What is an Arm Reliquary?
This medieval Arm Reliquary is part of the Guelph Treasure, formerly housed in the Cathedral of St. Blaise in Brunswick, Germany. During the Middle Ages, religious relics (bones or other items) associated with saints were collected and placed in precious boxes or containers. This Arm Reliquary is from the Romanesque period (11th and 12th centuries) when it was common to place a large, precious relic in a container shaped like a part of the body or object the relic derived from. In this particular instance the reliquary is shaped like an arm. Conservators used x-radiography to look inside the reliquary. Before taking the x-radiograph conservators felt that the silver exterior of the reliquary would be so dense that bone, a less dense material, might not be resolved in the image. To their surprise a large bone was clearly resolved in the x-radiograph and was confirmed to be an arm bone.
