Connie and Her Companion Brooch

As you know, the majority of our items are copies of real medieval pewter goods, but we fill in missing parts like the head of a figure, basing our decisions on other badges or art works. We also sometimes make versions of precious metal jewelry in pewter, base a piece on a painting or sculpture, add SCA-related items, create a custom badge, or make some other short leap. Our carnival goods though are (with very few exceptions) direct copies of original pieces – this stuff is just too weird to make guesses about.

For this piece we made a guess. We had been thinking for a while about the figure of a vulva with the big “word balloon” published in Heilig en Profaan 3 (dated 1325-1375). At first we spoke of it as “the Vagina Monologue” but in fact the words are not what the vulva says but a description of her. The original craftsman inscribed the words right way round in the mold, so of course they are in mirror image in the casting. They say “DIT.ES. CONTE.ENDE.AR.GHESELLE.KIN+DIE.VAN+ROMEN.COMMEN.SIN. Or in English “This is Connie and her little companion who have come from Rome.” (I leave it to you to translate “CONTE” as you prefer.) We put the letters in mirror image in the mold, so they are right way round in the casting.

As soon as Marianne understood that Connie was supposed to have a companion she speculated that her strange looped up “arm” was actually supposed to hold the companion in some way.

And now the jump – who is the companion? In other pewter badges with vulvas on pilgrimage they carry staffs with penises, wear hats with penises, and are bedecked with penises sitting like epaulettes on each shoulder. It is a common complaint throughout the Middle Ages that women (and men as well) behaved indecently on pilgrimage. As the old saying goes “What happens in Santiago stays in Santiago.” Which is the long way to say that the companion is almost certainly a penis and all we had to do was guess how Connie could hold him. Our solution is that she carries a pilgrim scrip and he peeks out of it. Speculation. Invention. But it’s what we did.

And I’ve got to tell you there is nothing sweeter than making Connie walk while you sing a cheery pilgrim song (something from the Llibre Vermell or maybe the Cantigas) and the little scrip swings back and forth while Himself keeps a look out. Really really cute!