Medieval Badges

Medieval badges are small, brooch-like objects featuring an image or symbol that was widely familiar in the High and late Middle Ages (ca. 1150-1500 C.E.). Largely mass-produced from tin-lead alloys, over 20,000 medieval badges have survived into our times.

Medieval people wore specific badges to create and claim social, political, and religious relationships. Whether religious or profane, self-chosen or compelled, medieval badges were understood to signal community belonging. Studying medieval badges provides rich and nuanced historical depth to contemporary debates around affiliative visual signs and symbols (head scarfs, crosses, beards), supporting reflection on the historical use of visual markers of identity to unite, divide, and define communities.

SSHRC Insight Grant and Website

From 2017 to 2023, I received a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant for a project titled “Visual Communication and Community Formation in the Middle Ages: Medieval Badges.” Through historical study, this project shed light on how badges were mass-produced, transported and distributed throughout medieval Europe, reminding us that trans-regional movements of people, things, and ideas have long been a defining feature of European life. The project examined how medieval badges functioned in everyday life, where they were worn, who wore which ones, how they were understood, and what they might have meant.

This grant supported a variety of scholarly activities, including maintaining a scholarly website designed to share knowledge about medieval badges and the tools scholars use for studying them. We have preserved an archive of the posts we shared, including medieval badge research, interviews with scholars, and work done by artists.

Banner image badge photographs are courtesy of the Family Van Beuningen Collection. Script courtesy of the Universitätbibliothek Heidelberg.