A 14th century pin displaying three phalli carrying a crowned vulva?!
Is it for real?
Yes, indeed, these cheap, mass produced badges were called pilgrim pins or sometimes carnival pins and were popular in the Middle Ages. There are many examples of both secular and sexually explicit badges. Scholars theorize that those featuring sex organs and other kinds of sexual humor symbolized a reversal of the “natural order” and reflected the kind of atmosphere prevalent at the carnival — a place that in the Medieval mind constituted a world “turned upside down.”
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