14. St. Clare of Assisi had beautiful hair when alive, and clippings of it are on display in Assisi… along with her fingernails.
Although often overshadowed by her more famous mentor, Francis, Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) still founded her own order of nuns, the Poor Clares. Inspired by Francis’s preaching when she was still a teenager, Clare renounced the world, and founded the order based on the ideals of extreme poverty and contemplation. The order spread like wildfire even during her lifetime, and soon houses of Poor Clares were established as far away as Britain. It’s a measure of her inspirational life and example that she inspired such devotion, given that she never left her own convent at Assisi.
What made Clare’s decision to give up the worldly life especially inspiring to others was that she was not only born into great wealth, but was extremely beautiful. She was blessed with especially lovely hair. Francis trimmed her flowing locks as a physical manifestation of her rejecting her former, vain existence. Someone collected these tresses, and they were later encased in a reliquary at the Basilica named in her honour. The Basilica also contains a beautiful rock crystal flask containing… Clare’s clipped fingernails. How these disgusting body parts came to be preserved is, sadly, not recorded.