MEDIEVAL PILGRIM BADGE

1400

A fragment of a medieval cast lead alloy pilgrim badge of St Barbara, dating AD1400-1500. . The fragment contains the saint's head, chest, long twisting hair and arms. She is wearing a beaded headband and high collared clothing. She is standing beside the tower in which she was imprisoned and holding in her right hand a palm branch symbolising her martyrdom. Only the upper section of the tower and the lower section of the palm branch survives. The badge is broken at her waist and the rest is missing. On the reverse is a vertical casting seam and the stump of the pin.Similar examples are recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme e.g. SWYOR-E10FB3 and IOW-2A0A40,The fragment measures 19.3mm (length) x 15.5mm (width) x 3.8mm (thickness) and weighs 1.15g.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).