Special issue about medieval badges
The Mediaeval Journal (Brepols) recently published a special issue on medieval badges with contributions of specialists in the field. The hypothesis tying together the articles is that badges, though made out of different materials, operated as a pan-European, visual and symbolic mode of communication.
Especially badges made out of tin-lead, or pewter, alloy circulated in large numbers and were distributed over large geographic areas. Their mass-production suggests a high level of what might be termed semiotic literacy across the diverse individuals and communities who wore them.
People displayed specific badges, whether secular or religious (or both), to create and claim social, political, and religious relationships by drawing on iconographies that were familiar and intelligible across large areas of medieval Europe. Different specialists contributed to this special issue, among them Ann Marie Rasmussen, Hartmut Kühne, Jörg Ansorge, Jos Koldeweij, Hanneke van Asperen, Jennifer Lee and Brigitte Bedos-Rezak.