Annunciation badge from Walsingham

Pilgrim badge, probably from the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham at Walsingham Priory. This thin 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 on the left-hand side of the scene with a book open 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 right-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. Also in the centre is a scroll bearing the letters ‘AVE MARIA GR’, part of the greeting that Gabriel spoke to Mary (‘Ave Maria gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta’, meaning ‘Hail, 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.