Rood of Grace

Part of a pilgrim badge, probably of the Rood of Grace, Boxley Abbey. This fragment depicts the terminal of one of the limbs of a crucifix. The terminal is decorated with a barbed quatrefoil, with a trefoil crocket at each barb. In the centre of the quatrefoil is a faint star or sunburst motif. A rood is a large crucifix usually displayed in a church. Boxley Abbey in Kent was a popular stopping-off point for pilgrims on their way to St Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury. The rood at Boxley Abbey had a life-sized figure of Christ, which was famous for shedding tears. Sometimes the face would also move. The complete pilgrim badges show the rood with the figure of Christ, an altar at the base with various offerings on it (such as candlesticks, money and goblets) and sometimes a man, the keeper of the rood, standing to the side of the altar. In 1538, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the rood was taken down and a mechanical device was found inside the head, revealing that the miraculous moving face was in fact complex trickery.