Skull and Bones

Almost every imaginable item has been auctioned off at Sotheby's in London, but this was a first: a skull described as "unusually long and narrow ... jawbone lacking." It fetched -L- 1,650 ($3,200) last week from the Swedish Royal Academy of Science, which decided in 1960 that the skull is almost certainly that of Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th century Swedish scientist and mys tic. His writings and visions form the heart of the 50,000-member Swedenborgian religion.

The skull was stolen from Swedenborg's London grave, 44 years after his 1772 burial, by a retired sea captain infatuated with phrenology. It was bought a century later at an antique shop in Swansea, Wales, by the family whose heirs sold it off last week. Swedenborgians protested the sale of stolen property, but are relieved that the skull is returning to Sweden, where the rest of the founder's body now lies.

Two days before the auction, the remains of a much more famous man of God, St. Francis, were reburied after a special rite at the basilica in Assisi, Italy. The skeleton was first identified by Vatican experts in 1818. When the remains were exhumed so the grave site could be repaired, Pope Paul asked scientists to study them. Their findings: the saint, who died in 1226, was short and frail and Ms bones "very porous, denoting a form of malnutrition."

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