MEDIEVAL AMPULLA

1350

An incomplete medieval lead pilgrims ampulla. Only the rounded base of the flask remains. On one face there is a downward-pointing arrow (shaped rather like an anchor with a cross bar two thirds of the way up). On the other side there is a round-based narrow-necked pot or phial sat within a cross-hatched crescent.The arrow is an enigmatic symbol of Our Lady of Walsingham (a popular shrine in Norfolk), and the pot represents the phial of Holy Milk, which stood on the high altar of the priory church.Brian Spencer, former Senior Keeper at the Museum of London, made a life-time study of ampullae and 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. Until the early fourteenth century, ampullae took various forms, were frequently inscribed and usually bore representations of the cult-figure or relic that they were intended to commemorate......Ampullae could be comfortably kept on the person or easily hung up in the home, or suspended , for the benefit of livestock, in the stable or cow shed or on the beehive. Ampullae were often donated to the neighbourhood, to be hung in the parish church. Almost as a matter of course, churches throughout thirteenth-century England secured possession of Canterbury ampullae containing what was perhaps the most famous of all elixirs, the water of St Thomas, tinged with the martyr's miracle-working blood' (Spencer, B. 1990, 57-58).The shape and design of this ampulla indicates that it is not an early example and suggests a date of c.1350 AD - 1530 AD.