Medieval Badges: Their Wearers and Their Worlds Contributor(s): Rasmussen, Ann Marie (Author) |
|
ISBN: 0812253205 ISBN-13: 9780812253207 Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press OUR PRICE: $61.75 Product Type: Hardcover Published: September 2021 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | Europe - Medieval - Religion | History - History | Military - General |
Dewey: 355.134 |
LCCN: 2021008772 |
Physical Information: 0.94" H x 7.25" W x 10.25" (1.84 lbs) 312 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Mass-produced of tin-lead alloys and cheap to make and purchase, medieval badges were brooch-like objects displaying familiar images. Circulating widely throughout Europe in the High and late Middle Ages, badges were usually small, around four-by-four centimeters, though examples as tiny as two centimeters and a few as large as ten centimeters have been found. About 75 percent of surviving badges are closely associated with specific charismatic or holy sites, and when sewn or pinned onto clothing or a hat, they would have marked their wearers as having successfully completed a pilgrimage. Many others, however, were artifacts of secular life; some were political devices--a swan, a stag, a rose--that would have denoted membership in a civic organization or an elite family, and others--a garland, a pair of clasped hands, a crowned heart--that would have been tokens of love or friendship. A good number are enigmatic and even obscene. The popularity of badges seems to have grown steadily from the last decades of the twelfth century before waning at the very end of the fifteenth century. Some 20,000 badges survive today, though historians estimate that as many as two million were produced in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries alone. Archaeologists and hobbyists alike continue to make new finds, often along muddy riverbanks in northern Europe. |