MEDIEVAL PILGRIM BADGE

1400

An incomplete copper-alloy pilgrim badge of Saint Barbara of Medieval date. It is missing the terminal of the spike due to old breaks, now worn.It is D-shaped in section. The front face has moulded decoration depicting a nimbed and draped Saint Barbara standing beside the tower in which she was imprisoned and holding in her right hand a palm branch symbolising her martyrdom. She holds a sacramental wafer in her left hand. The back face is flat and undecorated. In the centre is the remains of an integrally cast spike. This is rectangular and oval in section before terminating in old breaks.This pilgrim badge measures 26.10mm in length, 14.28mm in width, 2.42mm in thickness, 2.56g in weight.There are similar examples recorded on the PAS database (SWYOR-A8D690), (IOW-B00471), (SWYOR-E10FB3), (IOW-2A0A40),(LANCUM-E85957), (LON-51F502).The Oxford Dictionary of Saints has the following description. '[St Barbara] was shut up in a tower by her father Dioscorus, so that no man should see her. None the less princes sought her hand in marriage. She became a Christian while her father was away and decided to live as a hermit in a bath-house he had built. Here she made the workman add a third window in honour of the Holy Trinity. In his fury at her becoming a Christian, he nearly killed her, but she was handed over to a judge who condemned her to death. Her father was struck by lightning and died. This was the basis of her patronage of those in danger of sudden death, first by lightning, and then by subsiding mines or cannon-balls. Hence, her patronage of miners and gunners. The first known representation of her is an 8th-century fresco at S. Maria Antiqua, Rome; she is found, often with the equally mythical Margaret of Antioch, on late medieval English screens and stained glass. Her usual emblem is a tower. The painting of her by Jan van Eyck in the museum at Antwerp is probably the most famous representation' (Farmer, D. H. 1978, 28 'The Oxford Dictionary of Saints'. Oxford: Clarendon Press).