Astonishing discovery in the Münster Caskets from the early Middle Ages
Bonn · In preparing for church restorations, architects made an amazing discovery - caskets dating back to the 5th Century.
It wasn’t easy to lift the 100-kilo slab of concrete from the floor of the Münster Basilica. Architects Reinhard Sentis and Sebastian Eckert had to do just that as they investigated and prepared for upcoming renovations of the well known church in Bonn city center. Dean of the Catholic church, Wilfried Schumacher stood by and advised the two men to be careful, “not that someone gets injured!” But an injury was not in the making, rather a surprising discovery - a crypt from 1928 with caskets from the early Middle Ages.
Schumacher said they had known something was under the floor but they thought it was a shaft. They had imagined that the bones of the City Patron Saints of Bonn would be buried there as the basilica was built over their graves. Instead they stumbled upon a crypt about 7.2 meters wide, 2.6 meters long and 1.9 meters high. It was made of concrete and was judged to be 90 years old.
When they opened the crypt, they found caskets from the times of the Merowingians, who ruled in western Europe for 300 years beginning in the middle of the 5th Century. How many remains were found? At the moment, they could not say for certain how many bones had been recovered but they were planning on an appropriate burial.
It is believed that in 1928 when they had been digging under the church to find the original walls of the building, they came upon graves and took the caskets and bones out of the graves to store them in the crypt.
Schumacher believes the space in the crypt could be used today for storing urns but such an idea would have to be examined. Orig. text: Gabriel Immenkeppel
