KLOTZOW, GERMANY—According to a Live Science report, a bildstein, or stone carved with a picture during the medieval period, was discovered during a home construction project in northern Germany. This three-foot-long stone bears an image of a person wearing a cap, a short robe, and shoes. He is also shown wearing a shawl with a cross at its end thought to represent a pallium—a garment worn by Christian popes, archbishops, and very honorable bishops, said chief state archaeologist Detlef Jantzen of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation. The image is thus thought to depict Otto of Bamberg, a Christian bishop and missionary who visited the region in the twelfth century. “Otto [is known to have] received the pallium from Pope Paschalis II,” Jantzen said, so that when the bishop was traveling in Pomerania in 1124 and 1128, he was the first and only possible bearer of a pallium at that time in that area. Otto was also remembered for negotiating peace between the Polish duke and the Pomeranian nobility, Jantzen concluded. To read more about medieval Germany, go to "Letter from Germany: Berlin's Medieval Origins."
