In medieval Europe, men could wear rings, brooches, bracelets, and ornate chains without raising eyebrows—but earrings were another matter entirely. Unlike other forms of jewellery, earrings pierced the body, marking it with a physical transformation that carried deep symbolic and cultural weight.
As Denis Bruna demonstrates in his groundbreaking work on the history of bodily adornment, the male earring in the Middle Ages was not simply a decorative object, but a signifier of marginality, deviance, and even infamy.
The Pierced Body and Religious Anxiety
The Levitical prohibition—”You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves” (Leviticus 19:28)—was often cited to condemn bodily modifications in Christian Europe. The human body was considered the work of God, and any incision or piercing was perceived as a form of defilement. As such, earrings—requiring the piercing of the ear—were viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility.
Earrings were more than just a matter of personal style. They were associated with bodily mutilation and seen as emblematic of those outside the moral and spiritual order of Christendom. In religious art, they appeared not as signs of beauty or status, but as visual cues marking out the infames—the infamous.
Visual Evidence: Bosch and the Iconography of the Excluded
Christ Carrying the Cross by Hieronymus Bosch or a follower – Wikimedia Commons
Late medieval and early Renaissance paintings, particularly from the Flemish, German, and Italian traditions, bear out this interpretation. In works by artists such as Hieronymus Bosch, earrings, nose rings, and facial chains are often depicted on the torturers of Christ, on executioners, or on grotesque caricatures of Jews, Muslims, Black Africans, prostitutes, and lepers—figures seen as social or spiritual outsiders.
In Bosch’s Christ Carrying the Cross, as analysed by Bruna, we see a torturer with metal chains twisted grotesquely around his mouth—an image disturbingly mirrored on a torturer’s shield in reverse. The shield, a medieval emblematic device, here bears not the heraldry of nobility but the blazon of spiritual corruption. In this visual grammar, earrings and facial jewellery become symbolic markers of evil, foreignness, and moral decay.
The Eastern Origin of the Earring
Part of the suspicion toward earrings in medieval Europe stemmed from their perceived oriental origins. Throughout the Middle Ages, pierced ears, noses, and facial ornaments were associated with the East—cultures which, from the Christian European perspective, were often viewed with fear, mistrust, and theological disdain. In Islamic, Persian, and Indian societies, earrings were common and richly adorned. But in the West, from roughly the 9th century onward, such adornments disappeared almost entirely—except as markers of the “other”.
Thus, the male earring became doubly stigmatised: it transgressed both the sanctity of the body and the boundaries of Christian identity.
A Changing Code: From Stigma to Fashion
Portrait of Charles IX of France (1550-1574) by François Clouet (1510–1572) – Wikimedia Commons
Yet as with all cultural codes, meanings evolve. From the late 15th century into the Renaissance, the negative connotations of earrings began to soften. Influenced by the rediscovery of antiquity and the flourishing of humanist art and thought, jewellery—earrings included—regained social prestige.
By the early 16th century, earrings appeared in the inventories of Italian princesses. The arrival of Eleanor of Habsburg in France in 1530, wearing jewelled earrings to marry King Francis I, is often cited as a turning point. Not long after, French noblemen began wearing single pendants themselves.
Portraits by artists like François Clouet show figures such as Henri II, Charles IX, and Henri III adorned with single pearl earrings. Even King Charles I of England was famously painted in the 1630s by Van Dyck, wearing a delicate earring—a far cry from the associations of infamy seen in Bosch’s crucifixion scenes.
Dr Lorris Chevalier, who has a Ph.D. in medieval literature, is a historical advisor for movies, including The Last Duel and Napoleon. Click here to view his website.
By Lorris Chevalier
In medieval Europe, men could wear rings, brooches, bracelets, and ornate chains without raising eyebrows—but earrings were another matter entirely. Unlike other forms of jewellery, earrings pierced the body, marking it with a physical transformation that carried deep symbolic and cultural weight.
As Denis Bruna demonstrates in his groundbreaking work on the history of bodily adornment, the male earring in the Middle Ages was not simply a decorative object, but a signifier of marginality, deviance, and even infamy.
The Pierced Body and Religious Anxiety
The Levitical prohibition—”You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves” (Leviticus 19:28)—was often cited to condemn bodily modifications in Christian Europe. The human body was considered the work of God, and any incision or piercing was perceived as a form of defilement. As such, earrings—requiring the piercing of the ear—were viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility.
Earrings were more than just a matter of personal style. They were associated with bodily mutilation and seen as emblematic of those outside the moral and spiritual order of Christendom. In religious art, they appeared not as signs of beauty or status, but as visual cues marking out the infames—the infamous.
Visual Evidence: Bosch and the Iconography of the Excluded
Late medieval and early Renaissance paintings, particularly from the Flemish, German, and Italian traditions, bear out this interpretation. In works by artists such as Hieronymus Bosch, earrings, nose rings, and facial chains are often depicted on the torturers of Christ, on executioners, or on grotesque caricatures of Jews, Muslims, Black Africans, prostitutes, and lepers—figures seen as social or spiritual outsiders.
In Bosch’s Christ Carrying the Cross, as analysed by Bruna, we see a torturer with metal chains twisted grotesquely around his mouth—an image disturbingly mirrored on a torturer’s shield in reverse. The shield, a medieval emblematic device, here bears not the heraldry of nobility but the blazon of spiritual corruption. In this visual grammar, earrings and facial jewellery become symbolic markers of evil, foreignness, and moral decay.
The Eastern Origin of the Earring
Part of the suspicion toward earrings in medieval Europe stemmed from their perceived oriental origins. Throughout the Middle Ages, pierced ears, noses, and facial ornaments were associated with the East—cultures which, from the Christian European perspective, were often viewed with fear, mistrust, and theological disdain. In Islamic, Persian, and Indian societies, earrings were common and richly adorned. But in the West, from roughly the 9th century onward, such adornments disappeared almost entirely—except as markers of the “other”.
Thus, the male earring became doubly stigmatised: it transgressed both the sanctity of the body and the boundaries of Christian identity.
A Changing Code: From Stigma to Fashion
Yet as with all cultural codes, meanings evolve. From the late 15th century into the Renaissance, the negative connotations of earrings began to soften. Influenced by the rediscovery of antiquity and the flourishing of humanist art and thought, jewellery—earrings included—regained social prestige.
By the early 16th century, earrings appeared in the inventories of Italian princesses. The arrival of Eleanor of Habsburg in France in 1530, wearing jewelled earrings to marry King Francis I, is often cited as a turning point. Not long after, French noblemen began wearing single pendants themselves.
Portraits by artists like François Clouet show figures such as Henri II, Charles IX, and Henri III adorned with single pearl earrings. Even King Charles I of England was famously painted in the 1630s by Van Dyck, wearing a delicate earring—a far cry from the associations of infamy seen in Bosch’s crucifixion scenes.
Dr Lorris Chevalier, who has a Ph.D. in medieval literature, is a historical advisor for movies, including The Last Duel and Napoleon. Click here to view his website.
Click here to read more from Lorris Chevalier
Further Readings:
Denis Bruna, Piercing, sur les traces d’une infamie medievale (TEXTUEL, 2001)
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