Artifacts on Display at the Speyer Cathedral

There is only so much I could do here in Speyer Cathedral. I think it was only so large that it took me some time to go around it. Additionally, it was cold outside, so I wasn’t exactly in a rush to get back out. I discovered that the cathedral has a few chapels here which might we worth a look. Ultimately, I ended up in another chapel in the cathedral, this one almost directly across the earlier one I visited. It turns out that this chapel is rather different. This is a double chapel, one on top of the other. The one above is the Chapel of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, while the one below is the Chapel of Saint Emmeram.

While the Chapel of Saint Catherine of Alexandria is nothing special as far as design goes, it is what is inside which stands out. It is actually a small museum of sorts which exhibit some artifacts related to the church. Honestly, it was hard to know exactly what I was seeing since most of the signs were all in German. I understand that there is a relic related to Saint Edith Stein who was a nun here in the city of Speyer. There is also a rather bizarre head of Pope Saint Stephen I. Recall that there cathedral is actually dedicated to Saint Stephen, it shows in the official name of the cathedral – Imperial Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption and St Stephen. I don’t know which Saint Stephen this would be since the original Saint Stephen would have lived two hundred years before Pope Saint Stephen I. I would imagine that Saint Stephen lived almost a thousand years before the construction of the church so I am not sure how they would have got an idea of how his head was like. Still, it was a rather bizarre thing to see in cathedral.

[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/SpeyerCathedral.kmz} zoom=19]