MEDIEVAL AMPULLA

175

An incomplete cast lead pilgrim ampulla of Medieval date (c. AD 1175 – c. AD 1400). Length: 38.8mm; width: 28.0mm and 12.3mm thick. Weight: 28.07g.The mouth and the neck and one of the suspension loops are missing due to old ragged breaks. The obverse has moulded decoration in the form of a characteristic escallop shell and the reverse has a moulded crowned letter ‘W’. The crown is barely visible due to wear and corrosion. The surviving suspension loop is squashed and flattened against the body.In places there is a buff patina on both faces. The above weight may include some soil within the body.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).