Historically it was believed that the almighty Rey of France, Louis XIV of Bourbon, had died due to gangrene, a disease that had been generated by bacteria.
However, recently, a group of scientists inspected the heart of the monarch and found that he died of another illness.
Since the death of «the sun king«, its main organ passed through different hands, including those of kidnappers and painters, until it was finally returned to where it belonged.
The study that changed the history of the death of Louis XIV: «It was not about bacteria at all»
Louis XIV, known as the «Sun King» due to his immense poweris probably one of the most important and emblematic French sovereigns.
He began his reign in 1643, when he was barely 4 years old, and ended it in 1715, when he died at 76a very high age for the time.
Louis XIV assumed the throne at the age of 4. Photo: WikipediaAccording to history, as he grew older, Louis XIV suffered from diabetes, typhoid fever and had an anal fistula, among other health problems. In addition, he was overweight, had calcified cholesterol deposits in his arteries and was missing part of his palate. Despite everything, and no one understood how, he survived.
However, on August 10, 1715, he complained of severe pain in his leg. Although the king’s physician, Fagon, described it as a simple case of sciatica, gradually a black spot at the extremity of the monarch.
According to testimonies, the Sun King did not give up and faced this new illness very calmly. Finally, he succumbed September 1and it was later determined that the disease that caused his death was gangrenewhich is the death of body tissue and which had been caused by a serious bacterial infection.
In accordance with the royal funerary practices of the time, after the autopsy, his body was embalmed and a triple burial was performed: his entrails were deposited in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, his mummified heart was placed in the church of Saint Paul and Saint Louis of the Jesuits of the same city, and his body was buried in the royal necropolis of the Basilica of Saint Denis.
This was the official story about the death of Louis XIV of Bourbon. But in October 2025, three centuries later of death, a group of scientists carried out a study of the monarch’s heart, the results of which denied the cause of his death.
To carry it out, the forensic team received the approval of Juan de Orleans and Luis Alfonso de Borbón, both descendants of Louis XIV who head rival branches of France’s former royal family.
After that, and to verify that it was the king’s fundamental organ, they performed combined micro-CT (microscopic computed tomography) and paleoproteomics (analysis of ancient proteins) scans on it. Both experiments confirmed the human and cardiac nature of the sample.
Louis XIV died from a fungus and not as previously believed. Photo: WikipediaHowever, the most surprising thing about the study was that Scientists determined that Louis XIV died from a fungal infection caused by Cyphellophora europeaa mushroom which causes skin infections and can be lethal in immunocompromised people, as the monarch was due to diabetes.
«By analyzing the blood residue that was still present around the heart, we realized that it was not bacteria at all, but fungi,» he said. Philippe Charlierthe director of the investigation, in the middle The Times.
With these words, Charlier made it clear that it was not gangrene, and also added that, probably, the fungus could have caused septicemia on the king’s body, so the blackening of the leg would have been due to a localized necrosis.
Kidnappings, transfers and even food: the story of the heart of Louis XIV
As was said, after the death of Louis XIV, his heart was placed in a reliquary and was donated to the Jesuits of the church of Saint Paul and Saint Louis from Paris.
He remained there for 77 years, until the arrival of the French Revolution, whose supporters, in addition to beheading King Louis XVI and his family, got rid of the Sun King’s heart.
The chest it was in was melted down by order of the Mint, while the organ was sold to Alexandre Pau, a painter of landscapes. Pau grated a part of the king’s heart and used it as pigment for a work.
The heart of Louis XIV passed through different hands. What happened to what was left of the heart is a matter of conjecture. The most accepted hypothesis is that the artist returned the remains to the royal court after the Restoration of Louis XVII, and that they were placed in the Basilica of San Deniswhere they rest until today.
However, a more intriguing theory holds that the remaining part of the heart ended up in the hands of the Harcourts, a very influential British family. According to this thesis, they organized a dinner at which the dean of Westminster, William Bucklandate a piece of the organ. «I have eaten many strange things, but I have never eaten the heart of a king before,» Buckland reportedly said.
