Pilgrim Badges and Devotional Tokens

An important collection of medieval pilgrim badges and devotional tokens is kept in the collections of the Grosvenor Museum in Chester. These objects were collected from different religious sites around the world ranging from Canterbury to Rome. They have all been found in and around Chester, but none of them were made in the city. You can see that all of these tokens are small, designed to be worn as a badge or somewhere on the body as a reminder of the journey taken. All the objects are made out of metal, some out of cheap metals such as pewter others made out of much more expensive silver. Made from moulds, these are all mass produced artefacts. One interesting object in the collection is a silver spoon handle from Rome which shows the face of St Peter with a cockerel on his head because Peter denied Christ three times. These objects demonstrate the mobility of medieval people, their travels to other places over long distances and the objects they brought back as reminders of those places and experiences.