Our Lady of Walsingham

Pilgrim badge from the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham at Walsingham Priory. This thin, copper alloy badge is stamped with a scene depicting the Annunciation (the moment when the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to give birth to Christ). Mary sits at a table on the right-hand side of the scene with an open book in front of her. This is a reference to the belief that Gabriel’s arrival interrupted Mary reading Isaiah 7:14, a verse in the Hebrew Bible, which was thought to foretell her virgin conception. The Angel Gabriel descends from Heaven on the left-hand side. In between the figures is a lily growing out of a pot, which symbolises Mary’s purity, innocence and the immaculate conception of Christ. Above the lily is a scroll which bears the letters ‘GRA’, which is part of the greeting Gabriel said to Mary during the Annunciation (‘Ave Maria gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta’, meaning ‘Hail Mary, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women’). This flat badge would have been sown onto a pilgrim’s clothes or hat, or stitched onto the pages of a prayer book.

The shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk was a popular pilgrimage destination in the medieval period, especially after Henry III made a series of pilgrimages there in the 13th century.