MEDIEVAL AMPULLA

1100

Cast lead ampulla dating to the Medieval period, (1100-1500). The bowl is round and the neck is wide and long, flaring slightly towards the mouth. The handles which would have connected the neck of the object to the body have broken away resulting in small projections at the sides. One surface of the ampulla is decorated with a scallop shell design, type I. The opposite side is decorated with a letter W below a crown on a shield within three concentric circles.A similar example is fig. 174, p87, Spencer, (1990). Ampulla bearing a crowned W have been tentatively associated with the cult of Our Lady of Walsingham. The crown is accepted as the emblem of the Virgin as Queen while the W stands for Walsingham, (Spencer, 1990, p60-61).Brian Spencer, formerly Senior Keeper at the Museum of London, who made a life-time study of ampullae, has written: 'Ampullae or miniature phials were an important kind of souvenir. Generally flask-shaped, but with a narrow, flattish section, they were designed to contain a dose of the thaumaturgic water that was dispensed to pilgrims at many shrines and holy wells. Ampullae were made of tin or lead or tin-lead alloy and were provided with a pair of handles or loops so that they could be suspended from a cord or chain around the wearer's neck. Coming into use in the last quarter of the twelfth century, they were, in England, almost the only kind of pilgrim souvenir to be had during the thirteenth century. They were nevertheless available at a number of shrines, and thanks to returning pilgrims or to local entrepreneurs, probably featured as secondary relics in virtually every thirteenth-century English parish church.