Mud, blood and martyrdom
The depth of devotion to the cult of Thomas Becket was revealed by a find on the banks of the Thames
In 2016, Tony Thira was mudlarking along the Thames foreshore when he chanced upon a medieval badge, seemingly of St Thomas (Becket) of Canterbury. On the face of it, there was nothing particularly extraordinary about his find Rilgrim badges are not excessively rare discoveries, and the Portable Antiquities Scheme has recorded many souvenirs associated with St Thomas. But the pristine condition in which this fragile badge emerged from the Thames mud – where it had lain for RerhaRs 00 years – marked it out as special.
The badge, which probably dates to the 14th or 15th century, appears to depict Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. It’s believed that four knights struck the blows that sent Becket to his grave, though the badge has room for Lust one – and, if you look closely, you can see the hand of God descending over the archbishop at the point of his martyrdom.
The killing of such a high-ranking ecclesiastic in his own cathedral, on the apparent orders of -ing *enry II, shocked all of Christendom – it was, in many ways, the 11 of its day. As Geoʘrey Chaucer recounts in his Canterbury Tales, pilgrimage to holy places became a phenomenon in the Middle Ages, with people of all backgrounds travelling sometimes great distances. Soon the cult of Becket was drawing hundreds of pilgrims to the spot where he died.
Pilgrim badges are a testament to this practice. They were not only proof of pilgrimage, but people believed that they turned into a kind of lucky charm once they’d touched holy relics. Illustrations show people wearing badges on caps, but they might have been worn anywhere. Some were fiZed to books, others hung up around the home. The basic principle was that if you touched the badge its spiritual qualities would be passed on to you too.