Pilgrims' Badges
of
High Quality :
A Few Thoughts
about
A Few Exceptions

  While almost all of the badges which have survived in the London and Cluny Museum collections, so meticulously catalogued by, respectively, Brian Spencer and Denis Bruna, display a relatively crude ("Folk Art") aesthetic sensability, in both their conception and execution, there are several (among the hundreds in those two collections alone) which seem to exhibit a quality of design and production (realisation) which can only be said to be very close to "First Rate."
   At the very least, this would seem to suggest a double tier of souvenir production (?) : though all of these surviving examples are, apparently, executed in rather "base" materials (e.g., pewter), they may be reflections of many exemplars in more precious materials which have, because of their intrensic value, been lost (?).
   Here below I have collected a few exemplars of this class of objects, based entirely upon my own kinky aesthetic judgement.


(Click on the thumbnails to get a larger image.)


Spencer 84, 82: Two fragmentary "Head Reliquary" badges from Canterbury, displaying extraordinarily sensitive modeling and detail. The head, in particular, is quite exquisitely rendered, perfectly reflecting perhaps a late 13th or 14th century style, "the frown and drooping moustache [giving] St. Thomas a melancholy and somewhat reproachful expression..."
[Spencer, p. 105]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Spencer 85a (from the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, 130x68mm) : Another of the "Head Reliquary" Canterbury badges, perhaps not quite as fine stylistically as the previous one (with the exaggerated postures of the censing angels and the overy-sweet expression on the face of the Saint), but making up for that deficiency by the wonderful intricacy of its elaborate and delicately rendered tracery frame ("a fragile and laboriously created border of pierced quatrefoils...no later than the middle of the 14th century" [Spencer, p.107]), perhaps reflecting a very specialized workshop.

Spencer 134, 134a, 134b (p.128) : Three "Solid circular palques (32-34mm in diameter)... Invoking St. Thomas" [of Cantorbury], perhaps most notable for their astonishingly numismatic form, the clarity and beauty of their epigraphy ["SANCTE THOMA ORA PRO ME" --"the invocation begins to look like a magical formula..." ] and the delicacy of their design and execution. Perhaps from the third quater of the 14th century.

 

 

 

 

 


Spencer 151f
(p. 145) : Another genre of non-figurative badge, from Walsingham priory, remarkable for the very high quality of its design and workmanship, according to Spencer "...an early 16th century badge with the words of the Salutation stamped [sic?] on a coiling cartouche....perhaps more amulet than pilgrim sign, for in popular culture the words of the Annunciation had come to be regarded by the 14th century as one of the stock apotropaic phrases and were frequently applied to costume accessories for their magical effect."

A Place of Exceptions :
Rocamadour

   Badges from Rocamadour (as a genre, documentable from at least 1161) are quite remarkable for their numbers, their very consistant form, and their consistently (and extraordinarily) high quality. The latter two attributes might be attributable to a peculiar feature of their manufacture.
   Brian Spencer [p.234-4] offers this description of the badge: "Plaque in the form of a pointed oval seal on which is depicted a figure of the Virgin enthroned. She is nimbed and wears a plain, low crown. Her feet rest on a pedestal. In her right hand she holds a sceptre topped by a fleur-de-lys. On her left knee sits the Holy Child, his right hand raised in the act of blessing, his left holding a roll of scriptures [or a book or an orb]. Around the edge between two pearled lines runs the following inscription in mixed Lombardic and roman capitals: + SIGILLVM BEATE MARIE DE ROCAMADOR ('Seal of the Blessed Mary of Rocamadour')."
   This description fits all five Rocamadour exemplars in his catalogue and He goes on to note that "the organisers of the pilgrimage at Rocamadour appear to have encouraged a consciously archaistic approach to the design of its badge moulds." While I would question this "archaising" aspect, the surviving badges which he publishes certainly show a remarkable consistancy of form/iconography :

Spencer 245c : Of a type perhaps produced in the second half of the 12th century and "gone out of use by the end of the 13th;" the London exemplar being found in an archaeological context which "also yielded a remarkably large number of late 12th-century Canterbury ampullae..." (p. 237).


Spencer
245
(H 46mm.) : A similar example of this badge type has been found in an archaeological context datable to 1200-1225.
Spencer 245a: "...similar to 245 but...the handiwork of more accomplished mould cutters."

Spencer
245d :
"...closely corresponds to a 13th-century badge found at Dortrecht in 1980..."

   In view of these exemplars from Rocamadour, I believe that we should entertain the possibility that the curious and somewhat unusual seal-like basic form of these exemplars might be a clue to explaining their exceptionally high quality: namely that they could have been produced by a class of very specialized craftsmen (perhaps sucessive generations of just a single family of professional cutters of seal matrices) who executed the molds for these souvenirs, rather than the more typical (presumably) purely commercial artisans responsible for the vast majority of other badge types from the earlier periods so far discovered and catalogued by Spencer, Bruna and others.
   It may be noteworthy, on the one hand, that the general use of seals was becoming much more common (in both ecclesiastical and secular contexts, it must be remembered) at just this period (later 12th to early 13th centuries), and, on the other, that surviving seal exemplars demonstrate that executing ("cutting") a seal matrix required considerably more skill and training than cutting molds in stone, and was one whose technical secrets (and the much more specialized tools required to do the job) could have been passed down from father to son, in part explaining the remarkable stylistic and qualitative consistancy to be seen in these exemplars over a period of more than a century, as well.
   The superior technical challenge of executing a sucessful seal matrix (which seems, curiously, to have resulted in an extraordinarily high percentage of images of very high quality), implies also a more "professional" and formal education on the part of the artisan, which may also explain the superior stylistic quality of both the overwhelming majority of surviving seals and of these pilgrim souvenirs from Rocamadour.

Some References :

Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges: Medieval Finds from Excavations in London. London: Stationery Office, 1998.
Denis Bruna Enseignes de pelerinage et Enseignes Profanes. Paris: Musee de Cluny, 1996.
Kurt Koster Pilgerzeichen und Pilgermuscheln von mittelalter Santiago-Strassen: Saint Leonard -- Rocamadour -- Saint-Gilles -- Santiago de Compostela. Scleswiger Funde unde Gesamtuberlieferung. Neumunster, Germany, 1983.