![Richard de Clare](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Richard_de_Clare_%22Strongbow%22_%28seal%29.png)
Sigillography, also known by its Greek-derived name, sphragistics, is the scholarly discipline that studies the
wax
Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to giv ...
, lead, clay, and other
seals
Seals may refer to:
* Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly:
** Earless seal, or "true seal"
** Fur seal
* Seal (emblem), a device to impress an emblem, used as a means of a ...
used to authenticate
archival
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...
documents. It investigates not only aspects of the artistic design and production of seals (both matrices and impressions), but also considers the legal, administrative and social contexts in which they were used. It has links to
diplomatics
Diplomatics (in American English, and in most anglophone countries), or diplomatic (in British English), is a scholarly discipline centred on the critical analysis of documents: especially, historical documents. It focuses on the conventions, p ...
,
heraldry
Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch ...
,
social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...
, and the
history of art
The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetic vis ...
, and is regarded as one of the
auxiliary sciences of history
Auxiliary (or ancillary) sciences of history are scholarly disciplines which help evaluate and use historical sources and are seen as auxiliary for historical research. Many of these areas of study, classification and analysis were originally deve ...
. A student of seals is known as a ''sigillographer''.
Etymology
The word ''sigillography'' derives from the Latin word , meaning 'seal', and the Greek suffix , meaning 'description'. It was effectively coined in Italian (as ) by Anton Stefano Cartari in 1682. It entered English at a much later date: the earliest instances recorded by the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' date from 1879 (''sigillography'') and 1882 (''sigillographer''). The alternative term, ''sphragistics'', is derived from the Greek word , meaning 'seal': this word is first recorded in English in 1836.
History
Antiquaries
An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifacts, archaeological and historic sit ...
such as
Thomas Elmham
Thomas Elmham (1364in or after 1427) was an English chronicler.
Life
Thomas Elmham was probably born at North Elmham in Norfolk. He may have been the Thomas Elmham who was a scholar at King's Hall, Cambridge from 1389 to 1394. He became a Bened ...
and
John Rous
John Rous (21 May 1702 – 3 April 1760) was a privateer and then an officer of the Royal Navy. He served during King George's War and the French and Indian War. Rous was also the senior naval officer on the Nova Scotia station during Father ...
began to record and to discuss the historic use of seals in the 15th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries the consideration of seals became a fairly widespread antiquarian activity. Notable early students and collectors included
Robert Glover,
John Dee
John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, teacher, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divinatio ...
,
Sir Robert Cotton and
Nicolas-Claude de Peiresc.
The first published treatises dedicated to seals included Giorgio Longo's (Milan, 1615);
Olivier de Wree
Olivier de Wree (1596–1652), pen name Latinized as Olivarius Vredius, was a new Latin poet and historian from the Habsburg Netherlands.
Life
Born in Bruges on 28 September 1596, De Wree was educated at Jesuit schools there and at Douai. After t ...
's (Bruges, 1639); and Theodorus Hoepingk's (Nuremberg, 1642). Especially influential in shaping the discipline were
Jean Mabillon
Dom Jean Mabillon, O.S.B., (; 23 November 1632 – 27 December 1707) was a French Benedictine monk and scholar of the Congregation of Saint Maur. He is considered the founder of the disciplines of palaeography and diplomatics.
Early life
Mabil ...
's (1681) and
Johann Michael Heineccius
Johann Michael Heineccius (14 December 1674 – 11 September 1722) was a well-known German preacher and theologian, the brother of Johann Gottlieb Heineccius. He was born in Eisenberg, Thuringia
Eisenberg is a town in Thuringia, Germany. It is ...
' (1710). In England,
John Anstis compiled a substantial study titled "Aspilogia", but this remained in manuscript: the first work to reach print was a much slighter tract by John Lewis, ''Dissertation on the Antiquity and Use of Seals in England'' (1740). In the second half of the 19th century sigillography was further developed by German scholars including
Hermann Grotefend and
Otto Posse, and French scholars including
Louis Douët d'Arcq and
Germain Demay.
Sigillography is also an important subdiscipline of
Byzantine studies
Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, demography, dress, religion/theology, art, literature/epigraphy, music, science, economy, coinage and politics of the Eastern Roman Empire. T ...
, involving the study of Byzantine lead seal impressions and the text and images thereon. Its importance derives from both the scarcity of surviving Byzantine documents themselves, and from the large number (over 40,000) of extant seals. One of the largest compendiums of Byzantine seals can be found in the large volume by
Gustave Schlumberger
Léon Gustave Schlumberger (17 October 1844 – 9 May 1929) was a French historian and numismatist who specialised in the era of the crusades and the Byzantine Empire. His ' (1878–82) is still considered the principal work on the coinage of the c ...
, , published in 1904.
The first international colloquium on Byzantine sigillography was held at
Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks, formally the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, is a historic estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was the residence and garden of wealthy U.S. diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife, M ...
in August 1986.
[Oikonomidès Nicolas, Dumbarton Oaks International Colloquium on Byzantine Sigillography and International Congress of Byzantine Studies. 1987. ''Studies in Byzantine Sigillography.'' Washington D.C: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
]
Popular culture
Sigillography features in the plot of ''
King Ottokar's Sceptre
''King Ottokar's Sceptre'' (french: link=no, Le Sceptre d'Ottokar) is the eighth volume of ''The Adventures of Tintin'', the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper for its children's sup ...
'' (1939/1947), one of ''
The Adventures of Tintin
''The Adventures of Tintin'' (french: Les Aventures de Tintin ) is a series of 24 bande dessinée#Formats, ''bande dessinée'' albums created by Belgians, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one ...
''. Tintin accompanies
Professor Alembick, a sigillographer, on a research trip to the
Balkan nation of
Syldavia, only to become embroiled in a plot to dethrone the King.
References
{{Authority control
Historiography
Seals (insignia)