MEDIEVAL AMPULLA

1350

An incomplete cast lead Medieval pilgrim ampulla (c. 1350-c. 1500). The ampulla has a circular body and a neck that flares outwards and upwards. However, the neck is damaged and incomplete. It is unclear whether the neck has been deliberately damaged or whether there has been an attempt to abstract the formerly sealed holy water. The side lugs are intact. There is a tiny hole in one of the lugs and the other is without a hole. Consequently, the object was probably not suspended by a wearer. Decoration on both faces is raised. The obverse of the body, the more convex face, has a motif of four leaves or petals with cross hatching in the outer field. The reverse of the body has a flat topped shield containing a cross. Each angle of the cross is decorated, although, due to corrosion or wear, this is indeterminate. Around the peripheral edge of the body there is a faint casting seam. This ampulla is in poor condition and has traces of a matt buff patina. Some of this patina may have flaked off recently. 44.8 x 27.9 x 9.0mm. Weight: 34.69. An ampulla from Salisbury, with similar decoration, has been published (Spencer 1990: 90, ref: 185). 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. 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).