Engraved Identity and Imprinted Validation: Materiality of Western Medieval Seals and Strategies of Communication (8th-Early 16th c.)
Individual Research Project
Seals have been used in various civilisations throughout history. They are essential elements in the practices of literate societies. Few objects embody the various issues studied in the Cluster ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ as well as seals do: these impressions contain not only images but also written texts, and are used to validate written documents or close them and hide their contents (in which case, only the matrices can tell us about their form, since the seals were intended to be destroyed by the person who read the written document). They are also symbols of their owner's status and place and function within society: they express the identity of the person who uses them. This project focuses on medieval seals used in Latin Western Europe, considered on the one hand as one of the heirs of Antiquity and, on the other hand, in its relations with other regions of the Mediterranean world in the Middle Ages.
Despite their apparent simplicity and repetitiveness, seals come in a variety of materials (e.g. wax, gold, lead), colours (for the seal or for the cord to which it is attached), shapes and sizes, designs and methods of attachment (which, if pendant, allow the use of a counter-seal). Studied as a series, they enable us to reconstruct the communication strategies of these Written Artefacts over the long term, highlighting the phenomena of cultural trends and transfers revealed by the seal matrices and the impressions they have left behind.
The historical and cultural interest of these testimonies of the past is not only valuable for understanding administrative practices, but also for understanding the interaction between the written document and the seal affixed to it: the seal is an essential element of the semiotics of written communication (the ratio between the size of the written medium and that of the seal varies from one document to another and has a different impact on the viewer of a charter, just as a document sealed with a single seal or multiple seals does not have the same legal and social value). The study of seals also allows us to reflect on the relationship between the individual and the symbol of their identity and what gives it value in terms of validating the written word, as illustrated by the possible presence of organic elements (hair, for example) in seals or fingerprints.
This project, which will result in the publication of a monograph, focuses on the systematic and comparative study of seals used in Latin Western Europe from the end of the Merovingian period to the Renaissance, from the Baltic and North Sea to the borders of the Muslim and Byzantine worlds. Unlike publications devoted to various case studies and regional or typological inventories, this comprehensive study is resolutely comparative in nature, aiming to highlight continuities, changes and phenomena of imitation on a large scale and over a long period of time – thus contributing in an original way to our knowledge of an important civilisation in our cultural heritage, where writing played an important role among other modes of communication and preservation of knowledge and decisions.