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A 600-year-old brass seal found in a farmer’s field features an image of St. Catherine of Alexandria.
The depiction is chock full of symbolism, and includes items that show she was martyred.
Archaeologists believe that the 14th-century item was a seal for a church parish.
St. Catherine of Alexandria, the patron saint of a church in the Braniewo region of Poland, served a key function as a symbolic figure for both the church and a centuries-old cavalry unit. A recent find in a Polish farmer’s field—a 600-year-old brass seal depicting St. Catherine—helps highlight that storied importance. The brass piece, which has been identified as a seal for the church in a translated statement from private archaeological firm Pogotowie Archeologiczne, is dated to the 14th century.
The surprisingly well-preserved seal is flat on one side, with an image of St. Catherine dominating the center. She’s shown holding a sword and circle, which symbolize her death as a martyr. The engraved image is encircled with Gothic writing, and the back side of the seal has a raised edge with a hole, which would have allowed the seal to be tied onto another object.
Tomasz Kaluski of the University of Silesia, who has studied the find, said in a statement that is is interesting to locate an artifact of this kind, as parish seals from the Middle Ages are rarely preserved. He noted that the seal would have been used by an entire parish rather than a specific village rector, and considers the find to be one of significant importance.
The image of a crowned St. Catherine is the same image depicted in a well-known painting by Jan Matejko titled “The Battle of Grunwald.” That painting features Polish and Lithuanian soldiers fighting side-by-side against a Middle Eastern religious order known as the Knights of the Teutonic Order, in what has been described by historians as a decisive battle in the order’s expansion.
Historians believe that the image of St. Catherine found on the seal would also have been used by fighters from the Braniewo region on banners during that battle.
“Imagine life in the Middle Ages, in the 14th century Braniewo, the capital of Warmia at that time,” Adrian Klos, co-founder of Pogotowie Archeologiczne (the firm that recovered the seal), said in a statement. “The mentioned seal was used by the Bishopric of Braniewo, which in 1410 exhibited its own cavalry at the battle of Grunwald, which is immortalized on the famous painting by Matejka.”
How a brass seal from a 14th-century parish ended up in a random field is a complete mystery, however. “We know that the seal was found in a plough in Iózefów near Braniewo,” archaeologist Robert Wyrostkiewicz said in a statement. “The seal could have been abandoned, hidden, or lost. Without the archaeological context it is impossible to determine.”
The Braniewo Land Museum is already displaying the artifact in its main hall, and is now “one of the most important artifacts in our museum.”
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