Editing Decapitation (section)

==== Celts ====
{{see also|Celtic headhunting}}
The [[Celts]] of western Europe long pursued a [[Ancient Celtic religion#Head cult|"cult of the severed head"]], as evidenced by both Classical literary descriptions and archaeological contexts.<ref>{{cite book|author-link=Barry Cunliffe |last=Cunliffe |first=Barry |date=2010 |title=Druids: A Very Short Introduction |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=71–72}}</ref> This cult played a central role in their temples and religious practices and earned them a reputation as [[Headhunting|head hunters]] among the Mediterranean peoples. [[Diodorus Siculus]], in his 1st-century ''[[Bibliotheca historica|Historical Library]]'' (5.29.4) wrote the following about Celtic head-hunting:
{{blockquote|They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in [[cedar oil]] the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold.}}
Both the Greeks and Romans found the Celtic decapitation practices shocking and the latter put an end to them when Celtic regions came under their control.

[[File:Testa in pietra con più facce, da corleck hill, co. di cavan, I-II secolo dc. 03.jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|The [[Corleck Head]], Irish, 1st or 2nd century AD]] 
According to [[Paul Jacobsthal]], "Amongst the Celts the [[human head]] was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world."<ref>Paul Jacobsthal ''Early Celtic Art''</ref> Arguments for a Celtic cult of the severed head include the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tène carvings, and the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who [[Cephalophore|carry their own severed heads]], right down to ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'', where the [[Green Knight]] picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off in a [[beheading game]], just as [[Saint Denis of Paris|Saint Denis]] carried his head to the top of [[Montmartre]].<ref name="Wilhelm, James J. 1994">Wilhelm, James J. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." The Romance of Arthur. Ed. Wilhelm, James J. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. 399–465.</ref><ref name=SHMI>{{cite book|author-first=Paolo O. |author-last=Pirlo |title=My First Book of Saints |year=1997 |publisher=Sons of Holy Mary Immaculate – Quality Catholic Publications |isbn=971-91595-4-5 |pages=238–239 |chapter=St. Denis}}</ref>

A further example of this regeneration after beheading lies in the tales of [[Connemara]]'s [[Féchín of Fore|Saint Féchín]], who after being beheaded by [[Vikings]] carried his head to the Holy Well on [[Omey Island]] and on dipping it into the well placed it back upon his neck and was restored to full health.<ref name="Charles-Edwards">Charles-Edwards, ''Early Christian Ireland'', p. 467 n. 82.</ref>