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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1501: Saints, Pilgrims, Badges, and Souvenirs Crossing Borders

Thursday 9 July 2020, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden
Organiser:Annemarieke Willemsen, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden
Moderator/Chair:Ann Marie Rasmussen, Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies, University of Waterloo, Ontario
Paper 1501-aPilgrimage, Gender, and Materiality: The Virgin Mary as a Souvenir Hunter
(Language: English)
Emily Price, Department of History, University of Michigan
Index terms: Archaeology - Artefacts, Gender Studies, Hagiography, Religious Life
Paper 1501-bPinning Down St George: Characterising the Nature of (So-Called) 'Pilgrim Badges' of St George Recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme
(Language: English)
Michael John Lewis, Portable Antiquities Scheme, British Museum, London
Index terms: Archaeology - Artefacts, Art History - Decorative Arts, Daily Life, Religious Life
Paper 1501-cPilgrims, Badges, and Miracles of St Kunera at Rhenen, The Netherlands
(Language: English)
Annemarieke Willemsen, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden
Index terms: Archaeology - Artefacts, Art History - Decorative Arts, Daily Life, Religious Life
Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in individual aspects of medieval pilgrimage: in itineraries and lodgings, in female pilgrims, and especially in tertiary relics, pilgrim badges and other souvenirs that were collected at shrines and taken home. These powerful, protective objects often had a significant afterlife, worn as identity markers, placed in books, tombs, and buildings, and sometimes even performing miracles themselves. Databases of pilgrim badges show how they spread all over the world, ending up far from their shrines of origin, and at the same time were subject to very local, temporal and personal patronage, taste and fashion.