Although many people think of tattooing as a cultural practice native to Asia and the Pacific islands, tattooing has been practiced much longer in Europe than previously acknowledged.

One famous story described the tattoos of King Harold II of England, who was the last Saxon king, defeated by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 AD. Stripped of his clothing and royal regalia and his face badly mutilated, Harold II was finally identified by the tattoos of the names of his wife and country on his chest. This may have been a continuation of the tradition of elite tattooing of the Picts of the British Isles, or it may have been a common practice passed down from the Scandinavian origins of the Saxons. No further information has been found about purely decorative tattooing in the Middle Ages to answer these intriguing questions. Medieval texts do, however, mention religious tattoos with some frequency (van Dinter 2005:37).

Heinrich Suso (1295-1366 AD), a Dominican priest, had the name of Jesus tattooed over his heart. In 1503 a German girl whose face and body were covered in religious symbols was exhibited. “She was said to have received these symbols in excruciating pain during a mysterious illness,” and van Dinter proposes the idea that, in this case, the tattoos were meant to heal the girl through the power of their religious symbolism (2005:37). Some popular Christian tattoos were those of the fish, the cross, the Greek letters ‘X’ (chi) and ‘P’ (rho) which stood for the initials of Christ, the Latin letters ‘JN’ for Jesus of Nazareth, and the Lamb of God. Regarding tattoos and other permanent body markings, the Bible is unclear. Leviticus 19:48 states, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” This decree, however, was meant to distinguish the Hebrew people from surrounding tribes who would tattoo themselves in remembrance of their ancestors (2005 Tattoos and Religion).

Today, presumably due to the prohibition in Leviticus, there is still a stigma about tattooing within the Jewish faith, even though the wearing of clothing made from two different materials, the trimming of beard and hair, and other such prohibitions that are also included in Leviticus are usually ignored. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians (6:7), he writes, “From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” This could refer to sacred religious tattoos or stigmata. On the one hand, tattooing could be viewed as the desecration of the body, which is sacred because man was made in the image of God, and therefore altering it permanently goes against God’s will. This is an attitude adopted mainly by orthodox Catholics who associated tattooing with heathens and pagans. On the other hand, tattooing of religious symbols could signify one’s devotion, the pain of the process meant as a sacrifice for one’s faith. “These contrasting attitudes led the church to adopt a policy of tolerance towards religious tattoos” (van Dinter 2005:38).

During the Middle Ages, another form of devotional tattoo, the pilgrim tattoo, began to gain popularity. Pilgrims visiting holy sites were ritually tattooed as proof that they had completed their pilgrimage. This practice existed from at least the 16^th century in Bethlehem and Jerusalemand probably dates back much farther to the Medieval Crusaders. Some examples of pilgrim tattoos include those of William Lithgow, who, while on pilgrimage in Jerusalem, asked a monk to tattoo the crowns of England and Scotlandwith the inscription, “Vivat Iacobus Rex,” on his right arm as an expression of loyalty to King James, whom he recognized as the head of the church. A Count Alexander zu Pfaffenheim was tattooed with a cross on his thigh in Jaffain 1553, and one Otto Friedrich von der Goben was tattooed with a crucifix and other images in 1675. Even much later, in 1862, King Edward VII of England (who was not yet king at the time) had a Jerusalemcross tattooed on his arm (van Dinter 2005:36-38). These examples, although illuminating, are not enough to provide an accurate idea of how widespread the practice was among ordinary people. Could this be a continuation of the time-honored tradition of elite tattooing or are the sources necessarily skewed towards the famous and wealthy because of their status in society? Today religious tattoos are popular with many groups of people. In the U.S., this is often seen in Chicano communities, whose members have traditionally used images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, sometimes in full back pieces (Images 28.1, 28.2 and 29).

Pilgrim tattoos continued to be tolerated in Medieval Europe because of their spiritual nature, but examples of non-religious tattoos also existed. It is recorded that in 1609, a Londonmedical-astrologer named Simon Forman “made the characters of Venus, Jupiter and Cancer on his left arm and right breast” (Rosecrans 2000:46). Although the source, his 1611 Volumen Primum, does not describe the method by which he did so, it makes clear that the marks were permanent. Forman believed that through the application of specific astrological signs to certain parts of his body at a specified time, he would be able to have control over his own destiny. This type of body marking, if indeed it was a tattoo in the modern sense, suggests an altogether new type of classification of tattoo that is also very ancient: that of the magical tattoo. Jennipher Rosecrans writes that “Corporal alterations like Forman’s were not unknown in the early modern period. In fact, writing on the body, both permanently and ephemerally, was fairly common in magical, medical and religious practices. Although tattooing itself was not a widely practiced custom in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, there was an array of subcultures that authorized certain types of somatic marks and tattoos” (2000:48). Mostly these subcultures were those of the occult and were tied to the “magical renaissance” of the early seventeenth century. By the time of the European explorations of the fifteenth century, however, tattooing was no longer common in Europe as the indigenous decorative practices had been wiped out by the Catholic Church, and only a few instances of religious and magical tattooing survived in very specific contexts (Rosecrans 2000:47-50).  

Early European explorers who encountered tattooing in other cultures called the practice “prick’d drawings” (van Dinter 2005:40) and were astonished by these markings. Missionaries, who arrived with many of the explorers and conquistadors, were much less surprised for their training had included instruction on these ancient customs and “their written accounts include frequent references to the tattooing practices of the Moors, who occupied the Iberian Peninsulauntil the fifteenth century” (van Dinter 2005:42). Clearly tattoos had been a factor in European history for a very long time before contact with outside cultures. What this contact did, however, was to reinvigorate the ancient traditions and coalesce the various minor tattoo subcultures that had continued to exist on the margins of society into a true European “tattoo culture,” and this can be considered the basis for modern tattoo culture in Europe and North America.