Born in the Auvergne in 940, Pope Sylvester II (d. 1003), the first French Pope was earlier the archbishop of Ravenna and became Pope by the grace of Otto III late in his life. He had in his Palace a mysterious brazen skull that allegedly answered YES or NO to questions put to it on politics, finances, or the general position of Christianity. It is a well-attested fact that Cardinal Benno publicly accused Pope Sylvester II of being a sorcerer and ‘a magician in league with the devil’.¹ The ‘magic head’ went missing when Sylvester died, and the information it imparted was concealed in the Vatican vaults.²
Fables and romance tell of a variety of severed oracular skulls, like those of Minos, Aesculapius, Orpheus, Sualdam, Bran, and Osiris, whose head was preserved in a specially built Temple at Abydos where, according to legend, it provided the priests with much of Egypt’s knowledge of the afterlife. Among the best known in Christian circles are; the strange head in possession of St. Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus, d. 1280); the brazen skull of Roger Bacon (d. c. 1292); the mysterious ‘hoary head’ of the Knights Templar (c. 1135-1314), and the magical skull of the de Medici popes (c. 1513-1565). There are twelve historical records that reveal the existence of oracular skulls, five of them involving Popes and one of the frightful story of Catherine de Medici (1519-89) Queen of France and niece of Giulio de Medici (Clement VII, Pope from 1523 to 1534).³
¹Catholic Encyclopedia, xiv, 372
²Diderot’s Encyclopedia, 1759; also, The Vatican Censors, Professor Peter Elmsley (1773-1825), Principal of St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford
³La Demononie, ou traite des Sorciers, Bodin, Paris, 1587