A spotlight on pilgrim souvenirs today. Much like today, the
medieval pilgrim picked up items to remind them of a journey undertaken. This
tradition is most famously seen through the scallop shells worn by pilgrims who
had visited the shrine of St James at Compostela and the shell later became a
general emblem of pilgrims.
Beyond shells, small images depicting the saint may be cast (usually
in cheap lead) and then worn with a pin or fastened onto clothing. In addition
to pins, shrines also branched out into ampullae which were essentially small
metal flasks which may be filled with oil or water.
Pilgrim “souvenirs” first appeared after the death of Thomas
Becket in 1170. Miracles involving his blood soon followed and the cult of
miracles around his body began.
Thomas’s relics ended up across Europe in reliquaries but
the less wealthy also wanted them so the Canterbury metalworkers responded by
moulding portable containers decorated with images and inscriptions.
Ampullae were produced at Canterbury during the 12th-13th
c. and were adopted elsewhere. They proved particularly popular with sites linked
with water such as the Benedictine Abbey at Vendôme with its “Holy tear of Christ” and the sanctuary at
Boulogne-sur-mer which had a statue of the Virgin Mary which appeared from the
sea in an unmanned boat.
The primary difference between these two forms of souvenir
is that badges are items that have come into contact with the holy place of
pilgrimage, while ampullae contained physical material from the place and
therefore a fraction of its (for want of a better word) “power”.
A little bit of show and tell now, here is a pilgrim badge I
happened to get my paws on. This is a 14th century medieval pilgrim badge, decorated
with the head of John the Baptist within a raised border of relief rings and
dots. Fastenings for pin fixing on reverse. Found near Grantham in
Lincolnshire.
Similar examples can be found near Kings Lynn (top, 14th century,
P.A.S.: NMS-E40D22), Bury St Edmunds (middle left, 14th century, Kunera: 15299), London (middle right, 14th Century, Kunera: 10001), near
Middelburg (bottom left, 15th century, Kunera: 16458) and Thérouanne (bottom right, 16th century, Kunera: 10821).
The cult of St John the Baptist began in the 13th century
when Walon de Sarton whilst on crusade claimed a portion of John’s skull during
the sack of Constantinople in 1204. The relic was gifted to the bishop of
Amiens in 1206 and placed in the cathedral where it was exhibited on a silver
dish, later embellished with gems and replaced by a gold dish.
The iconography of these items allows us to not only determine
where an item is likely to have originated (Amiens), but also the destinations
of pilgrims after they left the shrine; revealing pan-European routes of
communication. With this item for example, its stylistically similar
counterparts show that pilgrims from Amiens were travelling/returning to the
Netherlands and Eastern England.
A small piece of information, but one that feeds into a
bigger picture of how the medieval world was communicating.
I wonder what our discarded and lost items would say about
us today?
Notes
Thanks are
due to Lloyd de Beer, a colleague from the BAA who helped me in identifying the
badge in the first place.
Image: A dog dressed as a pilgrim, BL Royal 10 E IV,
f. 57v
Anderson, W.” Blessing the fields? A study of late-medieval
ampullae from England and Wales”, Medieval
Archaeology (2010), vol. 54, pp.
1-14
Garcia, M. “Medieval Medicine, Magic, and Water: The dilemma
of deliberate deposition of pilgrim signs”, Peregrinations
(2005), vol. 1, issue 3
Kunera database:
PAS (Portable Antiquities Scheme):
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