Sigillography, also known by its Greek-derived name, sphragistics, is the scholarly discipline that studies the wax, lead, clay, and other seals used to authenticate archival 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,

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, Imperial, royal and noble ranks, rank and genealo ...

social history Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians. Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...

, 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 aesthetics ...

, 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 principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

'' 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

Sigilla comitum flandraie - de Wree 1639

Antiquaries such as Thomas Elmham and John Rous 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, teacher, astrologer, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, ...

, 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 Neo-Latin poet and historian from the Spanish Netherlands. Life Born in Bruges on 28 September 1596, De Wree was educated at Jesuit schools there and at Douai. After tr ...

's (Bruges, 1639); and Theodorus Hoepingk's (Nuremberg, 1642). Especially influential in shaping the discipline were

Jean Mabillon Dom Jean Mabillon , (; 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 Mabillon w ...

's (1681) and Johann Michael Heineccius' (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. ...

, 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 Gustave Léon 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 ...

, , 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 gardens of wealthy U.S. diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife ...

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'' () 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 supplement , it was serialised weekly fr ...

'' (1939/1947), one of ''

The Adventures of Tintin ''The Adventures of Tintin'' ( ) is a series of 24 comic albums created by Belgians, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a c ...

''. Tintin accompanies Professor Alembick, a sigillographer, on a research trip to the fictional Balkan nation of Syldavia, only to become embroiled in a plot to dethrone the King.

References

{{Authority control Historiography Seals (insignia)

Etymology

History

Popular culture

See also

References