OMG pilgrimage badges, is that ever neat. I still have a few books I want to do inter-library loans for of memoirs of walking the Camino. That is a dream of mine; if I could get my knees healed up and my feet and my legs. . .
I bought and read a book on pilgrimages a few years ago. It's a light read but I enjoyed it:
Pilgrimages : The Great Adventure of the Middle Ages by John Ure. I also got the modern English edition of
The Canterbury Tales with woodcuts by Rockwell Kent (to die for.) Yeah, I copped out and got the easy edition. Haha. The art is fantastic, and I see a pilgrimage badge for Canterbury on the page you cited. I'd like to go there and Mont St. Michel as well. What I need is a wealthy patron to treat me to a world tour of pilgrimage sites.
I was just reading a book on Canadian history and we have our Saint in St. Jean de Brebeuf. I'd forgotten the horrendous torture he went through at the hands of the Huron. The church officials apparently split his skull in two after his death and rebuilt the missing sides with wax and had the two halves in different reliquaries, but in the late 1990s one half of his skull was taken back to the Martyrs Shrine at St. Marie Among the Hurons near Midland, in Ontario, where this is now a reliquary. I never knew that. This chap has a picture of it:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NR6lxJkhnY4/S ... ne+013.JPG
I've been there twice, but not for years, and not after they built this reliquary. I find reliquaries somewhat creepy but it's part of the Saints and history and the way people exhibit faith I suppose.
I have the King of Coins card with St. Jude staring at me from my desk here. He's my last court card in the
Tarot of the Saints. I'm eking it out, only six Majors to go after Jude and I'm done the entire deck.
I love Nigel Jackson's work, so I can't discourage you from buying his deck. Oh, it's a book and then Adam McLean has done up the deck for sale. Would you buy both? The book looks like it has a lot of information in it. It's too bad you couldn't buy both decks, I really think the Dame has something to offer.
Another ramble through today's interesting facts.