JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post #90

Robert Gaugin (1433-1501) produced this fabulous illustration for his Compendium de origine et gestis Francorum, a 180-leaf history of France, printed in Paris in the second week of 1500.  (This is actually the fourth edition of this work which first appeared in the year 1495, which would officially make it incunabula.)

St. Denis and St. Remy are pictured here standing on either side of a column supporting the fleurs-de-lys, and surrounded by the coats of arms of various French cities and provinces. 


So far as I can limitedly determine this is the first title page featuring a headless, or decapitated, human.  And that human is St. Denis of Paris, also called Dionysius, Dennis and Denys, the third century bishop of Paris who was martyred about the year 250.  It is said that after being beheaded by the Romans at the highest point in the city of Paris (now known as Montmarte, “mount of the martyr”), Denis picked up his head, held it in his hands, and walked two miles in this fashion, preaching all the way.

St. Denis however was not the only beheaded person to carry his head, nor was he anywhere near being the only saint to do so. As a matter of fact there is an entire category of saints who carried their heads following beheading, called Cephalophores.  This special class of saints


include Paul of Tarsus, Saint Ginés de la Jara, Saint Gemolo , Aphrodisius of Alexandria, (pictured below)  Nicasius of Rheims,  Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and Oswald of Northumbria, while others of this category though not saints include Lucian of Beauvais, Nectan, , Osyth, Quiteria, Winefride and Wyllow. Cephalophores also make many appearances in literature, most notably in Dante’s Inferno (8th Circle, Bertrand, pictured left)
) and in Sir Gawain and the Green Night.

But none I think appear on a title page of a book earlier than this 1500 example of St. Denis.

As a very occasional note, St. Denis is pictured here with one halo–sometimes he has two.