I like to think I know quite a fair bit about saints, their relics and their worship in the middle ages. Every so often, however, I am surprised with something new and pretty crazy. Ready for a tale of bones, breasts & boxes? It's the tale of St Simeon's remains - THREAD! /1 
Here's what you need to know about St Simeon - also known as the God-Receiver. He held the baby Jesus when he was brought to the Jewish temple for the first time. That's basically it. There's prophecies involved, but they don't matter much. 2/
Hundreds and hundreds of years after St Simeon's death, and a few exhumations later, the bones were in the possession of a rich Venetian who was transporting them via ship near (what is now) the Croatian city of Zadar. 2/
Caught in a storm, the Venetian pulled the ship into Zadar's harbour. Terrified that someone would work out he was carrying a saint's relic on his ship, he claimed that they were his brother's and went and buried them in the cemetery. /3
Shortly after this, he took ill. Stories diverge at this point - either those treating the merchant found a document relating to St Simeon, or he claimed on his deathbed that he was carrying the bones of St Simeon. Legend says priests in the city also had dreams of them. /4
Now, with a set of saint's bones, the people of Zadar were very, very happy. Pilgrims started to come and see the bones, and miracles were claimed at the shrine - the standard stuff, the blind could see, the lame could walk, demons exorcised, etc... /5
Jump forward to 1371 The story goes that Elisabeth of Bosnia, regent of Hungary and Croatia, was attending mass in Zadar. Full of holy zealotry, she decided to take a piece of Simeon's finger and stuff it down her decolletage. Big mistake! /6
The finger, now 'twixt Elizabeth's breasts, began to decompose, maggots appearing and wiggling around! Horrified, she ran around the church, until she figured out that returning it may fix the problem. Chastened, she did so, with everybody being all, WTF? /7
Deeply, deeply ashamed of her attempt to steal part of St Simeon, Elizabeth swore to have a nicer box for the bones to be housed in. She hired Francesco di Antonio da Sesto, a Milanese goldsmith, to design it. 8/
It took local goldsmiths three years to create the scenes in silver, parts of which were gilded. The chest of St Simeon is considered some of the finest medieval Croation metalwork about - and they were masters! 9/
Since the early 17th century, the chest of St Simeon has been kept in Zadar's Sanctuary of Saint Simeon the Righteous, where it receives pilgrims daily - especially on the 8th of October every year, when the bones get a viewing. /10
You might want to check Zadar out next time you head to Croatia - there's plenty of traces of the medieval past there to discover. It really was at the centre of things for many centuries! /11
So that's the story of St Simeon's bones, Elizabeth's boobs, and a very pretty box. If you've got any more crazy stories of saintly relics and secondary sex organs, let me know - always up for discovering more! /FIN
