Why TF Are These Headless People Fighting?
Two Headless Men Are Having a Sword Fight. On a Vine.
They've lost their heads. Literally.
They're each carrying their own severed head, mid-fight, balanced on a length of vine, apparently mid-duel.
But WTF is this image doing in a medieval prayer book?
That's exactly where this image is.
This is in the Breviary of Renaud de Bar — a summer volume made in Metz, France, around 1302–1305. Its margins are packed with hybrid beasts, musical animals, and scenes that have absolutely nothing to do with prayer.
Wikimedia Commons catalogues this one as Kephalophoroi — literally, "head-carriers." It's on folio 99v.
The term refers to the familiar medieval tradition of saints who, after being beheaded, miraculously pick up their own heads and carry on walking.
Whether that's actually what we're looking at here, I don't know.
But that's where things get wonderfully strange.
Because these aren't two solemn saints calmly carrying their heads.
They're armed. They're balanced on a vine. And they appear to be duelling each other while still holding the heads they're apparently missing.
What exactly is going on here?
Honestly? I have no bloody clue.
Any ideas?
Image: “Kephalophoroi (headcarriers),” summer volume of the Breviary of Renaud de Bar, Metz, c.1302–1305, fol. 99v. Master of the Pontifical of Renaud de Bar.
Bibliothèque municipale de Verdun, MS 107. Public domain.