The Medieval Histories website has had two recent articles about the archaeological investigation and conservation of the tomb of the Emperor Otto I - the Great - in Magdeburg Cathedral.
The seal of the Emperor Otto I
Image: Wikipedia
The work has meant that the bones of the Emperor, who died in 973, could be studied and preserved for the future and his tomb chest, which is apparently from the time immediately after his death, has been stabilised and rebuilt.
The Emperor, whose first wife was a member of the House of Wessex as the daughter of King Edward the Elder, revived in 962 the dormant position of Holy Roman Emperor after its time of abeyance under the later Carolingians. Not only did he link the Imperial title to the kingship of Germany, which survived until 1806, but he is in many ways the creator of the medieval Empire, based on the precedent of Charlemagne. His descendants, referred to as the Ottonians, held the Imperial title until 1024.
Wikipedia has a biography of him at Otto the Great
The articles about the tomb and the skeleton can be seen at The Restoration of the Tomb and Reburial of Otto the Great and at Did Otto the Great Die from a Stroke?
The present thirteenth to early sixteenth century cathedral is described in considerable detail by Wikipedia at Magdeburg Cathedral
There is more about the history and building of the cathedral, and also information about the examination in recent years of the bones of Otto’s beloved first Queen, Eadgyth of England, which are also buried in the cathedral, at Magdeburg Cathedral
The Emperor’s death at Whitsuntide coincided, quite coincidentally, with the coronation that same Whit Sunday at Bath of King Edgar, who was Eadgyth’s nephew, and was followed fourteen years later by the elevation of the Capetians to the French throne - momentous years in the development of medieval national monarchies.
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