Melanie Olmsted | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Melanie Olmsted
Title: Saints, Shrines, and Souvenirs: The Effects of the English Reformation on Pilgrim Badge Use
Majors: History; Religious Studies
Minor: Museum Studies
Advisors: Sarah Mirza; Ibra Sene

Pilgrim badges are small metal objects that were worn on the hats or cloaks of pilgrims beginning in the twelfth century. Badges were bought at pilgrimage shrines across Europe and played many roles in medieval society including as touch relics, communication devices, and protective devices. More than 20,000 pilgrim badges survive to this day, indicating their popularity and ubiquity. Around the beginning of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, pilgrim badges disappear from the archeological record. Why? What about pilgrim badges made them incompatible with post-Reformation religion and practices? Further, what can be learned about the Reformation by looking at pilgrim badges? What can be learned about pilgrim badges by looking at the Reformation? Inspired by a pilgrim badge from the College of Wooster Art Museum’s collection, this essay uses quantitative analysis of pilgrim badges from Saint Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury to reach two conclusions. First, pilgrim badge functions rely on two institutions and beliefs: the cult of saints (the veneration of very special people) and the locality of the divine (the embeddedness of the holy in the landscape via shrines). Second, the Reformation had a profound impact on what ordinary people wore, what they kept in their houses, and how they communicated their identities.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.