Pious Phalluses and Holy Vulvas

Shield your eyes, my dainty ones, if you find this image overly shocking. But know that Medieval Europeans would not have found it so. You are looking at a row of phalluses carrying a crowned vulva on a bier. And this object is a type of pilgrimage badge — someone might have worn it to show off the fact that they had gone on a spiritual journey.

For an age as religious as it was, Medieval people had a very different understanding of obscenity than we do. In fact, vocabulary we view as taboo cussing really wasn’t a thing. Badges like this, other sexual imagery, and terms we consider swear words might have been funny in certain contexts. (For instance, this badge might be parodying common depictions of the Virgin Mary being carried by religious monks – as shown in the second picture.) However, they didn’t evoke prudish feelings.

We can get a sense of this through words that were in common usage. For instance, in Medieval England, here were some street names: Gropecuntlane, Schetewellwey (Shitwell Way), Pissing Alley. These were descriptive terms – prostitutes in Oxford hung out on Gropecuntlane, for instance. Latin-to-English vocabularies show a similar tolerance. For instance, “c*nt” was the normal translation of the Latin for “vulva,” and the buttocks was labeled “arse.” One such dictionary also helpfully lists words like “besh*tten,” “turd,” and “piss” — all as the regular way to refer to these things.

So this badge, again – maybe it was to ward off evil, to gain fertility, to make fun of the Late Medieval Church – but what it wasn’t was blasphemous and taboo. It’s not like Medieval people had no concept of swearing, but what shocked them was libel, taking God’s name in an oath, or bearing false witness– these give another sense of swearing entirely.