COIN MISCELLANY
Hundreds of years ago, religious pilgrimages saw thousands of believers travel miles to visit a shrine. Today, the coins and keepsakes they used are highly collectable
We take a look at pilgrimage coins
For more than 400 years brave souls from every corner of Britain regularly set forth on journeys that might have taken them hundreds of miles from their homes in an age when travel beyond one’s own parish boundary seemed remarkable. Destinations included Canterbury, St Andrews, Holywell, Glastonbury, Walsingham, or for those with deeper purses and braver hearts, a perilous Channel crossing and a year-long trek to Santiago, or Rome, or even to Jerusalem, regarded in those days as the very centre of the known world.
These men and women called themselves pilgrims. Their common objective was to reach one of the numerous shrines where the remains and possessions of a saint or martyr lay exposed to public view. Setting eyes on those relics, perhaps even allowed to touch them, all but guaranteed that a pilgrim’s prayers for a miracle cure, or an absolution of sins, or a place in heaven, would be answered.
In England, pilgrimages on a grand scale began a few days after Henry II’s knights butchered archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. His monks had wiped up the blood with strips of cloth and given the rags to members of the congregation who came that day to mourn Becket’s death. Word soon spread that these rags cured blindness, epilepsy and leprosy. To meet demand from the crowds who flocked to the cathedral in response, the monks switched to mixing and handing out Canterbury water - local spring water tinged with a tiny drop of Becket’s blood. They distributed the draughts in small glass bottles until an enterprising monk hit on the idea of making chalk moulds in which the monks cast large numbers of small vessels - ampullae was the Latin term - made from an alloy of lead and tin. The moulds were decorated with scalloped edges, and some were inscribed with phrases such as optimus egrorum medicus fit Thomas bonorum (Thomas has become the best doctor of the worthy sick). To pay for the ampullae, and for the upkeep of the shrine, the monks turned to selling these souvenirs. The pilgrimage industry had begun.
Rich source of collectables
Within a few years shrines had sprung up across the land. The items put on view drew pilgrims from far and wide, each eager to see or touch the relics and to buy an appropriate memento of their visit. By around 1300 leaden ampullae had evolved to leaden badges with pins to fix them onto hats and coats. Many of these leaden artefacts were mislaid on homeward journeys. Together with contemporary coins and other lost possessions from those centuries they provide a rich source of collectable coins and antiquities for today’s collectors.
A passage in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales recounts an earlier story, The Tale Of Beryn, which tells of two characters attempting medieval shoplifting as they try to steal an armload of pilgrims’ badges from a market stall. The description hints, not only at the huge numbers of souvenirs on offer, but also at their sale beyond the immediate vicinities of shrines. Concentrations of losses at ferry sites, at bridges, at major medieval road junctions and around hostels and hospitals renowned as resting places along pilgrims’ routes, confirm this evidence.
Throughout the pilgrimage centuries, hammered silver pennies of all the Plantagenet, Lancastrian and Yorkist monarchs were the common coins of the realm. Only well-to-do pilgrims would have carried gold coins, but groats (fourpenny pieces) and testoons (shillings) came into wide circulation later in the period; they occasionally turn up as finds. Similarly, the shillings and sixpences of Mary Tudor, a Roman Catholic who briefly reintroduced pilgrimages during her reign, were also lost by travellers. And throughout the entire period pewter and lead tokens were widely used and misplaced. Those depicting a hatted pilgrim may have been used as substitutes for small change wherever pilgrims spent the night. Alternatively they may have paid fees to cross bridges or ride ferries.
Many early pewter ampullae have come to light. They range in size from thimble height to over four inches tall, and in styles from plain to highly ornate examples depicting the saint, his reliquary and often a Latin inscription. Damage on some examples seems to have resulted from too frequent opening of the flask, perhaps to moisten a cloth which was then rubbed on aching muscles or sores.
We know from contemporary illustrations that music, particularly sounds from whistles, played a part in the journeys of pilgrims, especially when passing in large groups through towns where they may have been cheered on by citizens who paused to watch them go by. Some pilgrim groups also carried crucifixes and other symbols from their own local churches, hoping to display them at the saint’s shrine, perhaps to touch them against a sacred bone in hope that a little of the saint’s healing powers would rub off.