Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third EditionCutts, Edward Lewes
History
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third Edition
Cutts, Edward Lewes
Civilization, Medieval; Middle Ages -- Social life and customs
pastoral staff; perhaps it represents the shrine with its attendants. From
the style of art, this design may be of the early part of the thirteenth
century. But though this ampul is clearly designated by the monkish
writers, whom we have quoted, as the special sign of the Canterbury
pilgrimage, there was another sign which seems to have been peculiar to
it, and that is a bell. Whether these bells were hand-bells, which the
pilgrims carried in their hands, and rang from time to time, or whether
they were little bells, like hawks' bells, fastened to their dress--as
such bells sometimes were to a canon's cope--does not certainly appear. W.
Thorpe, in the passage hereafter quoted at length from Fox, speaks of "the
noise of their singing and the sound of their piping, and the jangling of
their Canterbury bells," as a body of pilgrims passed through a town. One
of the prettiest of our wild-flowers, the _Campanula rotundifolia_, which
has clusters of blue, bell-like flowers, has obtained the common name of
Canterbury Bells.[197] There were other religious trinkets also sold and
used by pilgrims as mementoes of their visit to the famous shrine. The
most common of them seems to have been the head of St. Thomas,[198] cast
in various ornamental devices, in silver or pewter; sometimes it was
adapted to hang to a rosary,[199] more usually, in the examples which
remain to us, it was made into a brooch to be fastened upon the cap or
hood, or dress. In Mr. C. R. Smith's "Collectanea Antiqua," vol. i. pl.
31, 32, 33, and vol. ii. pl. 16, 17, 18, there are representations of no
less than fifty-one English and foreign pilgrims' signs, of which a
considerable proportion are heads of St. Thomas. The whole collection is
very curious and interesting.[200]
[Illustration: _The Canterbury Ampulla._]
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