Pendants

pendant with queen margaret

1174–77; Gold

The pictorial engravings in gold likely depict Bishop Reginald, given the mitre and crozier (hat and staff), along with Queen Margaret. She holds her hands out in a receptive gesture, as if the pendant is about to be dropped into her hands. Her downward gaze may indicate piety more than reflection, respect for the bishop and the reliquary she is to obtain. As a pendant, of course, this item may well have been intended for personal use and wear rather than display. It thus serves not only as a depiction of a woman on a reliquary, but also as an indicator of how a woman might interact with religious objects, even if her high social status allowed her custom reliquary items.

An inscription on the back, where the figures are, identifies them as Bishop Reginald of Bath and Queen Margaret of Sicily¹. Inscriptions along the front identify this as a relic of Saint Thomas, though the relics once held within are now gone. Interestingly, this reliquary would have been relatively contemporaneous with the saint himself; saints are only canonized after death, but Thomas Becket died in 1170, and this pendant was made anywhere from four to seven years later.

Pendants make up a smaller subset of reliquary, but they can inform us of certain trends in personal devotion. By necessity, their relics need to be rather small, so larger bones were not held within them. This does not necessarily exempt any of the relics from violence; the thorn held in the relic (right) is a prime example. Supposedly, this relic comes from the crown of thorns placed on Christ’s head to enhance his humiliation and suffering during death. The pendant itself depicts the crucifixion. The pendant belonging to Queen Margaret held bloody pieces of Thomas Becket’s clothing. Thus the association of male figures with violence continued even in small, personal items.

Personal items can, however, show a distinction between the idealized gender roles and the actual practices of men and women. Margaret would have worn Becket’s bloodstained clothing every time she donned that pendant, keeping the violence of his recent martyrdom close to her heart. Physical pain may have maintained an iconographic distance from women, but in reality, women not only engaged with the iconography of the opposite gender, but they commonly underwent pain in a time where things like childbirth were expected. The archetype of the bloodless woman stands in stark contrast to the real women, for whom menstruation is intrinsic. Margaret’s depiction on the reliquary, the standard female depiction, stands in tension with the bloody clothing held just beneath her figure carved in gold, a subtle contradiction. The romanticized version covering remnants of violence that sit against her actual self.

findings:

Reliquary Pendant for the Holy Thorn:

1340; Gold, enamel (basse-taille), amethyst, rock crystal, vellum, thorn²

Next: Skulls

References:

“Reliquary Pendant with Queen Margaret of Sicily Blessed by Bishop Reginald of Bath,” The MET Museum, accessed May 10, 2026, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/468600.
“Reliquary Pendant for the Holy Thorn,” Treasures of Heaven, accessed May 10, 2026, https://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/treasuresofheaven/relics/Reliquary-Pendant-for-the-Holy-Thorn.