Second, that such souvenirs were often sewn into manuscripts to correspond with the times at which Communion was taken. First, that souvenirs of the taking of Communion were not only widely created, but they were also widely collected in manuscripts, where they have been misidentified as pilgrims’ badges. This article presents two fundamental reconsiderations of the relationship between the Eucharist and the medieval book in the Netherlands. 1 Despite, or even because the Eucharist had to be consumed and therefore vanished, a material culture developed within books to create a kind of permanence. This paradox should be seen against the backdrop of intense late medieval Eucharistic piety: fourteenth- and fifteenth-century votaries engaged in devotion to the host, which found several outlets, including spiritual and ocular Communion, as well as new offices for the feast of the Corpus Christi, and new prayers to be said before, during, and after taking the host, which became de rigueur for fifteenth-century prayer books. Materially, at least, the praying subject destroyed the object of devotion precisely by properly venerating it. In the act of completing the Eucharistic devotion, the object of intense love and scrutiny was quite literally consumed. The Corpus Christi could, in one sense, be continually renewed through transubstantiation, but once it was created out of a piece of bread and believers had taken the host internally, the visible, tangible trace was gone. Receiving the Eucharist created a paradox for medieval believers, who longed for a tangible trace of the body of Christ. When they were sewn into books, Eucharist badges reconfigured the book as a shrine that recorded a votary’s pursuit of Communion. Owners stitched such badges into their books’ margins at locations relevant to Eucharistic piety. These round badges were the same size and shape and bore the same imagery as host wafers. Noting that the vast majority of metal offsets in books of hours are round, the author posits that these were not impressed by pilgrims’ badges, as is often repeated in the scholarly literature, but rather by tokens that commemorate having taken the Eucharist. This article examines the practice by considering needle holes and offsets in the soft parchment, which indicate the shape of the badges and where they were attached. Although the cultural practice of sewing in badges was widespread in the late Middle Ages, nearly all of the badges have been removed (by later collectors). People used them to store small objects, including metal badges. Books of hours in the fifteenth century occupied several social and devotional roles.
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