One not familiar with the corpus of enigmatic late medieval leaden badges could wonder what can be g
One not familiar with the corpus of enigmatic late medieval leaden badges could wonder what can be gained academically from their study. They may in fact, teach us a great deal. Key to the discussion, as one historian (McDonald) has noted, is that the study of the badges “provides a unique, and still largely untapped, perspective on late medieval devotional practice, the border between sacred and profane, the social as well as apotropaic function of ornament … patterns of cultural and iconographic exchange, as well as persistently enigmatic attitudes towards sex and the display of sexual organs and sexual acts.”Here are just a few examples (descriptions under the zoomed image).(Text and images from an extensive paper BAWDY BADGES AND THE BLACK DEATH: LATE MEDIEVAL APOTROPAIC DEVICES AGAINST THE SPREAD OF THE PLAGUE, by Lena Mackenzie Gimbel, B.A. University of Louisville, 2010) -- source link
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