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In the St. Dominic Basilica, a dismembered holy head stares out from its beautiful reliquary.
The mummified head of Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is held in a beautiful reliquary in the Basilica San Domenico in Siena. Not far away is a smaller reliquary that contains her right thumb. When Catherine was seven, she had her first of many visions of Jesus seated on a throne and surrounded by saints. As a young woman, she chose to dedicate herself to prayer and worship, instead taking a vow of perpetual virginity and resorting to desperate measures - like cutting her hair off and scalding herself - to avoid getting married as per her family's wishes. Shortly after joining the nunnery however, Catherine experienced a spiritual vision of Jesus placing a peculiar ring upon her finger as part of their marriage contract; supposedly this was no ordinary wedding band but one made from the baby Jesus' foreskin! Beyond that point in time, it's claimed that Catherine had an ongoing experience of seeing the relic ring on her finger.
