The ’Coffee and Conversation’ topic earlier this month – ‘A photo adventure with Peter Read’ unearthed something of great interest to me, namely a collection of Medieval Pilgrim’s Badges found in Salisbury’ (Fig 1.)
Fig 1. Medieval pilgrims’ badges found in Salisbury
Among these was one described as ‘Monkey Physician standing on a Fish with Pestle and Mortar adding his own urine. A satire on medical practice’ (Fig 2).
This was of interest to me as the pestle and mortar is one of the tools in trade of the alchemist and early chemists, and used as well as by pharmacists to crush various ingredients.
For some time now I have been researching the alchemist who was said to have inhabited a room above the north porch of St Thomas Church and a plaque near the North Door, recently removed (2019/2020), describes him dashing ‘to escape the noxious fumes of his experiments’. (Fig 3.)
I have been curious to discover who this alchemist was and when (s)he lived. As I have been unable to find any source for this description, I have subsequently become curious as to who composed it, and from where they obtained their information.
One possible inspiration for this information was a snippet in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 18 January 1868 (Fig 4.) which describes a discovery made by the antiquarian, Rev. Edward Duke and written up in his Prolusiones Historicae.This describes five small crucibles which were found plastered over in a niche by the fireplace. Duke speculated that these crucibles were the utensils of an alchemist.
Since then, I have been engaged on a hunt for these crucibles, so far fruitless. I have also hoped that, if this alchemist actually existed, some further artefacts of his trade might perhaps be found. Indeed, I am disappointed that no such artefacts appear to be in the Drainage Collection. Hence my interest in the ‘monkey physician’ badge.
Our colleague, Alan Clarke, kindly unearthed the Museum Record for the ‘monkey physician’ badge which is described as a livery badge made of metal/lead, being the head and torso of a monkey physician, made 1400-1429, and found in the River Avon in Salisbury at SU143302. It has the Museum Number SBYWM:1987.200.12.
The Grid Reference of this find places it at the River Avon opposite the Central Health Clinic (just north of Avon Approach).
Alan Clarke kindly directed me to the website of the Henfield Museum where there is an article entitled ‘The Mudlark Treasures of Graham duHeaume’. In this article, the author, Jason Sandy, describes DuHeaume’s extraordinary collection of fluvial treasures from both the River Thames in London and the River Avon in Salisbury and description of ’satirical badges’.
Satirical badges were produced in the Middle Ages, and the article quotes Brian Spencer from his book, ‘Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges’, Boydell Press (2010), in saying that they were produced to show “disapproval of the established order by parodying reality and by poking fun at hypocrisy and human behaviour generally, especially in the upper strata of society”. The medical profession was one of the most common targets of medieval satire and complaint. In the church of St Mary, Bury St Edmunds, a late 15th century roof-boss takes the form of an ape with a urinal, the universal emblem of the medieval physician.
Sandy’s blog goes on to say that, during the 1980s, Graham duHeaume found (in Salisbury) a wonderfully comical 15th century pewter badge depicting an ape standing on a fish and urinating into a mortar that rests on the fish’s head
The ape holds a long-handled pestle which he uses to stir or pound the contents within the mortar. It clearly illustrates what people thought about doctors and their wild concoctions in the 15th century!
The following is verbatim from Sandy’s blog:
“Monkeys were often seen as imitators of man. The famous bishop St Isidore of Seville (c.560–636), sometimes called the ‘last Father of the Latin Church’, claimed that the word simius derived from similitudo, because monkeys mimic what they see. Medieval bestiaries continued the same etymological tradition, suggesting that apes were so called because they ape the behaviour of human beings (1).
Monkey physicians combine satire with a serious moral in the same vein. At one level, they echo the widespread suspicion of ‘Doctours of Physik’, whom poets like Chaucer portrayed as those who ‘loved gold in special’. But this scene is more than satirical. As St Peter told the Jewish priest, only one physician could cure men – Christ. While monkeys might ape physicians who purport to look after physical health, only priests were the true ‘doctors of souls’. Christ alone can cure men of their sins, their spiritual ailments.”
In their book, ‘Men and Apes’ (1966) Desmond and Ramona Morris write:
“The ape’s capacity for imitation gave rise to the odd notion that he deliberately copied human actions in order to convince people that he was really one of them. As a result of this, he became the prototype of the imposter, the fraud, the hypocrite and the flatterer. In particular, he came to represent persons of little worth, or base origin, who pretend to high position’. Further on the Morris’s comment that, ‘ Monkeys burlesquing human actions became very popular in humorous art. Clergy, scholars, doctors and aristocrats were portrayed as apes; so also were peasants, but much less frequently.”
The local Blue Badge Guide David Richards has written to me, saying:
“Salisbury Museum’s three (slightly different) grotesque ape physician badges are very striking. I believe the best interpretive source is Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum’s ‘Medieval Catalogue Part 2: Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges Brian Spencer (1990) Another informative source is the illustrator of the badges, Nicholas Griffiths FSA,“
This alerted me to consult the Medieval Catalogue from which I discovered that the Museum does indeed possess two such badges plus a fragment (head and torso) of a third. (Fig 5.)
Fig 5. Ape physician badges in Salisbury Museum
The first of these is described as ‘An ape, wearing a hood and standing on a fish, pounds the contents of a mortar with an immensely-long pestle, and adds a stream of urine to the concoction from his own over-large penis. Early 15th Century’.
The second, the one we have been considering thus far, is described as, ‘The mortar has handles and the fish a more predatory look. Early 15th Century’. Spencer doesn’t comment on the ‘strap’ that apparently supports the penis against the pestle.
The description of the third, a fragment, says that the face is more ape-like.
Spencer goes on to say that fragments of three other versions have been found at Salisbury (Private Collection) and many more have turned up at London (e.g. London Museum 1940, pl lxxiv, 60; pllxxii, 49, where the creature is wrongly described as a woodwose (2).
Spencer goes on to say that:
“The various components of this grotesque scene, the mortar and pestle, the hood and the fish, are all well-known medieval sexual symbols…. .The constant association of urine with the diagnostic technique of medieval doctors and of the mortar and pestle with the apothecary make it more likely, however, that the ape has taken on the role of a doctor. If his hood can be interpreted as a cowl, then he is very probably burlesquing a monk physician. In that case the back of the slippery fish on which the physician in standing many underline the insecure basis of his remedies.”
- This is also on the Blog of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.
- A woodwose is the wild man or wild man of the woods; a mythical figure that appears in the artwork and literature of medieval Europe, comparable to the satyr or faun type in classical mythology and to Silvanus, the Roman god of the woodlands.
Many thanks to Alan Clarke, David Richards and Stephen Dunn for helpful comments made in the preparation of this article.
And thank you Alan for a fascinating piece on some of our objects!
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