one of his grandsons, some of my ancestors fled Europe and came to the New World because they were Protestants. So this means a lot to my lineage as well, this particular edict. By this time Henry, now Henry IV of France, and his wife, or his cousin wife, Margaret Valois, have no children. Now their marriage was not a romantic marriage. It was definitely a political marriage, but they seemed to be pretty good friends. And so by 1599 they got their marriage annulled and he married a woman named Maria. Maria ended up being the mother of his children, including of course Louis XIII that we spoke about on Monday who was the father of Louis, or supposedly the father of Louis XIV and possibly the man in the iron mask. Now not only did King Henry IV of France try to bring back, or bring religious tolerance to the area, but he also was famous for some other things as well. There's a very famous bridge that crosses over the Seine in Paris that he is responsible for. He is also responsible for funding the French exploration of the New World, or New France, which is part of Canada. Henry is known as the Good King. He's also known as Henry of the Great. Looking back, Henry IV of France was a very strong king, a very thoughtful king. He seemed to really care about his subjects more so than other rulers of Europe at the time. However, because of the religious controversy, because he was a Huguenot that became a Catholic for namesake in order to take the crown, and because he was trying to bring tolerance to different flavors of Christianity to his home country, a lot of people had problems with him. In fact, by the time that he was successfully assassinated in 1610, there had already been 17 attempts on his life. But on May 14th, 1610, as King Henry IV was traveling through Paris to go and see a sick friend, his buggy got stuck in a traffic jam. At this point, a young man named François Ravilec jumped inside the carriage and stabbed King Henry IV assassinating him. Now François was a fanatical Catholic. In fact, in his trial, he felt like that was what he had come to Earth to do, was to get rid of King Henry IV, this Huguenot. François Ravilec's execution was quite a brutal one. They pulled his body apart and they quartered him and all sorts of gross stuff they used to do back in those days to torture people before they were dead. But nonetheless, Henry IV died. He laid in state and then was buried with his head attached to him. It wasn't until 1793, well over 100 years after his death, during the French Revolution that a bunch of the bodies of royal family members were pulled up and torn apart. It is believed at this point that is when King Henry IV had his head chopped off. But no one was super sure. In fact, it wasn't until 1817 that one of his descendants had his grave opened up just to check and see and it did appear that his body was missing his head. Now the head seemed to travel through different private collectors all throughout France, very similar to Oliver Cromwell's traveling head we covered a couple of weeks ago in which I will place that video down below as well if you haven't seen it. In 1919 it fell into the hands of a particular gentleman who felt like that this was the mummified head of King Henry IV and he even tried to give this head to the Louvre Museum, but they wouldn't take it, like weird, they wouldn't take it. So anyway, he ended up selling it to somebody else in 1953, this other man, and he just like shoved it in his attic until 2008 when it was brought back out to be examined. Now believe it or not, we still don't know if that is actually the mummified head of King Henry IV. There are two camps on this. There's a group of people that really strongly believe it is and they have their reasons and there's a group of people who really don't think it is. And they also have their reasons. We will explore that on Monday, on our Mystery Monday. I stumbled upon this story of King Henry IV's head while I was researching the man in the iron mask, and I thought that this story would be a pretty simple one to tell, but it turns out there was a lot of backstory to it. So that is why I've had to divide it up into two separate episodes. Again, today we just needed to know who King Henry IV was and why he was missing his head to begin with, and then again Monday we will look at all the evidence and figure out for ourselves whether we believe this is the missing head of Henry the Great or not. Meanwhile, I hope you all are having an awesome Friday. I'm so happy you joined me today for this story. We're in Mercury Retrograde. It's been an exhausting Mercury Retrograde. It has just started, so I hope you guys are all taking care of yourself, holding your cards close to hand, cocooning when you need to cocoon, and know that this time period shall pass. Thank you to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase our opening song, the link is in the description box below. And as always, thank you so much to Todd Roderick for editing and helping me get this video out to you guys. I hope you guys have a wonderful day and a wonderful weekend. I will talk to you soon. Bye.