Love is in the Air

With Valentine’s Day just ahead of us, lovebirds are nestling. Red roses are being prepared. Cards decorated with hearts and scribbled love notes will be exchanged between lovers and friends. Whether you love or loathe this February celebration, one thing is clear: drawing on several centuries of cultural imagery, Valentine’s Day symbols are strong and here to stay.

BIRDS

The romantic association between birds and lovers is a longstanding one, particularly around the day of Saint Valentine. Literary historian Henry A. Kelly suggests that the great medieval English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, originated what we think of today as Valentine’s Day in his poem, Parliament of Fowls. The poem associated birds choosing their mates to the then already established day of Saint Valentine:

For this was on Seynt Valentynes Day,
Whan every foul [fowl] cometh there to chese [choose] his make [mate],
If every kynde that men thynke may. (309-311)

            It happened on Saint Valentine’s Day
Which is when every bird arrives [at the Parliament] to choose its [his?] mate,
Every kind of bird that mankind can imagine.

Kelly writes that the reality of birds choosing their mates in February was grounded in the social imagination at the time, and in observations of the natural world of northern Europe, especially the lengthening of days and birds flying in the air above, choosing a mate. According to Kelly, Chaucer connected these observations to a specific saint’s day, that of Saint Valentine, and then, a tradition was born.

Pewter badge, crossed hands emerging with fleur-de-lis crown, heart pierced by arrow, pin, origin unknown, 1325-1375, found in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, 27 x 22 mm. Family Van Beuningen Collection, inv. 3887 (Kunera 17280). Photograph and permission from Family Van Beuningen Collection.

HEARTS

Birds are not the only image from the medieval period to permeate Valentine’s Day today. Central to contemporary Valentine’s Day symbolism – and to our concept of love – is the heart. There is a longstanding relationship between the heart and love, which we see before the Middles Ages in the Classical tradition, but that we can thank the medievals for proliferating. Ann Marie Rasmussen writes that a love poem from a collection of Latin letters known as the Tegernseer Briefsammlung, written in German around the year 1180, records a very early instance of linking the heart with the notion of romantic love:

Dû bist mîn, ich bin dîn
des solt dû gewis sîn
dû bist beslozzen
in mînem herzen
verlorn ist daz slüzzelîn
dû muost ouch immêr darinne sîn

You are mine, I am yours.
Of this you can be sure.
You are locked
in my heart
the key is lost,
and so you must stay there forever.

The beloved is held within the heart of the lover, dramatized in the poem first through the heart alone and further through the heart’s bygone key. By the early decades of the thirteenth century in Europe, images of giving, receiving, exchanging or even locking up hearts had become a near universal symbol of love. Sharing hearts between a man and a woman emphasized constancy, fidelity and companionship, including, of course, erotic love.

Unlike our modern concentrating of romantic gestures onto Valentine’s Day, medieval heart badges were exchanged as tokens of affection between lovers throughout the year. But if you’re still looking for a creative gift for a special someone tomorrow, consider looking in European river systems for lost or strayed medieval heart badges; on short notice, of course, a love poem will always do. 

Written by Hannah Gardiner. Translations by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on February 23rd, 2021.

Works Cited

Kelly, Henry, A. Chaucer and the cult of Saint Valentine. Leiden: Brill, 1986.

Rasmussen, Ann Marie. Medieval Badges: Their Wearers and Their World. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.

Tegernseer Briefsammlung, between 1178-1184. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 19411, f. 114v.

The Golden Scabs of Saint Job — Part three

PART THREE — SAINT JOB, DISEASE IN THE MIDDLE AGES, AND ‘SCAB’ BADGES 

Latten-copper badge, Job on a dunghill with musicians around him, on round badge with inscription S. IOP ORDE, attachment not present, Antwerp, Belgium, 1475-1524, found in Nieuwlande, the Netherlands, 33 x 33 cm. The Van Beuningen Family Collection, inv. 1381 (Kunera 00242). Photograph courtesy of The Van Beuningen Family Collection.

Latten-copper badge, Job sitting nude on a dunghill, offering musicians a coin, in round frame on diamond shaped badge, attachment not present, Wezemaal, Belgium, 1475-1524, found in Arnemuiden, Belgium, 27 x 32 cm. The Van Beuningen Family Collection, inv. 4484 (Kunera 16451). Photograph courtesy of The Van Beuningen Family Collection.

The round latten-copper badges above depict a scene from an extra-biblical story about Saint Job, as explored in The Golden Scabs of Saint Job — Part One. This scene, which was frequently featured on Wezemaal badges, illustrates the moment where Job, having nothing else to offer, reaches out to give the musicians a scab from his body, which miraculously turns to gold. This moment is the turning point in Job’s story: a visible miracle and a sign of hope that fulfills Job’s earlier proclamation in the story when he defends his innocence, saying: “But [the LORD] knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold” (Job 23.10). 

What immediately stands out about these two badges is their golden colour. Made of latten-copper, which turns gold after being fired, the material of the badges dually speaks of its own transformation and Job’s. While these two particular badges were both originally round in diamond frames (now broken off), other surviving golden badges are exclusively round. The form of these circular, golden badges recalls the golden scab Job would have offered from his body; in semiotic terms, they are iconic signs, bearing a strong resemblance to the object they represent. These badges invite a closer look at the way the story came to life on the pilgrims’ bodies.  

Bartholomaeus Steber, woodcut, a woman in bed and a man sitting on a stool are covered with lesions with physicians attending to them. Vienna: Johann Winterberg, 1497-1498. Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

Before looking at the pilgrims’ bodies, let’s consider the historical context of the syphilis epidemic occurring in Western Europe (c. 1495) and its relation to Saint Job. We know that the pilgrimages to the site of Saint Job in Wezemaal overlapped with this epidemic. While scholars disagree about whether there was an increase in pilgrimages to Wezemaal during these years, there is no question about the associations between syphilis and Saint Job, exemplified, for instance, by a French name for syphilis, le Mal Monseigneur Saint Job, and hospitals opening up at that time bearing Job’s name, as Old Testament scholar Samuel Balentine points out. 

The skin infections that would have afflicted those suffering from syphilis likewise linked the disease to the afflicted Saint Job. Being a venereal disease, people likewise witnessed that syphilis afflicted only specific individuals and not the entire population as other diseases had, forging the connection to the plague that afflicted Job as opposed to other Old Testament plagues that swept across Israel and its enemies, (Arrizabalaga et al., 52). While other pilgrim badges from Wezemaal depict the story of Saint Job, the golden scab badges specifically point to the greater social context of physical affliction. 

Like other pilgrim badges, these badges were made to be worn and seen. But what would it have meant to a pilgrim to wear this badge — a badge that was not only a token of having been on pilgrimage to the site of a Saint, but one that symbolized the diseased and redeemed body part of that Saint, which they then embodied on their own body? 

Since syphilis was an unknown and new disease, perceptions of it were informed by social perceptions of other skin-related illnesses such as leprosy. French medieval historian Francois-Olivier Touati illustrates that over the course of the twelfth century, leprosy came to be seen not as a divine punishment, but as an invitation by God to convert to a religious life and attain salvation. Following from Touati, medieval historian Elma Brenner argues that lepers were seen, in the centuries preceding the syphilis epidemic, as a religious group “chosen by God to suffer in this life in order to be redeemed in the next” (241). Sickness marked God’s intervention, not his absence. The sick, suffering body was therefore not seen by all as a punishment by God, but was viewed as an invitation into God’s grace, and a time of waiting for when all would be made new. 

A theology of the sick body anticipating newness is reminiscent of the Jobian narrative. The pilgrims who, in good or poor health, attached these badges to their bodies aligned their bodies into a participatory relationship to the innocent suffering and triumph of Saint Job in an embodied way. The presence of the story’s golden scabs on their own bodies can be seen as form of role-play, wherein the pilgrim body joins the body of another: first Job’s, and by typological association, to that of Christ’s. Bearing these golden scabs on their bodies would have transformed the body of its wearer into a sign of redemption. The pilgrim, like Saint Job and Christ, was close to God and may have been suffering from an affliction by no fault of their own, all the while persevering with a confidence that their suffering had already been redeemed and come out as gold. 

Whether such badges were later offered as tokens to others, as they had been offered to the musicians in the story, is unknown, but provocative to imagine. One has to wonder what feelings the pilgrims affixing these badges to their cloaks may have had as they wandered around the village church in Wezemaal and back home, disrupting linear time through their faith and bringing the story to life. 

Written by Hannah Gardiner. Edited by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on January 29, 2022.

Works Cited

Arrozabalaga, Jon, John Henderson and Roger Kenneth French. The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 

Balentine, Samuel E. Have You Considered My Servant Job?: Understanding the Biblical Archetype of Patience. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015.

Brenner, Elma. “The Leprous Body in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Rouen: Perceptions and Responses.” In The Ends of the Body: Identity and Community in Medieval Culture, edited by Jill Ross, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, pp. 239-59. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

Campbell, Gordon. “Syphilis.” Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 

Minnen, Bart. “‘Den heyligen Sant al in Brabant.’ The Church of St Martin in Wezemaal and the devotion to St Job 1000-2000 – Retrospective. The fluctuations of a devotion” [English summary of: Den Heyligen Sant Al in Brabant: De Sint-Martinuskerk van Wezemaal en de cultus van Sint Job 1000-2000 (Averbode, 2011).]

Suykerbuyk, Ruben. The Matter of Piety : Zoutleeuw’s Church of Saint Leonard and Religious Material Culture in the Low Countries (c. 1450-1620), vol. 16. Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2020.

The Golden Scabs of Saint Job — Part two

PART TWO — THE VILLAGE CHURCH AS PILGRIMAGE SITE

The Norbertine Abbey of Averbode, Belgium acquired Sint-Martinuskerk (Church of Saint Martin) in 1232. Unbeknownst to all at the time, this church would transform Saint Job and Saint Job would transform this church. Sint-Martinuskerk was the first church in the Low Countries to create a devotion to Saint Job. Bart Minnen credits Saint Job for making Sint-Martinuskerk one of the richest rural churches in Brabrant. But how did this happen? 

“België - Wezemaal - Sint-Martinuskerk - 01” by Em Dee, WikiCommons. Photograph courtesy of photographer under CC BY-SA 4.0.

A church or cathedral was not enough to attract the hordes of pilgrims Saint Job of Wezemaal did. Unlike religious sites across Europe that became sites of pilgrimage because they housed a special relic, (e.g., bones, fabrics, etc.), Sint-Martinuskerk belonged to a category of pilgrimage sites where the religious object sought after was a miraculous wooden statue. And miraculous it was: Saint Job of Wezemaal was said to have performed various miracles, inspiring a petition to the Pope in 1501 “for the approval of a college of priests, the institution of 10 May as feast day, and the granting of an indulgence” (Suykerbuyk 102). These miraculous aspects associated with Saint Job of Wezemaal were essential to Job’s pilgrim sainthood. 

The wooden statue below was commissioned from an anonymous artist at the end of the fourteenth century, pre-existing the pilgrimage to Wezemaal. The wooden figure of Job sits in golden, priestly robes and holds in his right hand, the priestly blessing hand, a placard with words from the Book of Job: Godt Gaf Godt Namp [God Gave God Took]. In his left hand, Job holds a flame. 

Saint Job statue at Wezemaal. Anonymous, c. 1400–1430, wood. Wezemaal, Sint-Martinuskerk, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels, inv. 4411. Photographer: Jean-Luc Elias. Photograph courtesy of KIK-IRPA, Brussels.

The connection between Job and the priesthood has long been depicted in Jobian iconography. Traditionally, priests have been seen as those closest to God and those who mediate the relationship between mankind and God. Old Testament scholar Samuel E. Balentine has called Job the priest of the priests, urging Job’s witness as being crucial to understanding the priesthood of Aaron, or even that of the High Priest in Christianity, Christ. The Book of Job portrays a priestly Job: a pious man offering prayers of intercession for his friends and burnt offerings on behalf of his family as the head of household. Balentine has likewise speculated on the relationship between priest and those affected by skin disease, like Job was, which was likewise a reality during pilgrimages to Wezemaal through the syphilis epidemic that began in 1495. Balentine argues that the rituals to heal someone suffering from a skin disease (see Leviticus 8) were similar to ordination rituals, inviting a parallel between the priest and the “leper.” 

Biblical studies scholar Barry Huff suggests that the flame in Job’s left hand originated out of references to burnt offerings in the Books of Job and Leviticus, and thus can be seen as illustrating Job’s piety. Huff points out that the theme of burnt offerings also occurs in the Testament of Job (which the previous post identified as the source for the musicians who figure so prominently in the medieval Job iconography) and is expanded in Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job. Huff writes: “Through the lens of Gregory the Great's interpretation, this [flame] motif speaks with new relevance to the lives of all believers, beckoning them, like Job, to persevere through the fire of suffering that burns away the dross of impurity so that the gold of virtue can radiate” (337). 

While the theology behind the iconography of the wooden statue would likely have been unfamiliar to many of the pilgrims seeking Saint Job’s blessing, the transformative power of Job was nonetheless understood. Despite or perhaps in light of this, the church saw a new stone statue of Job introduced between 1491 and 1610. This one depicts a seated, suffering Job.

Saint Job statue at Wezemaal. Anonymous, c. 1491–1610, stone, 177 x 87 x 43 cm. Wezemaal, Sint-Martinuskerk, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels, inv. 4415. Photograph courtesy of KIK-IRPA, Brussels.

Unlike the confident Job who has passed through the fire and been transformed into gold as shown by the priestly robes, the second statue of a suffering Job only alludes to, but does not depict, his transformation. The statues would have offered to pilgrims two very different moments in the story of Job for reflection, mediation, and perhaps even identification: aligning oneself with the suffering man in hope of healing or with the saved man who is an exemplar of the rewards of faith.

Bart Minnen explains that the earliest medieval badges from the site of Wezemaal also depict Job the priest, but like the statues their iconography transitions to the suffering Job sitting on a dunghill, offering musicians a coin. This scene remains consistent despite changing compositions of the bodies, differing badge shapes and frames surrounding the scene, and additional elements such as inscriptions and the presence of political family crests. These badges, most of which are dated to the second half of the fifteenth century, depict Job at the miraculous point that bridges his suffering and triumph: when his scabs turn to gold. I will elaborate in the next post on the relevance of this hope in suffering throughout the syphilis epidemic that began in 1495 and continued during the same time as pilgrimages to Wezemaal.

Written by Hannah Gardiner. Edited by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on August 17, 2021.

Works Cited

Balentine, Samuel E. “Job as Priest to the Priests,” in ‘Look At Me and Be Appalled’: Essays on Job, Theology, and Ethics, Biblical Interpretation Series, vol. 190 (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 107-132.

Huff, Barry. “Job the Priest: From Scripture to Sculpture,” in Seeking Wisdom’s Depths and Torah’s Heights: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Balentine, eds. Barry Huff and Patricia Vesely (Macon, GE: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2020), pp. 327-53.

Minnen, Bart. “‘Den heyligen Sant al in Brabant.’ The Church of St Martin in Wezemaal and the devotion to St Job 1000-2000 – Retrospective. The fluctuations of a devotion” [English summary of: Den Heyligen Sant Al in Brabant: De Sint-Martinuskerk van Wezemaal en de cultus van Sint Job 1000-2000 (Averbode, 2011).]

Suykerbuyk, Ruben. The Matter of Piety : Zoutleeuw’s Church of Saint Leonard and Religious Material Culture in the Low Countries (c. 1450-1620), vol. 16 (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2020).

The Golden Scabs of Saint Job

THE GOLDEN SCABS OF SAINT JOB – EXPLORING THE SAINT JOB MEDIEVAL BADGES FROM WEZEMAAL (BE)

This series of three blog posts explores the pilgrim badges of Saint Job from Wezemaal, Belgium. This series considers these badges as a form of adaptation, informed by biblical, legendary, and literary accounts of Job that were popular in the medieval imagination. The question inspiring these blog posts is: Why was Job the only Old Testament figure to be venerated by pilgrims as a saint? 

PART ONE – THE MEDIEVAL FIGURE OF JOB

The Book of Job is part of Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Old Testament. It is an example of wisdom literature, which explores questions of suffering, justice, and the relationship between God and humankind. 

In scripture, Job is a righteous, godly man who lives a materially and socially affluent life until God permits the Satan (meaning, ‘the adversary’) to take everything away from him. Job’s children, servants, and livestock die, and he is afflicted with a skin disease: “[Satan] struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes” (Job 2.7-8).

In his suffering, Job is subjected to the questioning of friends seeking to discover what offense Job has committed to deserve this punishment from God. Job defends his innocence and remains faithful to God, though he regrets his own life. After much affliction, Job asks God to explain his suffering to him, and God replies by questioning Job over the course of four chapters, beginning with the lines: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38.4).  At the end of the story, God restores Job’s life and fortunes two-fold.  

Our investigation of Saint Job begins at Sint-Martinuskerk (Church of Saint Martin) in the village of Wezemaal, which is located in the northern half of Belgium. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims flocked to its miracle-working wooden statue of Saint Job that bears the Flemish inscription Godt gaf Godt namp [God giveth, God taketh away]. Several Saint Job pilgrim badges from this site also survive and along with them an interesting question: what sets Job apart such that he became the only Old Testament figure to be venerated by pilgrims as a saint with a large trace in medieval badge history?

Historian Bart Minnen has shown that the earliest known badges from Wezemaal depict the wonder-working statue of Job in the Church of Saint Martin. Most surviving Saint Job pilgrim badges, however, feature a different image. Most show Job sitting on a dunghill surrounded by a musician or musicians. 

Pewter badge, Job covered in boils and sitting on the dunghill offering musicians around him a coin with inscription S. JOB TOT WE[SEMALE] GOD GAF GOD NAM, eyes, Wezemaal, Belgium, 1450-1499, found in Nieuwlande, the Netherlands, 72 x 43 mm. The Van Beuningen Family Collection, inv. 0951 (Kunera 00235). Photograph courtesy of The Van Beuningen Family Collection.

Modern viewers curious about this scene will find no references to musicians in the Old Testament Book of Job. (The apocryphal text, the Testament of Job, an elaboration on the Book of Job, is likely the original source for the idea of musicians. In it, Job’s daughters were the musicians who at the end of his life understand the heavenly music of the angels descending for Job’s soul.) However, Job and musicians were a familiar scene in the late Middle Ages in a wide variety of contexts, from medieval paintings and Books of Hours to plays.  The late fifteenth-century altarpiece shown below serves as an example. Three musicians playing wind instruments appear twice: in the lower right-hand corner they serenade the naked saint; centred in the middle background, they appear with a woman clothed in blue. In the lower-right hand corner, Job can be seen using his left hand to touch his skin, while his right hand offers something to the musician. 

The Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine, Triptych of the Life of Job, around 1485/1490. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Germany, inv. WRM 0412. Photograph by Wolfgang F. Meier. Photograph courtesy of Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne, d029744, permalink.

Literature of the Middles Ages also included musicians in its adaptations of Job’s the story. The late-fifteenth century English poem, “The Life of Holy Job,” weaves together biblical and literary accounts:

This sore syk man syttng on this foule Dongehill
There came mynstrelles before him, playing meryly
Money had he non to reward aftyr his will
But gave them the brode [spread out] Scabbes of his sore body 
Whiche turned vunto pure golde, as sayth the story. 

This passage clarifies what is happening is the painting: Job has only one gift to offer the musicians in return for their serenade: the scabs from the sores on his body. These, however, miraculously turn to gold. In the middle of the altarpiece, the musicians hold out their hands to Job’s wife, the woman in blue, to show what they’ve been given. The background illustrates the restoration of Job’s life: the livestock flocking back into the gates and the chest of gold seated in the middle of the room full of people. No longer is Job afflicted by the grotesque demons that tortured him as he remained pious, as seen in the front left-hand corner of the altarpiece.

This altarpiece, while extraordinary, is certainly not the only one in the Middle Ages illustrating this scene from the well-known medieval legend of Job. Most of the Job badges from Wezemaal also picture this scene; some badges even resemble the golden scabs of Job’s body. What clues might this scene offer into understanding Job’s sainthood? We will continue answering this question in the coming blog posts with knowledge of the medieval literary imagination of the figure of Job in mind.

Written by Hannah Gardiner. Edited by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on June 21, 2021.

Works Cited

Balentine, Samuel E. Have You Considered My Servant Job?: Understanding the Biblical Archetype of Patience (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015).

Harkins, Franklin and Aaron Canty. “Introduction,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, eds. Franklin Harkins and Aaron Canty (Brill Academic Publishers, 2016), pp. 1–10. 

Hendrikse, Henk. “Een pelgrimsinsigne van Sint-Job uit Scherpenisse,” n.d., https://www.zeeuwseankers.nl/verhaal/een-pelgrimsinsigne-van-sint-job-uit-scherpenisse

Meyer, Kathi. “St. Job as Patron Saint of Music,” The Art Bulletin, no. 36:1 (1954): pp. 21–31. 

Minnen, Bart. “‘Den heyligen Sant al in Brabant.’ The Church of St Martin in Wezemaal and the devotion to St Job 1000-2000 – Retrospective. The fluctuations of a devotion” [English summary of: Den Heyligen Sant Al in Brabant: De Sint-Martinuskerk van Wezemaal en de cultus van Sint Job 1000-2000 (Averbode, 2011).]

Interview with Guillaume Herrou

Interview with Guillaume Herrou

The topic of medieval badges in Rouen was offered as a subject at the École du Louvre for several years before Guillaume Herrou chose to undertake it during his Master’s of Museology and Art History. Guillaume’s thesis comments on the formation and composition of the collection at the Musée des Antiquités, the history and reception of badges in museums, and offers a comparative museology of the display of badges to inform how the collection in Rouen can be displayed. Sparked by and thanks to Guillaume’s research, Guillaume and Nicolas Hatot, the curator of the Musée des Antiquités de Rouen, began looking for private collections of badges in Rouen and surrounding regions and discovered the collection of Guy Dubois. This small collection of badges, which is cited in Guillaume’s thesis, was gathered in Rouen during the mid-twentieth century during the reconstruction of the city after the Second World War. 

Guillaume agreed to conduct a short interview earlier this year to share about his experience encountering and studying medieval badges.

Medieval Badges: What drew you to medieval badges (known in French as enseignes du plomb)? 

Guillaume Herrou: In my degree, I specialized in late antiquity and Byzantine Christian art. Because there was no seminar offered about that in my master’s, I decided to study the Middle Ages. One of the subjects proposed at that time was about badges and I wanted to study a corpus of objects. Badges seemed to be fun, so I thought, let’s go!  

MB: Have you ever had a strange encounter when trying to tell someone what you research?

GH: Even students who study art history don't know what badges are, so it's a bit difficult. Also in French, enseignes has two meanings. The principal meaning is the ‘sign’ at commercial shops. People think I study shops and signs at shops. So they don't understand what this has to do with the Middle Ages? So I have to explain it from the beginning: what a badge is, why they’re made in lead, and what they’re used for. 

MB: How would you summarize medieval badges to a non-specialist audience?

GH: I would begin with a presentation of badges and explain that big collections of badges are conserved in Paris, in the Musée de Cluny, and in the British Museum. I'd explain there are two kinds of badges, the older badges, which are religious badges, and later badges which could also be profane badges. I'd also explain that I think more important is that badges testify to medieval culture, and in particular, popular culture, as we can see with sexual badges. It’s a bit strange for us to understand this kind of object, but badges can show the diversity of the Middle Ages and this culture, which we don't know very well.

MB: What did you think when you first heard about medieval badges?

GH: I felt like an archaeologist who discovers a new treasure. I had to understand what badges are and what they’re used for, and why also why they’re conserved in museums. And why we don't see this kind of objects more often in museums.

MB: Your master’s research looked specifically at medieval badges housed at the Musée des Antiquités of Rouen, in the Normandy region of France. What is unique about the collection of badges housed in Rouen?

GH: First, I’m not sure I’d say it’s unique because there are many similarities with the Parisian collection. The badges in Rouen were found during the dredging of the Seine during the same period, the Second Empire, and were found by collectors — not specialists, nor archaeologists. But yes, we can say it was unique because this collection was found in Rouen and so, it reflects the history of the city because of the pilgrimages that were done in the Middle Ages by the inhabitants of the city. It also reflects more local pilgrimages like Mont-Saint-Michel or the Saint Catherine pilgrimage in Rouen. For profane badges, I think it can also reflect the history with the invasion of England during the Hundred Years War. 

MB: Would you say there's anything particular about the French tradition of scholarship on badges? 

GH: First, I wouldn't say that there is a tradition of scholarship in France because it was a subject for collectors at the end of the nineteenth century. A few people were interested in the 1960s, and today I think it's not really a ‘subject’ from my point of view. The exception to this would be the work of Denis Bruna who defended his PhD thesis on medieval badges in the 1990s and made the catalogue of badges at the Musée de Cluny. New research is being done, but it's niche. In France, I think, because many conserved badges are made out of lead, it's not an honoured object that we put in the exhibitions first. Plus, you’d have to know there are badges to be able to find [them] in the museum. Maybe it's because there are lots of other objects [in France] and so badges are less interesting, or because the iconography is more complicated for the public to understand. But today, I think museums are trying to exhibit these objects and show their interest to the public, as you can see in my thesis. Many museums are rebuilding their museography and they try to include these kinds of objects inside, like in the Musée de Cluny, like in the Musée de Rouen, even if in the British Museum, which has a few pieces from Rouen. 

Guillaume Herrou received his Bachelor of Archeology and Art History with a specialization in Paleochristian, Coptic and Byzantine Art and Archeology from École du Louvre (Paris) in 2019. He is currently pursuing a Master in Museology and Art History at École du Louvre. During his first year of his Master’s (Museology), Guillaume wrote a thesis on the collection of medieval badges at the Musée des Antiquités in Rouen. Guillaume is currently in his second year of his Master’s (Art History), writing a thesis about the late-medieval iconography of baldness and shaving under the supervision of Denis Bruna, Chief Curator of Fashion and Textiles, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Edited by Hannah Gardiner. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on May 17, 2021.

Interview with Dr. Carolin Rinn

INTERVIEW WITH DR. CAROLIN RINN: PILGRIM BADGES FROM AACHEN AND CANTERBURY

Aachen Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral were well-known medieval pilgrimage sites. Aachen Cathedral was built under the orders of Charlemagne in the late eighth century and he was buried there in 814. In addition to Charlemagne’s tomb, this site famously houses four holy relics: the tunic Mary wore when giving birth to Christ, Christ's swaddling clothes, the beheading cloth of John the Baptist, and Christ’s loincloth. Canterbury Cathedral is famous for being the site of the martyrdom of archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170, whose shrine became one of the most important pilgrimage sites in medieval Europe. 

To learn more about the medieval badges from these famous sites, Ann Marie Rasmussen met virtually with Dr. Carolin Rinn to discuss her dissertation, “Between Memory and Mediation of Salvation: Visuality and Mediality of the Medieval Pilgrim Badges from Aachen and Canterbury.” Carolin shared her experience studying medieval badges as an art historian and the findings and implications of her research. 

AMR: Your dissertation explores the visuality and mediality of pilgrim badges from Aachen and Canterbury. Could you tell us how these worked at the sites?

CR: The visuality – the iconography of the saints, the legends, the cathedral, and the design of these pilgrim badges – in Aachen and Canterbury is different. [In Aachen] you have Mary as the patron of the cathedral. You also have Charlemagne and some very important relics that are housed there. In Canterbury, visuality is centred around Thomas Becket and his spectacular martyrdom. Becket’s likeness to the suffering and sacrifice of Christ was a very big topic. The mediality of the badges from the two sites is also different. In Canterbury, there were both badges and ampullas. The ampullas contained the blood of Thomas Becket mixed with water, so they said. [This so-called “Canterbury water”] could heal diseases and cause miracles, which we know from the famous miracle records from that time. Buying an ampulla with this special substance was one reason pilgrims went to Canterbury. There are relationships between this substance and the images [on the ampullas], the front and the back of the badges, the frame, and so on. In Aachen, there was no substance. There are relics from Christ, John, and Mary at the site, but nothing pilgrims could take with them. Only the badges.  

AMR: Could you tell us about the mirrors on some of the Aachen badges?

Pewter badge, square frame intended to hold a mirror surmounted by tunic on rod supported on either side by posts topped with deorated diamond, eyelets, Aachen, Germany, 1475-1524, found in Nieuwlande, the Netherlands, 45 x 29 mm. The Van Beuningen Family Collection, inv. 0674 (Kunera 00430). Photograph courtesy of The Van Beuningen Family Collection.

CR: Oh, yes. Special badges from Aachen had these little mirrors built in. When the relics were shown to the pilgrims from the church tower, which has happened every seventh year, basically from the Middle Ages until now, we know that the pilgrims were massed far below. We know that mirrors were raised up to probably “see” the relic and its power, which was collected in the mirror. Many Aachen pilgrim badges bought by pilgrims included both a mirror and an image of the tunic Mary wore when giving birth to Christ, which was the top relic.

Another element commonly found on the Aachen badges that I found very interesting is the face of Christ. It's very big and very dominant. So I wondered, what's that about? You could say it’s the Vera Icon, but the Vera Icon was a relic in Rome, and therefore not specific to Aachen. There were relics of Christ in Aachen, but none related to the Vera Icon. At first, this made no sense to me, but then, what came into my mind was that this face of Christ – which is basically staring at you – might be a preview of seeing God at the end of time. There are these famous words in the Bible by the Apostle Paul who says, ‘You can see God only like in a dark mirror, but not clearly until the last judgement.’ This is a new finding from my dissertation.

AMR: But then you shall see face to face. [see 1 Corinthians 13.12]

CR: Yes, face to face. These words were very important for thinking about how devotion and prayer worked in the Middle Ages, especially during the fifteenth century: you never get to the point you want to get to, but you always have to try. I don’t think that every pilgrim would have thought about this impact, but well-educated pilgrims must have known these discussions and theories. This shows that pilgrim badges could also be used as devotional objects and as objects that led pilgrims to their way to salvation even after the pilgrimage. 

AMR: It is really interesting that you thought about this adult face of Christ. By the fifteenth century it’s on small objects everywhere. It’s obvious they’re not from Rome, but you see this face again and again. That's really interesting. There was no face relic of any kind at Aachen. 

CR: The interesting thing is that the badge also shows the theme of salvation: you have the tunic, which signifies Christ's birth in the beginning, and then you have this face of God in the end. I think the example of the face of Christ and the badge from Aachen shows that there's so much more to learn. It’s worthwhile to integrate badges into art historian research. They were important visual objects, and sometimes they are as tricky as big paintings to analyze. 

AMR: Of all the badges you've seen so far, which one is your favorite and why?

CR: My favorite is still the ampulla from Canterbury with Thomas Becket, which I saw at the British Museum. It's just so beautiful. On the front side, there’s Thomas Becket, and on the right and the left sides, there are soldiers with their swords. On the back, you see the murder within a seal-shaped frame.

AMR: Their swords are raised. It's like the minute before the swords fall, right? 

Front of pewter ampulla, three knights assassinate Saint Thomas Becket, 1170-1200, England, object reference: 1921,0216.62. Photograph courtesy of © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

Back of pewter ampulla, pointed oval panel with the martyrdom, inscribed + OPTIM EGROR MEDIC FIT TOMA BONOR [Thomas is the best doctor for the worthy sick]. Photograph courtesy of © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

CR: Yes! It's just so beautiful. I think it also works as a devotional object because of image on the back, which was worn near the heart. Having a badge near the heart of the pilgrim plays with this idea that you could impress good images into your heart with prayers during devotions. 

AMR: There’s a very famous piece from Amsterdam, a homemade altar that has had two pilgrim badges nailed onto it. It’s clear in this case that the badges have been repurposed into a devotional object. But in other cases, it's not possible to prove it, but it makes sense. 

CR: Yes, it's not possible to prove it, but I think as an art historian, if you're dealing with medieval art, you can’t prove many things, but you can show they could be possible. In this case, in that region around Canterbury at that time, we know that there were these ideas of impressing your soul with good images and seeing Thomas Becket as a good role model. Not everybody knew this, probably. The monks of Canterbury did at least. And I think it's possible that there were viewers who had these ideas in the back of their mind.

AMR: Oh, absolutely. By the fifteenth century people are beginning to argue about symbols and signs and their efficacy. Badges are made to work within these complex representational systems. The more you bring to them, the more they can say to you – just as you say, they can work on different levels. 

CR: I think the idea of pilgrim badges as cheap mass products has led some scholars to think badges are not complex. Not every badge has these complexities, but some do. This is important because pilgrim badges were a medium for everybody. On every level of thinking or living in the Middle Ages, low or high, you can gain something from the pilgrim badges. I think that's fascinating.

Carolin Rinn studied art history, classical archaeology, and philosophy at the University of Giessen (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen). After an internship at the British Museum, Carolin returned to the University of Giessen to complete a PhD in Medieval Studies. Under the supervision of Markus Späth and Silke Tammen, she wrote a dissertation entitled, “Zwischen Erinnerung und Heilsvermittlung: Visualität und Medialität der mittelalterlichen Pilgerzeichen aus Aachen und Canterbury.” She presently works with the archeological excavation company SPAU, where she offers her historical expertise to guide visitors through various sites, which she views as a pilgrimage of sorts. She continues her research with medieval badges through her work with the Pilgerzeichendatenbank, an online database of pilgrim badges. 

Edited by Hannah Gardiner and Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. The interview took place on July 19, 2021. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on September 6, 2021.

Badges Across Europe: Rostock, Part Four

GEOGRAPHY LESSON 4: Mobile, mutable images

The badges from Rostock and their corroborating evidence testify to the wide-ranging mobility of Rostock pilgrims. This fact should not surprise us; after all, the burghers of Rostock were sea-faring merchants and traders. The sum total of these artifacts suggests that piety wove together many strands of the lives of the inhabitants of medieval Rostock.

The bells in their churches sounded, as it were, with the voices of the saints and divine figures represented on their in-cast badges. Returned travelers must have told stories of miraculous rescues and journeys of thanksgiving, of long treks undertaken for the soul of a deceased or for the chance of inheritance, or of taking up arms to earn salvation by converting to Christianity the Prussian polytheists who lived only a few hundred kilometres to the east. The surviving evidence usually concerns men but here and there women and even children appear in it as well. Sometime around 1254-56, the archival evidence tells us, one Henricus de Horneshusen traveled to Livonia with his wife and son. The image below is a detail from the Saint Hedwig Altarpiece at Church of Saint Catherine in Brandenburg, which is located about 280 kilometres south of the city of Rostock. The Saint Hedwig Altarpiece, made around the year 1500, shows a man, a woman, and a child wearing hats adorned with pilgrim badges.

Selection from Saint Hedwig Altarpiece, Church of Saint Catherine, Brandenburg, Germany, ca. 1500. Photograph courtesy of photographer: Dirk Jacob.

The fact remains, however, that the archaeological evidence could suggest that medieval pilgrims threw their badges away at journey’s end. What might this tell us about the way medieval pilgrims viewed their religious badges? 

Seeking to explain why so many pilgrim badges turn up in wet soil deposits in and along rivers (the Thames, the Seine, the Meuse, and so on), the idea circulated in and beyond medieval circles for decades that medieval pilgrims tossed their badges into rivers at journey’s end as a sign of thanksgiving. This “ritual deposition theory,” as art historian Jennifer Lee calls it, popular though it is, is not borne out by other evidence. There is good evidence that medieval badges were discarded as scrap metal, for example. Disposing of religious badges in latrines, whose contents in turn were flushed into rivers or used as backfill or infill on construction sites, further undermines the ritual deposition theory. It seems more likely that pilgrims at times treated religious badges as unimportant objects; when a badge’s purpose had been fulfilled, it was discarded.

A more promising theory that conforms better to the archaeological evidence is that religious badges were de-venerated, meaning that the badges lost their ritual-like, religious status as a hallowed or revered object and could therefore be discarded as waste. Perhaps, as Lee hypothesizes, religious badges “were more important as signs of a temporary social role (that of pilgrim) than as representatives of the object of the pilgrim’s devotion” (11). The discarded badges suggest that “many pilgrims did make a clear distinction between the venerable images at the pilgrim centres and the cheap, mass-produced copies that they bought to wear, and then to throw away” (Lee, 11). This theory is exciting because, as Lee points out, de-veneration is “a characteristically modern way to regard images” (10), which makes these medieval religious badges, thrown into latrines, the first tangible evidence of image de-veneration.

Does tossing a religious badge into a latrine make a medieval pilgrim less pious? Probably not. Rather, it shows us someone using images in ways that are, in fact, modern, “distinguish[ing] between different types of images with mutable and context-dependent significance” (Lee, 11). Meticulous attention to the medieval religious badges found in Rostock, Germany reveals that some of the practices of the Rostock city dwellers are arrestingly familiar, even when they are embedded in a historical era distant from our own.

Written by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on March 22, 2021.

Works Cited

Ansorge, Jörg. “‘pelgrimmatze in de ere des almechteghen godes’: Pilgerzeichen und Schriftquellen zum mittelalterlichen Wallfahrtswesen in Rostock,” in Verknüpfungen des neuen Glaubens. Die Rostocker Reformationsgeschichte in ihren translokalen Bezügen, edited by Heinrich Holze and Kristen Skottki. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck-Ruprecht, 2019, pp. 29–83.

Lee, Jennifer. “Medieval pilgrims’ badges in rivers: the curious history of a non-theory.” Journal of Art Historiography. no. 11 (2014): pp. 1–11.

Badges Across Europe: Rostock, Part Three

GEOGRAPHY LESSON 3: CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE

Dr. Ansorge’s article shows us the detective archaeologist at work, seeking out disparate kinds of evidence for clues to better understand the landscapes of religious belief in medieval northern Germany. To contextualize the Rostock badges, Ansorge unearths evidence from archives, manuscripts, early printed broadsheets, and books, and from other unusual sources as well. Each source requires different contextual knowledge and a different interpretative stance. Ansorge views these sources as a kind of assemblage in which different kinds of evidence provide a deeper understanding of late medieval piety while supplementing the picture of where Rostock pilgrims travelled with new information.

Many medieval wills from Baltic Hansa cities have survived into our times: about six thousand from Lübeck and one thousand from Stralsund. In comparison, only sixteen Rostock wills from the fourteenth centuries have survived. These wills are of interest because of the common practice in the cities of northern Germany of testators stipulating in their wills that inheritors or others undertake pilgrimages to specific, named holy sites. 

All the sites from which the Rostock badges come are mentioned in Rostock wills. However, the wills also name pilgrimage sites from which no badges have been found (to date) in Rostock. The most frequently named holy sites in the wills are Rome and the Holy Land (i.e. Jerusalem). Badges made in Rome have not been frequently found in northern Germany, so it is probably not a coincidence that only one has been found in Rostock. Jerusalem badges are so rare that it seems badges were almost never produced there. In any case, the Rostock wills confirm that Rome and the Holy Land should be included among the long-distance destinations for pilgrimage journeys made by inhabitants of Rostock.

On the other hand, none of the surviving wills mention the holy sites at Steinfeld and Stromberg, so without the badges we would not have known that pilgrims from Rostock travelled there.

Pewter badge, crucified Christ, Stromberg, Germany, before 1269, found in Rostock, Germany. Left: front of badge; Center top: folded badge as originally found folded into ball, head of Christ on top; Center bottom: back of folded badge; Right: back of badge with arrows highlighting fold marks. This badge was found in the Mühlendamm excavation site shown in the blog post Geography Lesson 1. Photograph courtesy of photographer: Dr. Jörg Ansorge, Horst (Germany).

Ansorge also discusses written evidence from Rostock covering the two decades between 1250 and 1270. It shows Rostock burghers travelling on pilgrimage to Livonia (German Livland) in the eastern Baltic, where the modern states of Estonia and Latvia are located (in a few cases their wives went along, too). The time period coincides with the conquest of Livonia by the military order of the Teutonic knights. These pilgrim journeys might have been traditional religious visits to holy sites, but they might also have been “military” pilgrimages in which the travellers sought salvation by taking part in an armed conquest that comprised violent conversion and colonization.

The medieval custodians of holy sites often kept so-called miracle books in which they recorded the miracles performed by the shrine’s saint. Burghers from Rostock appear in these books. One Heinrich Loesthin “from the city of Rostock,” for example, travelled to Thann (Alsace) in 1450 to thank Saint Theobaldus for saving him from shipwreck. Early sixteenth-century Rostock printers published flyers advertising, as it were, local pilgrimage sites: Güstrow, Sternberg, Heiligengrabe, and Wilsnack. In 1593, a Lutheran pastor writing about now abandoned Catholic pilgrimage practices, mentions a number of sites, including one in Rostock itself.

More evidence about medieval badges comes from an unexpected source. Especially in northern Europe, late medieval bell makers (or founders) often pushed religious badges into the clay moulds a bell would be cast in, which created impressions of these badges on the final metal bell. In other words, the badge impression left in the metal bell is a trace of a once existing badge. Ansorge uses this ghostly evidence to corroborate his identification of the holy sites from which the Rostock badges came (he occasionally uses other surviving material evidence such as medieval stained glass or statues, too). 

Medieval bell, detail showing cast of badge from Wilsnack, Germany, Saint Catherine's Church, Lübeck, Germany. Photograph courtesy of photographer: Dr. Jörg Ansorge, Horst (Germany).

The unearthed pilgrim badges from Rostock do not tell a complete story on their own. The judicious use of corroborating evidence from a wide variety of sources allows a knowledgeable researcher such as Dr. Ansorge to share a more detailed and nuanced picture of where Rostock pilgrims went.

Written by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on March 8, 2021.

Works Cited

Ansorge, Jörg. “‘pelgrimmatze in de ere des almechteghen godes’: Pilgerzeichen und Schriftquellen zum mittelalterlichen Wallfahrtswesen in Rostock,” in Verknüpfungen des neuen Glaubens. Die Rostocker Reformationsgeschichte in ihren translokalen Bezügen, edited by Heinrich Holze and Kristen Skottki. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck-Ruprecht, 2019, pp. 29–83.

Badges Across Europe: Rostock, Part Two

GEOGRAPHY LESSON 2: WHERE THE ROSTOCK PILGRIMS WENT

The twenty-nine pilgrim badges found in Rostock testify to journeys to different holy sites. Medieval pilgrims purchased religious badges at the sites they visited and then brought the objects home with them. Dr. Ansorge uses the badges found in Rostock as evidence to see where and how far the Rostock pilgrims travelled. 

Some Rostock pilgrims ventured far to visit holy sites of outstanding importance in medieval Christendom. Santiago de Compostela in Spain, whose badges were mentioned in the previous blog (Part One), is about 2500 kilometers from Rostock. Also found were single badges from Rome (about 1700 kilometers distant), and from Canterbury where Saint Thomas Becket was revered (about 1000 kilometers distant). A single badge was found from Saint-Josse-sur-Mer in northern France (Picardy) (about 1000 kilometers southwest), which may have been a waystation on the pilgrim road to either Santiago or Canterbury and another was found from Einsiedeln (Switzerland) (about 1000 kilometers south), which may have been a waystation on the way to Rome.

The Becket badge from Canterbury is one of only two such badges found in northern Germany. The other was found in the Hansa city of Wismar and can be dated to the 1260s. The Becket shrine at Canterbury was the most important pilgrimage site in England and it was not old; Becket was murdered in 1170 and made a saint in 1173. The quintessential Englishness of Becket’s popularity and its being wrapped up in the specifics of English politics make one wonder whether the Becket badges found in Rostock and Wismar might in fact have been discarded there by English traders and merchants, who frequented Hanseatic League cities.

Pewter badge, Becket head front and back, Canterbury, United Kingdom, 1260-1270, found in Rostock, Germany. Photograph courtesy of photographer: Dr. Jörg Ansorge, Horst (Germany).

Roughly half of the Rostock badges are from the large, old pilgrim sites on or near the Rhine or Meuse rivers. Aachen, Cologne, and Maastricht, for example, were linked together as an established pilgrim route. Besides being relatively close to one another, the great shrines of these cities were ancient, traditional holy sites. Clearly Rostock pilgrims wished to partake in this venerable divinity. To the frequent finds can be added two more sites southwest of Rostock: Stromberg and Steinfeld. These sites are in middle distance range, between 600 and 700 kilometers west or southwest of Rostock and it is likely that Rostock pilgrims visited two or more of them on one trip. 

Some Rostock badge finds testify to journeys to local shrines which could have been completed round trip in about a week. These are represented by badges from now obscure or vanished holy sites at Kenz (about 60 kilometers east northeast of Rostock), Güstrow (about 40 kilometers south), and Sternberg (another 30 kilometers southwest of Güstrow). Also present are badges from the great holy site of Wilsnack, which is less than 200 kilometers southwest of Rostock, and from Königslutter, another 150 kilometers southwest of Wilsnack, both established way-stations on middle and long distance pilgrim journeys. 

Pewter badge, Virgin Mary and Child, Kenz (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), Germany, found in Rostock, Germany. Photograph courtesy of photographer: Dr. Jörg Ansorge, Horst (Germany).

Pewter badge, Virgin Mary and Child, Aachen (Nordrhein-Westfalen), Germany, found in Rostock, Germany. This badge was found in the Mühlendamm excavation site shown in the previous blog post, Geography Lesson 1. Photograph courtesy of photographer: Dr. Jörg Ansorge, Horst (Germany).

There is a badge from a holy site dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary that is about 300 kilometers east of Rostock in what is now Poland on the mountain, Góra Chełmska (German, Gollenberg, Mount Gollen), east of the town of Koszalin. Easily accessible from the Baltic, it seems likely that Rostock pilgrims would have travelled there by sea. 

And finally, there are two badges that have not yet been identified, probably because they came from small, local holy sites that vanished when the territories around Rostock adopted Lutheranism in the Reformation. Using his skills as an archaeologist-dectective, Dr. Ansorge continues to seek the home and saintly identity of these badges.  

Identifiable by their imagery as coming from specific holy sites, the surviving pilgrim badges found in Rostock can be ordered according to the distance between holy site and find site. They show people from Rostock travelling near and far on what were once well-established roads and pilgrim routes, not all of which are still known today.

Written by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on March 1, 2021.

Works Cited

Ansorge, Jörg. “‘pelgrimmatze in de ere des almechteghen godes’: Pilgerzeichen und Schriftquellen zum mittelalterlichen Wallfahrtswesen in Rostock,” in Verknüpfungen des neuen Glaubens. Die Rostocker Reformationsgeschichte in ihren translokalen Bezügen, edited by Heinrich Holze and Kristen Skottki. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck-Ruprecht, 2019, pp. 29–83.

Badges Across Europe: Rostock

MEDIEVAL BADGES FROM ROSTOCK: FOUR GEOGRAPHY LESSONS

This blog post in four parts focusses on twenty-nine medieval badges found in the Baltic coastal town of Rostock, Germany. It summarizes a recent article by Dr. Jörg Ansorge, one of the premier archaeologists working with pilgrim badges in Germany today. The article discusses all badges that were found in Rostock by 2018 (more have been found since then). Dr. Ansorge pays meticulous attention to different kinds of evidence in order to create rich contexts for the found badges. He draws conclusions that allow us to glimpse people’s religious practices in medieval Rostock and to better understand how medieval people used their religious badges. 

I am excited to be publicizing the work of outstanding archaeologists undertaking urban excavations that add to our knowledge of medieval places less widely known in English-speaking countries. Archaeologists work with all kinds of clues that they unearth themselves, whether from the ground, from archives and books, or drawn, in agreement or disagreement, from the work of other scholars. These blog posts highlight the intellectual complexity of the research archaeologists do. 

ROSTOCK, GERMANY

Rostock is a port city that in the second half of the twentieth century was part of the German Democratic Republic (or East Germany). Straddling the Warnow River, Rostock stretches from the river’s mouth on the Baltic Sea in the north to the city center about ten kilometers upstream, or south. It is the most populous city (ca. 210,000 inhabitants) in the province of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and home to one of the oldest universities in central Europe, the University of Rostock, which was founded in 1419. In the Middle Ages, Rostock was a thriving member of the Hanseatic League, a commercial confederation of merchant guilds and cities located on and near the Baltic and North Seas. Rostock was a self-governing city, with city council (Rat) made of aldermen (Ratsherren) elected from among the elite families. The language spoken in Rostock was Low German and the population was, of course, Catholic until the Reformation.

GEOGRAPHY LESSON 1: BADGES AND SOIL COMPOSITION 

Twenty-nine medieval badges have been found in Rostock. Two of these are scallop shell badges originating in Santiago de Compostela that were found in graves. The majority of the badges (twenty) were found in layers of organically rich, wet soils that were on the surface during medieval times but were buried by subsequent soil deposits or by usage (the German word for this phenomenon is a wonderful composite noun, Feuchtbodensedimente).

Organically rich means that the layer is full of decomposing organic materials such as plant matter and waste, including sewage. Wet means exactly what it says: the soil has been in water for a long time. In medieval cities, all kinds of refuse were dumped into latrines, whose contents were emptied into adjacent rivers and creeks and onto nearby agricultural fields. Archaeologists excavating the remains of medieval cities in northern Germany frequently encounter this waste for another reason. During medieval times the expanding cities of northern Germany required new buildings. The available ground, however, being low-lying and only marginally suitable for buildings, demanded special foundation construction techniques, and these included creating infill by depositing huge quantities of soil and waste. This urban land reclamation and ground elevation, which took place in areas near the waterfront or the sea, was largely completed around the year 1300.

Rostock, two views of the excavation site at Mühlendamm. Mühlendamm (a street name in Rostock), was a mill dam on the Warnow River whose construction began in the mid-thirteenth century. In the photo on the left are the thirteenth-century elevation layers where a Stromberg badge was found (this badge will be shown in part III), which can be dated to 1269. In the photo on the right are the remains of a fourteenth-century mill building. An Aachen badge (this badge will be shown in part II), which dates to c. 1330-1350, was found at this site. In the background of the righthand photo can be seen the Nicolai Church Rostock (founded 1230). The original church, often altered over the centuries and largely destroyed in World War Two, was rebuilt in 1976 and repurposed at that time to include apartments on the higher floors. The square tower visible on this photo dates from 1976. Photographs courtesy of photographer: Dr. Jörg Ansorge, Horst (Germany).

Rostock, main excavation site at Gerberbruch. This was the site of tanning industries outside the town wall near the Warnow River from the thirteenth to twentieth centuries. The red-brown soil near the bottom of the pit is late thirteenth-century waste tan bark. All the sites shown in these photographs are now below sea level because the peat upon which they were built has been compacted by centuries of overburden. Photograph courtesy of photographer: Dr. Jörg Ansorge, Horst (Germany).

Badges are found in these urban foundation deposits for two main reasons. First, medieval pewter tends to disintegrate over time and when temperatures fall below freezing. The anaerobic conditions of wet soil deposits, however, provide ideal conditions for its survival. Second, medieval badges are found in these wet soil deposits because they were discarded into latrines, whose contents were flushed into streams or otherwise put to use in fields or on construction sites. In other words, sometimes medieval people threw their religious badges away (I will return to this point in part IV).

Layers of medieval wet soil deposit are characteristic of medieval urban centres in northern Germany (and indeed, of most cities in Northern Europe, including London). These deposits have another unexpected archaeological bonus: they preserve datable organic material such as timber, datable by dendrochronology, which was used for making foundations for buildings where infill rubbish and waste had been dumped. The contexts of timber, new building construction, and waste thus provide precise dates for the badges, because the badges cannot post-date these materials.

The surprise here is that many religious badges found in Rostock are from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a finding that conforms well to the dating of badges found in other northern German cities such as Stralsund and Wismar. Europe-wide, the use of medieval badges swells and peaks in the fifteenth century, and we might be tempted to hypothesize that these northern city dwellers were, to use a modern phrase, late adopters of badge use, situated as they were far from the centre of European politics and culture. But the archaeological evidence contradicts the hypothesis of late adoption. The dating of the badges shows that early on, by the middle of the thirteenth century, the inhabitants of northern German cities were undertaking pilgrim trips near and far, and they were bringing badges home with them. They were early and apparently enthusiastic adopters of the idea that a person could identify themself as a pilgrim by wearing a small, cheap, mass-produced, ephemeral, image-bearing badge of their very own.

Written by Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen. This post was originally published on the Medieval Badges blog on February 22, 2021.

Works Cited

Ansorge, Jörg. “‘pelgrimmatze in de ere des almechteghen godes’: Pilgerzeichen und Schriftquellen zum mittelalterlichen Wallfahrtswesen in Rostock,” in Verknüpfungen des neuen Glaubens. Die Rostocker Reformationsgeschichte in ihren translokalen Bezügen, edited by Heinrich Holze and Kristen Skottki. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck-Ruprecht, 2019, pp. 29–83.