Bawdy Medieval Badges Talk

In this special event on Tuesday, April 13 from 1:00-2:15pm , University of Waterloo Professor Ann Marie Rasmussen, author of Medieval Badges: Their Wearers and Their Worlds (forthcoming, 2021), will be joined by multidisciplinary artist Melanie Jackson to discuss the world of bawdy medieval badges. This event will feature Melanie Jackson’s recent reimagining of these bawdy badges in her artistic project, “Spekying Rybawdy,” where she brings these infamous badges to new life.

Medieval badges are small, brooch-like objects that were mass-produced in the High and late Middle Ages in Europe. Over 20,000 of these lead-tin alloy badges survive into our times. They feature image or symbols that were familiar to medieval people. Often referred to as pilgrim badges because so many surviving badges are religious, many medieval badges in fact belong to the secular sphere of life. Among these are over three hundred obscene badges whose iconography displays explicit, and at times puzzling, bawdy imagery and scenes.

This is a free event, please register here.