BERLIN, GERMANY—According to a Live Science report, 188 figurines used as reliquaries to hold the remains of Christian saints in the mid-fourteenth century have been unearthed in the Molkenmarkt, the oldest square in Berlin. All of the three-inch figurines depict women, and some of them are shown wearing crowns. Bones were found in circular inlays in some of the reliquaries. A fifteenth-century statue of Saint Catherine of Alexandria standing about four inches tall was also uncovered. Saint Catherine is said to have lived in the early fourth century, and to have been martyred by the Roman emperor Maxentius (reigned a.d. 306–312). She is shown wearing a jagged crown and holding a sword and a wheel. Another fifteenth-century statue recovered during the excavation depicts the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus and offering him an apple. “Both figures of saints are extremely rare in the archaeological context of the Berlin area—and beyond—and offer a special insight into the bourgeois piety of the late Middle Ages,” commented Sebastian Heber of the Berlin State Office for Monument Preservation. To read more about other discoveries from the ongoing Molkenmarkt excavations, go to "Letter from Germany: Berlin's Medieval Origins."
