Late medieval religious and secular badges

A fact that has only recently emerged from the vast amount of finds, especially in the Low Countries, is that in the Middle Ages there was a tremendous variety of mass-produced, cheap jewellery ranging from devotionalia to erotic brooches. Little research has been devoted to the imagery depicted by these 'poor mans' jewels.

Four years ago the Catholic University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) started to develop an international, computerised database containing medieval badges (the name of the project is KUNera). The database contains medieval badges from all over Europe. This paper serves as an introduction to this database, its purpose and its contents.