In the Middle Ages , religious pilgrimage were all the rage in Europe . In spite of plagues and famines that ravaged the population in the 13th and 14th centuries , X of one thousand of citizenry would walk for month to end up at theSantiago de Compostelacathedral in northwesterly Spain each yr to pay their regard , receive absolution or beg for healing at the tomb of the Apostelic Father James . There were many more holy sites of varying popularity — the Seven Pilgrimage Churches of Rome and the Holy Land route ( Jerusalem , Bethlehem and Nazareth ) were the giving time , but the church also encourage pilgrimages to smaller shrines , like the grave of Thomas Becket in the English county of Kent , the destination of the ragtag lot of pilgrim depicted in Geoffrey Chaucer ’s " Canterbury Tales . "
No matter the length , it was an skill , foot it over one C or thousands of miles to arrive at a holy land site , so course gothic Pilgrim would want a souvenir to prove they had made the trek , to signal they belonged to a specific spiritual residential district and to serve as a sort of protective amulet .
As a result , an industry emerged to satisfy the pilgrims : Badges made out of a tin - Pb alloy that they could pin to their hat or cloak were spate - acquire and became wildly democratic . Most of these badge depicted what you ’re believably ideate : angel being martyrize , angels , animals with religious significance , pilgrims come out triumphant and spiritually cleanse from the pilgrim’s journey site , etc . But some of them were a picayune more … laic .
Take , for representative , the badge depicting a giant vulva with arms and legs and a hat , holding a staff adorned with an upright phallus . Or the three phalluses manning a sailboat , or the winged , crowned phallus wearing a buzzer around its " cervix " or the vulva on horseback , hunting with a bow and arrow . candidly , there are so many different sexual motive , and they ’re so bizarre and fascinating that it ’s easy to just ogle them without questioning why they were made in the first billet .
But most scholars studying medieval pilgrimage badges have a surprising hypothesis for the purpose of suchbawdy images : These badges were specifically made to guard offplague . The Black Death , which kill 25 million Europeans during this period , was terrifying in part because this was long before thegerm hypothesis of diseaserevolutionized the way we kept disease from spreading . Nobody really knew how everyone was getting theplague — it was just as workable that bad air or animbalance in somebody ’s humourswas the perpetrator as it was that sick mass were passing it along to their admirer just by looking at them . It was probably this last one — the sickly looks — that the raunchy badge were trying to fend off .
Although it ’s impossible to say just what the medieval pilgrims were suppose with these ridiculous and obscene pins , many scholars suggest that they were almost certainly not intended to be erotic . At the time , a virulent malady and an evil sprightliness were view extremely confining relatives , if not one and the same . Protective talismans like theEvil Eyehave been used since ancient time to guard off the unwished and badly - intentioned stares of others , and images of genitals have likewise been thought to have powerful protective world power in cultures all over the world .
Regardless of whether mediaeval pilgrims were correct or not about the method of disease transmission , the icon of a lion with a jumbo penis in its jaws pinned to somebody ’s lapel would probably make you take care out from that somebody passably quickly .
