A devotional medal is a medal issued for religious devotion.
History
In the early church
The use of amulets and talismans in pagan antiquity was widespread. The word amuletum itself occurs in Pliny, and many monuments show how objects of this kind were worn around the neck by all classes. Gregory the Great sent to Queen Theodelinda of the Lombards two phylacteria containing a relic of the True Cross and a sentence from the Gospels, which her son Adulovald was to wear around his neck. However, the practice of wearing encolpia (small pectoral crosses) lent itself to abuses when magical formulas began to be joined to Christian symbols, as was regularly the practice of the Gnostics. Some fathers of the fourth and later centuries protested against Gnostic phylacteries worn by Christians. A coin-like object found in catacombs bears on one side a depiction of the martyrdom of a saint, presumably St. Lawrence, who is being roasted upon a gridiron in the presence of the Roman magistrate. The Christian character of the scene is shown by the chi-rho chrisma, the alpha and omega, and the martyr's crown. On the reverse is depicted the tomb of St. Lawrence, while a figure stands in a reverent attitude before it holding aloft a candle.
A second medal, which bears the name of Gaudentianus on the obverse and Urbicus on the reverse, depicts seemingly on one face the sacrifice of Abraham; on the other apparently a shrine or altar, above which three candles are burning, towards which a tall figure carrying a chalice in one hand is conducting a little child. The scene appears to represent the consecration to God of the child as an oblate by his father before the shrine of some martyr, a custom for which there is a good deal of early evidence. Other medals are much more simple, bearing only the Chi Rho with a name or perhaps a cross. Others impressed with more complicated devices can only be dated with difficulty or, as in the case particularly of some representations of the adoration of the Magi which seem to show strong traces of Byzantine influence, belong to a much later period.
Some of the medals or medallions reputedly Christian are stamped upon one side only, and of this class is a bronze medallion of very artistic execution discovered in the cemetery of Domitilla and now preserved in the Vatican Library. It bears two portrait types of the heads of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, and is assigned by Giovanni Battista de Rossi to the second century. Other medallions with the (confronted) heads of the two apostles are also known. How far the use of such medals of devotion extended in the early Church is not clear.
Medieval Medals
Although it is probable that the traditions formed around these objects, which were equally familiar at Rome and at Constantinople, never entirely died out, still little evidence exists of the use of medals in the Middle Ages. No traces of such objects that survive are remarkable either for artistic skill or for the value of the metal. In the life of St. Genevieve, it is recounted that St. Germanus of Auxerre, having stopped at Nanterre while on his way to Britain, hung around her neck a perforated bronze coin marked with the sign of the cross, to remind her of having consecrated her virginity to God. The language seems to suggest that an ordinary coin was bored for the purpose. Many of the coins of the late empire were stamped with the chrisma or with the figure of the Saviour, and the ordinary currency may often have been used for similar pious purposes.
In the course of the twelfth century, if not earlier, a very general practice grew up at well-known places of pilgrimage, of casting tokens in lead, and sometimes probably in other metals, which served the pilgrim as a souvenir and stimulus to devotion and at the same time attested the fact that he had duly reached his destination. These signacula (enseignes) known in English as "pilgrims' signs" often took a metallic form and were carried in a conspicuous way upon the hat or breast. Giraldus Cambrensis referring to a journey he made to Canterbury about the year 1180, ten years after the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, describes himself and his companions returning to London with the tokens of St. Thomas hanging round their necks. They are also mentioned in the allegorical poem Piers the Plowman. The privilege of casting and selling these pilgrim's signs was a very valuable one and became a regular source of income at most places of religious resort.