The pilgrim's badge: Water, air, and the flow of sacred matter

Ar t i c l e

The pilgrims badge: Water, air,

and the flow of sacred matter

Chloe M. Pel l e t i e r

Department of Art History, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Abstract In the 1970s, thousands of medieval pilgrims badges were dredged from

Londons River Thames. Further excavations in France and Germany revealed this was

not an isolated case. Though no contemporary accounts directly attest the phenomenon,

scholars have suggested that pilgrims tossed their badges into the river after

pilgrimage as propitiatory or votive offerings. This essay expands on those theories by

adopting a comparative approach focused on notions of flow and sacred materiality. It

connects the practice of tossing badges into rivers with a similar post-pilgrimage tradition:

the casting of badges onto church bells. Reading these badge practices into one

another elicits richer understandings of both and helps to contextualize the river

badges within broader discourses of purification ritual and fluid mechanics. Ultimately,

this essay speculates that, for the medieval person, river badges comprised a

communal deposit of sacred matter perceived to enact a flow of purifying blessings

throughout the environment.

postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2017). 8, 240253.

doi:10.1057/s41280-017-0053-3

In 1978, British archaeologists dredged up a small pewter badge from the River

Thames (Figure 1). A single metallic granule in a horde, this unassuming badge

is broken in places, with lines lumpy and unrefined. Modeled in uniform rivulets

of metallic relief, the badge depicts John Schorn, an unofficial saint and famous

exorcist whose Buckinghamshire shrine received throngs of pilgrims throughout

the late medieval period (Spencer, 1998, 192195). Schorn was revered for

reviving a holy well during a period of drought and, more memorably, for

2017 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2040-5960 postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies Vol. 8, 2, 240253

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Figure 1: Pilgrim badge from the shrine of John Schorn (figures within a stylized architectonic setting),

late fifteenth century, lead alloy. Museum of London.

capturing the devil in a knee-high boot. Deviating from the standard iconography

in which Schorn clasps the devilled boot in his right hand (Figure 2), this

particular badge describes the demonic exorcism in a series of faint rays

emanating from Schorns left hand towards the empty boot. Here, the saintly

rector...