Takács Imre: Az Árpád-házi királyok pecsétjei (Corpus sigillorum hungariae mediaevalis 1. Budapest, 2012)
Catalogue
1. King Stephen I(1000-1038) Great seal (?) Has not survived. The first mention of a royal seal in Hungary is in the seal clause of the deed of foundation of Pannonhalma Abbey, issued in 1001: Quod ut verius credatur hanc pajyinam manu propria roborantes sißillari iussimus. (DHA, 40.) The document survives in an interpolated state made a century later; the original royal seal it mentions might have been the royal signet ring mentioned in the 1009 Veszprém charter, even though the two documents used different words for seal ( sißillum - anulus), or more precisely for application of the seal (sißillari). Nonetheless, after such great pains had been taken to imitate the original script and the king’s monogram, the decision to apply King Coloman’s great seal to the copy may have been guided by its resemblance to the original, of which some impressions no doubt still survived: the great seal of St Stephen. If the first Hungarian king did use a royal seal depicting himself seated on a throne, its precursor could not have been other than the image propagating the idea of vicarius Christi introduced on Otto Ill’s seal a few years earlier, in 997/998, one which became widespread on medieval seals (Posse I, p. 10. 1). Of course, this is all supposition; there are no surviving impressions of a royal seal used by St Stephen. 2. King Stephen I(1000-1038) Signet rinjj Has not survived. The first documentation of the use of a royal signet ring is the seal clause of the 1009 deed of gift of the Bishopric of Veszprém: Quod ut verius credatur dilißetiusque ab omnibus observetur, paßinam hanc manu propria coroborantes anuli nostri impressione subter insißniri curavimus. (DHA, p. 53.) No impression, and no further mention, of St Stephen’s signet ring is known. 3. King Peter(1039-1042;1044-1046) Lead bulla cast, pressed lead; diam: 26-30 mm, t: 3,5 mm; 19.09jpr Legend on front, beside king’s head, oriented vertically on each side: PET / RUS on reverse, in four horizontal lines: D(E)I GRA(TIA) / VNGA / RIORV[M] / R[E]X This is the only known impression. The vertical legend beside the image of the ruler is unusual in Western royal seals and probably follows the Byzantine custom. The closes known precursors of the image and legend composition are the medallion portraits of rulers on the border of the Székesfehérvár casula, which was made eight years before Peter’s ascendancy to the throne and was later converted into a coronation robe. 156
