Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals Edited by Noël Adams, John Cherry and James Robinson Publishers The British Museum Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DG Series Editor Josephine Turquet Assistant editor Portia Reyes Assistant for images Margarita Luna Distributors The British Museum Press 46 Bloomsbury Street London WC1B 3QQ Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals Edited by Noël Adams, John Cherry and James Robinson Front Cover: Seal of Robert Fitzwalter, 1213–19 (Handlist no. 8.1) ISBN 978-086159-168-8 ISSN 1747-3640 © The Trustees of the British Museum 2008 Note: the British Museum Occasional Papers series is now entitled British Museum Research Publications. The OP series runs from 1 to 150, and the RP series, keeping the same ISSN and ISBN preliminary numbers, begins at number 151. For a complete catalogue of the full range of OPs and RPs see the series website: www/the britishmuseum.ac.uk/researchpublications Order from www.britishmuseum.org/shop For trade orders write to: Oxbow Books, 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2EW, UK Tel: (+44) (0) 1865 241249 e-mail [email protected] website www.oxbowbooks.com or The David Brown Book Co PO Box 511, Oakville CT 06779, USA Tel: (+1) 860 945 9329; Toll free 1 800 791 9354 e mail [email protected] Printed and bound in the UK by Kingswood Steele Contents Preface v James Robinson In Search of a Semiotic Paradigm: The Matter of Sealing in Medieval Thought and Praxis (1050–1400) 1 Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak The Knight’s Alter Ego: From Equestrian to Armorial Seal 8 Adrian Ailes Heads, Arms and Badges: Royal Representation on Seals 12 John Cherry Queens and Powerful Women: Image and Authority 17 Elizabeth Danbury The Re-use and Copying of Ancient Intaglios set in Medieval Personal Seals, mainly found in England: An aspect of the Renaissance of the 12th Century 25 Martin Henig Seals and Status in Medieval English Towns: A Case-study of London, Newcastle and Durham 35 Elizabeth New Glasgow, Italy and France: 13th- and early 14th-century Seals from the Cathedral 42 Virginia Glenn The Seals of the Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England 52 David Marcombe The Judicial Seals of the Welsh Courts of Great Sessions 60 David H. Williams The Oldest Equestrian Seals in Sweden: Karl Sverkersson, Birger Brosa and Karl the Deaf 66 Göran Tegnér The Re-engraved Matrix: Bishop versus Chapter in Nidaros around 1300 71 Erla Bergendahl Hohler Medieval Seal Matrices found at Castles and Castle Mounds in Denmark – What does Archaeology tell us about their Use? 77 Michael Andersen Seals of Swedish Towns before 1350 81 Henrik Klackenberg Curial Narratives: The Seals of Cardinal Deacons 1280–1305 85 Julian Gardner The Sealed Saint: Representations of Saint Francis of Assisi on Medieval Italian Seals 91 Ruth Wolff ‘... in quella era unico al Mondo’: A Reassessment of Cinquecento Seal Engraving and the Seal Matrices of Lautizio Da Perugia 100 Matthew Sillence Appendix: The Exhibition Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals 106 Introduction to the Handlist to the Exhibition 106 James Robinson Handlist to the Exhibition 109 Bibliography 127 Acknowledgements The papers contained in this volume were delivered at a conference held at the British Museum on 16 and 17 February 2007. (The exception is David Williams’ paper which replaces that delivered at the conference, now published as ‘Medieval Cistercian seals with special reference to “hand-and-staff seals”’, Archaeologia Cambriensis 2005, vol. 154, 153–78.) The conference was organised to coincide with the exhibition Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals (see Appendix). Both endeavours were generously supported by John H. Rassweiler who has also contributed significantly to the cost of this publication. The exhibition was conceived in collaboration with John Cherry and curated by James Robinson and Noël Adams but a great many other people helped to bring it to fruition. Jana Vodickova was responsible for the design, Julia Robinson and Ben Ferguson for the graphics and marketing. Thanks are also due to Philip Attwood, Jim Peters, Peter Rae, Jennifer Mills, Amanda Gregory, Richard Kelleher, Kirstin Leighton-Boyce, Jennifer Adam, Michael Neilson and Pippa Pearce. The success of the conference relied on the very high standard of the papers that were given and to its emphatically international, interdisciplinary nature. Elizabeth Morhange and Carey Fleiner provided assistance in the early stages of its planning and further help was offered by Matthew Harvey, Francesca Hillier and Isabel Assaly. The quality of this publication is due entirely to the energies of Josephine Turquet assisted by Portia Reyes and Margarita Luna. In Search of a Semiotic Paradigm: The Matter of Sealing in Medieval Thought and Praxis (1050–1400) Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak Historians fish in the vast sea of the medieval past. As they troll were responsible for the vast majority of sealed documents and reel in, they wish to comprehend, not only the catch but from the late 13th century onward.6 A second criterion for the sea itself, and yet when they pull in the net, the sea slips distinguishing the two periods concerns the particulars of through the webbing.1 So we are left with artefacts deprived of diplomatic discourse, specifically the final textual clauses of their context, which we then attempt to restore. Such is the charters in which the attachment of the seal was announced. case with seals. Medieval scholars have considered them as After some flux during the early 11th century, the formulae authoritative means of documentary validation, as markers of became virtually standardised in stating that the author of the identity, and as loci of artistic, spiritual, and ritual activities. charter had confirmed it with the impression of his seal: ‘que This understanding of medieval seals and sealing practices concessio, ut rata et inviolabilis in futuro permaneat, sigilli mei assumes a general grammar instrumental in generating seal impressione corrobari volui’.7 By the early 13th century, form, performance, and meaning. In this sense, the ‘realism’ of however, imprinting (impressione) began to be supplemented seals is construed as inhering in the adequacy of their fit to by specific references to the gesture of appending, as stated paradigmatic cultural models.2 typically in a validating clause: ‘quod ut ratum sit firmiterque Medieval seals, however, did not merely reflect the in posterum teneatur, ipsam compositionem litteris tradi organizing principles of medieval culture and society nor did fecimus et sigillorum nostrorum appensione muniri’.8 By the they simply represent reality; they were involved in creating a mid-13th century, the clause of validation tended to include a reality, that is, veritas, truth. Seal legends not infrequently newer generic formula which asserted that the seal was themselves declared that the seal was veritas.3 It was explicit appended as an attestation: ‘In cujus rei testimonium, ... that the accuracy and truthfulness which inhered in a sealed sigillum meum feci apponi’.9 charter was a verity produced by the seal. In medieval culture, The progression of these trends – the formulas overlap and truth was a fundamental value which could not be dissociated the examples cited do not exhaust the full lexicon of terms used from the real: truth was reality. in validating clauses – cannot be explained simply as reflecting I wish here to examine seals and sealing practices beyond contemporary sealing techniques. True, the earliest western their determinative function, to consider the mechanisms by seals were applied directly to their documents and the wax was which seals served both as makers and markers of reality, to stamped after it had already been laid on the parchment. analyze seals both as material and as conceptual entities which Applied seals, however, gave way to pendant seals from the between 1050 and 1400 formed the matter of diverse mid-11th century onward. In such regions as Flanders, Brabant, discourses, relationships, and images. My analysis will focus Hainaut, the pendant seal had totally replaced the applied seal on a few specific cases which permit a survey of the manner by 1110.10 Of course, even after the introduction of pendant and the implications of sealing performance. I will argue that seals, imprinting, that is, the impression of a matrix upon the in acting as formative models of truth and of experienced soft wax or metal, persisted. Nor had appending totally reality, seals and sealing exposed contemporary tensions in displaced imprinting as the specific act which defined and such realms as metaphysics, law, and semiotics. At the core of completed the process of sealing, since the final stamping of these tensions lay the fact that there was no possible appeal to the wax seal necessarily occurred only after its attachments existing guarantees which could verify the application of seals had been inserted into the document itself. An entire century and assure the success of their operations. I therefore intend to elapsed between the first appearance of pendant seals and the propose that, as axiomatically-defined objects of social control time that textual clauses declaring their pendency became and identity, seals benefited from the affirmative support of standard within the document itself. rules which had their sanction in supernatural stipulation; they We therefore have to address the fact that, during the initial gained their sanction by means of their performance within the century of their diffusion, seals were experienced as, and acted fields of theology and devotional literature. as, impressions. Attention to the validating formulae reveals The first case is based upon my analysis of several hundred the following points. Some formulae indicate that the charter charters given in northern France between 1050 and 1300.4 itself had been impressed impregnated) with the seal, ‘mea This bracket of dates in fact covers two periods: 1050 to 1180, carta sigillo impressa confirmavi’.11 In other clauses, the term and 1180 to 1300, which may be distinguished along two axes.