The History Blog

An extremely rare medieval gold seal engraved with the image of an elephant carrying a castle on its back has been discovered in Norfolk. It was discovered in June 2020 by a metal detectorist near King’s Lynn. The seal dates to between 1250 and 1350 and is only the third gold seal ever recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and the only one to star an elephant.

“Few people in medieval England would have seen a live elephant,” said Beverley Nenk, curator of later medieval collections at the British Museum.

“The image may have been based on reports of these fabulous and exotic creatures from travellers or pilgrims returning from the East or from the Crusades, or from descriptions and images in bestiaries and other manuscripts.”

There was a live elephant in the royal menagerie at the Tower of London between 1255 and 1257 – a gift from King Louis IX of France to King Henry III.

The seal is just over an inch long, a gold oval set with an oval stone intaglio stone engraved with an elephant in profile walking towards the right, its trunk curled forward at the tip. On his back is a castle (an adaptation of the howdah, the canopied seat carried by Asian war elephants). The stone is probably a carnelian, although there is some slight banding like you see in agate. It is backed and rimmed in gold and there is a gold loop soldered to the reverse.

There is no name on the seal (the other gold seals are also anonymous), but there is an inscription. It reads: PARMAT EST ‧ WEVEI ‧ DRA OBEST, a bit of an obscure saying which is being interpreted as meaning “armed with a shield, the outlaw dragon is harmful.” The connection between the castled elephant and the inscription is equally obscure. It could be a reference to the idea, commonly expressed in medieval bestiaries, that dragons were elephants’ only natural enemies.

In medieval heraldry, elephants symbolized power, wisdom and courage. Because they were associated with Eastern rulers, elephants on a coat of arms could refer to a victory or success in the East. The castle on the back is associated with royalty and combat. Christian iconography used the elephant as a symbol of Christ’s redemption of fallen humanity.

The date range is suggested by the lettering, which is 13th century in style, and by comparison to other seal matrices set with gemstones that were created in the early 14th century. It is not clear if the intaglio itself is medieval. It could just as easily be ancient, as ancient engraved gemstones were reused in seals and jewelry in the Middle Ages.

The seal’s status under the Treasure Act 1996 will be determined at a coroner’s inquest at the end of the month. As it is made of more than 10% precious metal and is more than 300 years old, the will certainly be declared official Treasure, after which a British Museum committee of experts will assess its market value. Local museums will be given first crack at the chance to pay the fee (split by the finder and landowner). The Norwich Castle Museum has already expressed a desire to acquire it when it becomes available.

More than 11 years ago when this blog was new (well… less old, at any rate), I wrote about medieval penitentials and the brilliant sex flowchart derived therefrom by University of Kansas history professor emeritus James A. Brundage for his seminal text Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. It is still one of the most viewed posts in History Blog history.

Written by Irish monks starting in the 6th century, penitentials listed sins commonly encountered in confession and suggested suitable penances for each sin. They are remarkably explicit and specific in their descriptions of sinful sex acts, and the penances consistently prescribe rigorous fasting. A wide variety of sexual experiences — same-sex, extra-marital, marital but done at the wrong time, beastiality, masturbation — all earned the penitents years of fasting.

There was some discussion in the comments of what that level of fasting might entail. One comment from Mary clarified that a fasting penance in this context enjoined penitent sinners to abstain from certain kinds of food, not all food, mostly rich foods like meat and wine.

I was reminded of this exchange when watching the highly entertaining and illuminating webinar Love, Lust, and Libido: Aphrodisiacs in Medieval Europe hosted by food historian Ken Albala and Getty manuscripts curator Larisa Grollemond. Albala explanes the Humor Theory and how inextricably linked it was to food which was not just a menu but medicine. What foods you were allowed to eat while doing penance for sexual sins was determined by the humors, because some ingredients — ginger, meat, salt — stimulated libido/performance/fertility while others — spinach, beans, fruit — suppressed them. Grollemond adds some visual aids in the form of manuscript illuminations from the Getty’s collection. It is an impressively thorough and eminently watchable treatment of the question.

Also not to be missed are three videos of Albala making recipes mentioned in the webinar. That almond milk creamed spinach from 1420 looks pretty great to me, especially if you add the garlic the author warned against as it is known to inflame lust.

The warriors in two Iron Age boat graves in Valsgärde, outside Uppsala in central Sweden, were laid softly to their eternal rest on down bedding. The boat graves date to the 7th century, and their featherbeds are the oldest down bedding known in Scandinavia.

Feathers were widely traded in the Middle Ages, and there are extensive records of the trade going back to the 15th century. Eiderdown from the St. Cuthbert’s duck (aka, the common eider) was the most popular feather commodity, harvested from purpose-built nesting boxes on the northern coast of Norway and sold over trade routes throughout Scandinavia and Europe. The earliest written reference comes Ohthere of Hålogaland, the Viking explorer who relayed an account of his travels to King Alfred of Wessex in the late 9th century. He said the Sami people payed their taxes to him in buckets full of feathers.

Feathers are infrequent survivors on the archaeological record, so the bedding in the Valsgärde burials provides a rare opportunity to investigate what was a highly-prized and valuable commodity. Researchers studied the feathers to determine their origins and assess whether they may have been traded over long distances, like the eiderdown from north Norway.

Excavated starting in the 1930s, burials Valsgärde 7 and 8 were two of 15 richly-furnished warrior boat burials from the Late Iron Age found at the site. The two boats are 30 feet long and have no masts. They were row boats, long enough to accommodate four or five pairs of oars. The men were inhumed with highly decorated helmets, shields, swords and daggers as well as use items like hunting gear and cooking tools. The remains of feather-stuffed pillows and bolsters were found under the warriors, the shields the helmet.

In a new study, scientists took samples of feathers from several places in the boat graves and examined them microscopically to identify what species they came from. The results were short on eider duck feathers, although there were some. The feathers were sourced from a surprising variety of birds including geese, ducks, grouse, crows, sparrows, waders and eagle owls. There is no indication that they were traded from far-away northern climes; they were harvested locally, or from the nearby Baltic coast.

The great variety of species gave the researchers unique insight into the bird fauna in the immediate area in prehistoric times, along with people’s relationship to it.

“The feathers provide a source for gaining new perspectives on the relationship between humans and birds in the past. Archaeological excavations rarely find traces of birds other than those that were used for food,” [researcher Birgitta Berglund] says.

“We also think the choice of feathers in the bedding may hold a deeper, symbolic meaning. It’s exciting.”

Berglund explains that according to Nordic folklore, the type of feathers contained in the bedding of the dying person was important.

“For example, people believed that using feathers from domestic chickens, owls and other birds of prey, pigeons, crows and squirrels would prolong the death struggle. In some Scandinavian areas, goose feathers were considered best to enable the soul to be released from the body. […] The examples show that that feathers in the bedding from Valsgärde most likely also had a deeper meaning than just serving as a filler. “

The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports and can be read here.

A silver-gilt praying knight emerging from a snail shell onto a non-equine quadruped, likely a goat, is one of the stand-out pieces of this year’s British Museum annual treasure report on Portable Antiquities Scheme finds. The object is less than an inch long, has flat back and a short rivet which indicates it was mounted to something thin and rigid like a leather belt. It is solid silver and its shaped and molded front is gilded with some wear on the top of the man’s head on the center of the shell.

It was unearthed by a metal detectorist in a field near Pontefract last September. The mount dates between 1200 and 1350, a time when scenes of knights and snails had a burst of popularity in the art of France, Flanders and England. The motif of a knight in combat against a snail and its many variants were common in the margins of illuminated manuscripts from Arthurian tales to psalters. They weren’t references to anything specific in the text, but rather  satirical references to cowardice in a monde renversé (world upside down) style; ie, the little, weak, slow snail treated as a valiant, sometimes even victorious chivalric opponent.

Knights, mounted and on foot, armed to the teeth with swords, lances and bows, charge a snail that faces them with antennae extended. Sometimes a woman begs the knight not to take this terrible risk. Sometimes the knight is on his knees in capitulation before his snail foe. Other variants merge animals and men or feature hybrid animals or animal combatants in place of the knights. The chimeric imagery often evoked snail shell shapes, as in the curled tail of a serpent. The knight-snail-goat has that same elision, where the spirals of the shell are placed where the curled horns of a ram would be.

The Aspremont Psalter-Hours, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia features a marginal illustration of a knight at arms emerging from a snail shell mounted on the back of a dog. The pose and position of the shell over the animal is comparable to the recently-discovered mount, although the knight in the mount has his hands clasped in prayer, not wielding shield and lance. His Norman style helmet is his only armament.

An exceptional hoard of 10th century jewelry that almost disappeared into the penumbra of online antiquities trafficking has gone on display for the first time at the Archaeological Museum of Córdoba. Its existence was only suspected last year when a local archaeologist saw photographs of some of the pieces for sale on social media and notified the National Police. The treasure was ostensibly discovered on La Amarguilla, a farm in the Andalusian town of Baena, southeast of Córdoba, but the story is self-serving with many glaring omissions.

According to the experts consulted, the treasure was buried inside a bag or a ceramic container in the ground. Indeed, all of the pieces were stained by soil, indicating the treasure had been dug up only recently. The police investigation took place in the Córdoba municipalities of Lucena, Luque and Baena, where the treasure was finally found in an industrial warehouse. The person who had it in their possession took the police to an estate in Baena where they claimed to have found it.

However, the individual’s explanations regarding the original site of the buried treasure reportedly failed to convince archaeologists and consequently, no excavation has been undertaken to determine whether other elements are still to be discovered there.

This is the 16th known jewelry hoard found in Andalusia and it stands out among them for the quality, quantity and rarity of its pieces. The Amarguilla Treasure is comprised of 623 jewels, beads and gems. There are 98 pieces of jewelry made of precious metal — gold, silver or gilt silver — of an unusual variety of designs. There are pendants, bracelets, hairpins, dress ornaments, rings of caliphal type, chains and broken necklaces. A large group of beads and pearls found in the hoard were originally part of the necklaces or bracelets. There are 17 hard stone (mostly quartz and rock crystal) beads, four cylindrical pink coral beads, 36 glass beads of different colors and 476 river seed pearls. No other documented Andalusian jewelry hoard contains any seed pearls.

Among the notable pieces are two intricate gold filigree pendants, one in a circular, one in a bell shape. Circular examples have been found before in hoards. The bell-shaped one is unique on the archaeological record. The greatest standout jewels are a circular pendant with the Star of David inside and two bangles, one silver, one gilt, with animal head terminals. The Star of David pendant is made with a filigree so delicate and precise that required great technical virtuosity from the goldsmith. It is unique; there is no other piece like it extant. The bangles are made of four twisted tubes silver with four threads twisted between them. The terminals are serpent heads constructed with very fine granulation.

The style of the jewels dates them to the 10th century. It was likely buried in the beginning of the 11th century during the upheaval of the civil war that broke out in 1009 and would drag on for two decades and ultimately bring about the demise of the Caliphate of Córdoba. The other Andalusian hoards also include coins that made it possible to pin down the latest possible date they were buried. That this hoard does not strongly suggests they were surreptitiously sold before authorities got wind of the discovery. Coins are more common, making them easy to move because people don’t ask a lot of questions when they emerge on the market. The jewelry is extremely rare and much harder to sell without arousing suspicions, which is exactly how the Amarguilla treasure came to light in the first place.

The Jewels of Amarguilla exhibition is temporary, running through June 6, 2021, but the treasure will go on permanent display at the museum.

Scientists have confirmed that a 500-year-old manuscript in the Wellcome Collection believed to have been worn by women for divine protection during childbirth was indeed used as a “birth girdle” in pre-Reformation England when the postpartum death toll and infant mortality were extremely high.

Among the relics and talismans seized during the Dissolution of the Monasteries were numerous birthing girdles. Abbeys and monasteries lent them out to parishioners (gross) for a fee that priced most women out of the market. Girdles made of silk, iron, snake skin and parchment are on the lists of confiscated devotional objects from the Dissolution.

Between the destruction of the Reformation, very few birth girdles have survived. Most of them are made of parchment, including the Wellcome Collection manuscript in the recent study. Unusually among surviving girdles, this parchment roll makes the link to childbirth explicit in its prayers that appeal to protective mothers (Mary, Anne). It was made of four strips of vellum sewn together and is incredibly long and thin (10’10” x 4″), a hint of how it may have been worn, for example, wrapped around the body with key prayers placed against the belly for maximum effect.

MS. 632 features iconography of the Passion of the Christ drawn in red and black ink — the crucifix, nails, drops of blood, the I.H.S. Christogram, the five wounds — and prayers and invocations to God, Jesus, Mary and a panoply of Saints, including Anne (mother of Mary), Margaret (swallowed by a demon dragon and burst out of its stomach) and Julitta and Cyricus. Julitta was Cyricus’ mother and according to hagiograhies, they were both martyred in the early 4th century when Cyricus was just three years old. They are the patron saints of family happiness and restoring health to sick children.

The prayers and invocations are written in Latin and English on both sides, although some of the text has been abraded from heavy wear and tear. They seek the protection of God against a variety of evils like being slain in battle, struck by lightning, wrongfully convicted of a crime, robbed at sea or on land and dying of pestilence. Then there’s the specific instructions for use in childbirth:

And yf a woman travell wyth chylde gyrdes thys mesure abowte hyr wombe and she shall be safe delyvyrd wythowte parelle and the chylde shall have crystendome and the mother puryfycatyon. [And if a woman travailing with child girds this measure about her womb, she shall be delivered safely without peril and the child shall be christened and the mother purified.]

It’s childbirth-specific features, abraded surface and a few reddish stains indicated it was likely worn during delivery, but there was no direct evidence. The manuscript is extremely fragile, so in order to confirm whether it was actually used by women during childbirth, researchers at the University of Cambridge turned to that greatest of school supplies, the Staedtler Mars eraser.

This form of non-invasive proteomic analysis has been used before on delicate ancient parchments to determine their animal source, but this is the first time it was used to identify the source of stains on the parchment. The analysis found a total of 54 human-exclusive proteins, 50 of which are present in cervico-vaginal fluid.

They also found animal-derived proteins including honey, milk, eggs, cereals and legumes (broad beans or peas), all of which were are ingredients in herbal treatments for issues in childbirth. Oh, also mouse pee. Plenty of mouse pee, but thankfully that wasn’t part of the delivery pharmacopoeia; just the inevitable result of it being stored somewhere where mice could get to it.

The study has been published in the journal Royal Society Open Science with a pretty great title: Girding the loins? Direct evidence of the use of a medieval parchment birthing girdle from biomolecular analysis.

The world’s longest Viking longship, the Roskilde 6, is being installed for a new exhibition at the National Museum in Copenhagen that starts June 25th. The Roskilde 6 has been traveling for years, touring Germany, England, Canada and the US. Last Friday it arrived packed in 27 boxes and curators have been piecing it back together.

At 37.4 meters (123 feet) long, twice the length of Columbus’ flagship La Santa Maria, it is the longest Viking ship ever discovered. The keel alone is 32 meters (105 feet) long, the longest keel ever found on a Viking ship. It was 13 feet wide at the widest point and had a shallow draught of just 33 inches.

Roskilde 6 was discovered in February 1997 by workers dredging the Roskilde harbor before construction of an extension to the Viking Ship Museum. Nine shipwrecks from the late Viking and early Medieval periods were discovered at the site. Roskilde 6 had been dragged into the shallows and partially dismantled along with a half dozen ships to serve as defensive barriers in the harbor of Roskilde Fjord.

Today about 20-25% of the longship survives, the timbers preserved for centuries in the waterlogged mud of the fjord’s shoreline. Dendrochronological analysis indicates the ship was built after 1025, and the type of oak points to it having been built not in Denmark but in Norway, near Oslo. It was in active use for at least 15 years, as there is evidence of repairs using timber felled from the Baltic area in 1039.

Roskilde 6 was an ocean-going warship, not a ceremonial one like many of the ship burials which were built solely for funerary purposes, and the high quality of its materials and workmanship points to it having been part of the royal fleet. Its large size required adaptations to ensure it would be flexible enough to navigate the choppy water. The keel was actually made of three parts connected by long scarves. The planks of its hull were barely more than an inch thick, which made it comparatively light in weight for its length.  The floor planks were riveted together and half-frames placed on top of them. The keelson, of which a 10-foot section has survived, was fastened to the hull with meticulously carved horizontal double knees.

The ribs over the hull at regular interviews correspond to where the thwarts (the rowing benches the oarsmen sat on) were placed, making it possible to calculate the full length of the warship and the size of its crew. Early Viking ships were small, fitting crews of 40 men. This one had a crew of 100, 80 rowers, two men per oar.

The preserved timbers have been mounted on a steel skeleton to give visitors a realistic view of its impression dimensions when it was intact.

A hoard of jewelry from the Viking era found on the Isle of Man has been declared official Treasure. The objects are small in number but large in significance and one of them is large in the literal sense too.

The hoard was discovered last December by Kath Giles, a retired police officer, while metal detecting on private land. The first thing she found when he brushed away the soil was a spherical terminal of a brooch. The rest of it — a long pin and a hoop — emerged next, followed by a braided gold arm ring and pieces of a broken silver armband.

She notified Manx National Heritage and archaeologists identified the objects as Viking jewelry dating to around 950 A.D. Viking gold and silver jewelry have been found on the Isle of Man before, but this is the first time this type of gold arm-ring and brooch have been unearthed on the island.

The gold arm ring is made of three thick rods of gold plaited together. The terminals are joined by flat band decorated with a stamped dot pattern. It was extremely valuable in the Viking era when gold artifacts are rare, worth the equivalent of 900 silver coins.

The pin is a thistle brooch of ball type thistle brooch, named after the ball-shaped terminals and pin head with brambling decoration reminiscent of the bushy little flower. The brambling — tiny cones that just out from the cast silver ball — were created by making diagonal criss-cross cuts and then punching out some of them. The example in the hoard has incised designs along with the brambling on the head and terminals.

It is a giant of a jewel, with the pin approximately 20 inches long and the hoop about eight inches in diameter. Originally a Celtic form of normal size, these types of penannular brooches were prized by the Vikings who settled in Ireland and put their own stamp on the Celtic design, greatly increasing their size and decreasing their decorative intricacy. They were signifiers of wealth and status, so the bigger the better, as far as the Vikings were concerned, even though it made them notably impractical as fasteners. Because of their massive size and weight, they could only have been worn on very thick outerwear like furs or skins. The pin was worn at the shoulder with the sharp point facing upwards.

Allison [Fox, Curator for Archaeology for Manx National Heritage] said:

“Vikings arrived on the Isle of Man in the 800s, firstly trading and eventually settling.  Kath’s hoard can be dated on stylistic and comparative grounds to around AD 950, a time when the Isle of Man was  right in the middle of an important trading and economic zone.  But elsewhere to the east and west, Viking rule was coming to an end and perhaps this encouraged further Viking settlement on the Island.  The Viking and Norse influence remained strong on the Island for a further three hundred years, long after much of the rest of the British Isles.

The arm-ring, brooch and cut armband are all high-status personal ornaments and represent a large amount of accumulated wealth.  Finding just one of these items would be of significance.  The fact that all were found together, associated with one single deposition event, suggests that whoever buried them was extremely wealthy and probably felt immediately and acutely threatened.”

The hoard went on temporary display in the Viking and Medieval Gallery at the Manx Museum. It will be assessed by a committee of experts to determine its value and conserved before permanent display is arranged.

Renovations of a Seville tapas bar have uncovered the remains a 12th century Islamic bathhouse with uniquely rich decorations. The Cervecería Giralda in the historic center of Seville has been one of the city’s most popular bars since it opened in 1923. The building has soaring vaulted ceilings supported by four columns, typical of the medieval bathhouses or hammams, and there are records going back to 1281 referencing a bathhouse that had existed in the area, but there was no archaeological evidence to confirm this was it, and the building was widely thought to be more Neo-Mudéjar (ie, Moorish Revival) than the genuine article.

The descendants of Roman baths, hammams served the same hygiene and socialization functions as their predecessors as well as performing a religious role as facilities for the full-body ablutions mandated in the Quran for ritual purification. There were hundreds of them in the Muslim-ruled cities. In Spain, Christian rulers who conquered those cities frequently destroyed the bathhouses, built over them or converted them to other uses.

Seville became the capital of Al-Andalus under the Almohad Caliphate which ousted the Almoravid dynasty in a series of battles between 1146 and 1173. They conquered Seville early, transferring the capital from Cordoba to Seville in 1150, but their rule would be short-lived. Seville was conquered by Ferdinand III of Castile in 1248.

Much of Seville’s extant Moorish style architecture was actually built by Christian rulers who appropriated the aesthetic even as they demolished or radically altered the original structures. Today there is only a smattering of original architecture from the Almohad period, including the Giralda bell tower of Seville Cathedral, formerly a minaret of the Great Mosque of Seville, the Patio del Yeso (Courtyard of Plaster) in the Alcázar royal palace, the Patio de los Naranjos, once part of the mosque and now annexed to the Seville Cathedral.

As the name suggests, the Cervecería Giralda is only feet away from the former mosque. The earliest documentary evidence of a bathhouse at the site dates to 1281 and refers to the “baths of García Jofre” adjacent to the cathedral being donated to the Church by King Alfonso X. By the 17th century, the great vaulted building’s history as a hammam was already forgotten. A major reconstruction divided the high ceilings of the warm room into two stories, replaced the original columns and closed the skylights. Historians contended it was the remains of an ancient amphitheater rather than a bath, or a newer construction from the 15th-16th century done in Moorish style.

Fran Díaz, the architect in charge of the modernization project, was labouring under that same misapprehension when he began renovations last year. He was disabused of the notion when probes behind the false ceiling revealed the presence of skylights known as luceras, decorative cutouts in the ceiling characteristic of hammam architecture. In the wake of the discovery, renovators stepped back so archaeologists could take over to fully explore the remains of the bathhouse.

They found 88 skylights in several different shapes — eight-pointed stars, six-pointed stars, octagons, quadrifoils — that are far more elaborate than those found in other Muslim baths of the period. An entirely unprecedented discovery were geometric murals. Nothing like them has been found before in the Iberian peninsula. Painted in red ochre against a white background, the latticed pattern likely represented water. Large sections of it have survived on the walls and ceilings. Archaeologists believe that the entire bathhouse from ceiling to floor was originally painted with these decorations. This is the only known hammam with surviving original wall and ceiling painted decoration. The only other examples of integral decoration in bathhouses stopped at the baseboards.

The main space of the bar was the hammam’s warm room. One wall opens into a smaller rectangular space with a barrel-vaulted ceiling that was originally the bathhouse’s cold room. That’s where the skylights are. What is now the kitchen area was the hot room, but most of the original structure was destroyed so all that remains is a partial arch. That the skylights and priceless murals survived at all is thanks to Vicente Traver, the architect who renovated the building in the early 20th century. He could have torn down what was left of the bathhouse, or redone it so invasively that little of the original elements remained. Instead he created the false ceiling and protected the fragile remains.

The discovery of the baths spurred a new concept for the renovation of the bar. To preserve the 12th century marvel while still making the space a functioning bar, architectures installed a metal cornice above Traver’s wall tiles. Renovations are scheduled to be completed next month, after which the Cervecería Giralda will reopen with a newly fabulous interior that maintains the striking features of the early 20th century renovation that have become integral to the establishment’s character with the magnificence of the original Almohad hammam.

Murals on the south transept of Augsburg Cathedral have been newly dated to around 1000 A.D., making them the oldest known paintings in a cathedral north of the Alps.

The murals depicting scenes from the life of John the Baptist were painted on the south transept at the time of the construction of the Romanesque church (completed 1065). They were whitewashed during the iconoclastic fervor of the Protestant Reformation centuries ago and their existence was forgotten until they were rediscovered when the whitewash was removed during renovations in the 1930s. Further elements were revealed during renovations in the 1980s. The murals had suffered extensive paint loss and nobody realized at the time of the rediscoveries their age and significance.

The first inkling of their great age came after structural repairs to the roof in 2009 exposed wall paintings that could only date to the original construction of the cathedral. Similarities in style between the construction period paint and the south transept murals suggested the faded murals may be far older than anyone realized.

In fact, they are older than the anyone realized the church was.

Dendrochronological tests revealed that wood in the masonry dated from AD1000, contradicting the previously held dating of the cathedral to around AD1065. The new dating “fits with what we know about a massive destruction in 994,” says Birgit Neuhäuser, a spokeswoman for the Bavarian State Office for Heritage Protection.

“The oldest frescoes are the first layer above the masonry, and are therefore part of the original decor of the church,” Neuhäuser says. “We can assume that in the case of an important Episcopal church, the frescoes would have been painted soon after the construction, so soon after AD1000.”

A team of restorers and researchers from the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Historical Buildings has spent months studying, cleaning and conserving the murals for the first time. They have been able to identify two scenes and the remains of a third despite the extensive paint loss. The scene on the east wall depicts the beheading of John the Baptist. Herod sits on the throne in the upper part of the panel while two disciples mourn the execution of the Baptist. The west wall mural depicts the entombment. The third scene was on the south wall but was destroyed in the 14th century when a Gothic window was constructed. Researchers believe it was probably the birth and naming of John the Baptist.

Given the height of the frescoes in the church, there is no need for special conservation measures in the long term, according to Neuhäuser. “They are not under any particular stress” from the humidity or heat generated by visitors’ traffic, she says. “After cleaning and conservation, they are in a stable and sustainable condition.”

The team plans to examine the roof area and the northern transept of the church for further fresco remnants.