Takács Imre: Az Árpád-házi királyok pecsétjei (Corpus sigillorum hungariae mediaevalis 1. Budapest, 2012)
Introduction
The “image of the king” did not refer to a simple representation; the words imply an actual manifestation of the living king. Reverence was for the image of the king, whom the seal made present in his full power and authority. A charter issued by Emperor Conrad III in 1139, containing a revision of two former documents, makes a distinction between the “known ring” of King Dagobert of the Danes and the “known image” of Charles the Great (Karoli regis Francorum nota imagine signatum).218 The twelfth century imperial chancellery used the word imago with the same meaning as it had in the vocabulary of the Hungarian king’s nótárius. Every compositional element of the representation on the seal had significance: the posture and insignia of the figure, above all the crown, sceptre and globe, and just as importantly, the costume and the form of the throne.219 The royal seals have a special place among medieval Hungarian relics in forming an almost unbroken series of representations of the monarch. We know of about forty' seals of kings and queens with figurái representations from the three centuries of the rule of the House of Árpád. This number is all the more striking when set against the very small number of other figurái art works from the period. Appearing at intervals of 10, 20 or 30 years (most frequently during the reign of Ladislaus IV) over several centuries, medieval seals may be viewed as the most reliable set of pictorial sources for the period, and royal seals can be dated precisely in nearly every case. The study of seals gives an insight into art in medieval Hungary that cannot be obtained in any other way. The discussion here focuses on issues of image history and representation history connected with these seals. Accordingly, we will devote less attention to the diplomatic aspects of the seals, which have been better explored in different branches of historical study. Justification of the autonomous art-history approach is provided by the artistic qualities of the seals used by kings, queens and princes of the first Hungarian ruling dynasty', and also by the gaps in the art historiography of this area. The difficulties in judging the quality and stylistic character of each seal arise primarily because what has survived is not the primary “work of art”, the goldsmith’s matrix engraved in metal, but the secondary stages of the production process, the impressions of the matrix in other material. Furthermore, many of the surviving impressions, given the effects of adverse storage conditions on their fragile material, are fragmentary or incomplete. As a result, our knowledge of them - especially from the eleventh and twelfth 218 Posse V, p. 137. 219 On the history of sovereign insignia: Schramm 1958. centuries - is subject to the uncertainties and methodological imperfections of restoration and fragment interpretation. For seals that survive in the form of wax impressions, we should not forget that they are all the work of goldsmiths, usually highly esteemed masters of their time. The ability to engrave matrices was a criterion laid down in the late medieval goldsmith guild regulations for being admitted as a master.220 Sources mention that seals were made by specialised artists as early as the fourteenth century, and their special titles (incisor sigillorum, gravator sigillorum, sculptor sigillorum, sigillifaber) convey that these masters were distinguished from other goldsmiths primarily on the basis of the seals they made.221 It is quite certain that to engrave a seal matrix for a monarch was a particularly prestigious and well-rewarded task. Although no artists’ names related to the royal seal are directly mentioned in Árpád era sources, we know of one case that may be interpreted as such with high probability. In 1270, the year King Stephen V ascended the throne, a goldsmith named Matthew received an outstandingly high honorarium - 60 holds (approximately 30 hectares) of land - for a service that was not further specified. He may have been the maker of Stephen V’s great seal with a double cross bearing a crown of thorns, the most sophisticated iconographic programme of any thirteenth century Hungarian royal seal.222 (Cat. 36.) The matrix or typarium is a negative mould usually made by engraving a metal blank. It could also be carved from stone, and in the Carolingian era was often a gemstone in a metal setting.223 One of the earliest documentary records of the use of seals by Hungarian kings, the deed of foundation of the Bishopric of Veszprém issued in 1009, mentions the signet ring of King Stephen (anuli nostri impressione, see Cat. 2). We may infer that Stephen’s ring was the kind of gem seal documented as having been in use in the second half of the twelfth century - during the reign of Stephen III, Béla III and Enteric (Cat. 16, 18, 20) - or one like those of the Carolingians, a larger stone set in an inscription-bearing metal frame, as used by Béla IV during the lifetime of his father (Cat. 29). The seal matrix could also be an engraved precious stone in a gold setting, as mentioned in a document from the time of Louis the Pious ( sigilla aurea mirifica cum preciosis lapidibus) ,224 220 Brucher 1889, p. 248; Ewald 1914, p. 137. 221 Ewald 1914, pp. 137-138. No makers of Hungarian royal seals are known by name from the thirteenth century, and only one from the next: Petrus Gallicus Simonis, who made the third great seal for Charles Robert in 1331. Cf. Mihalik 1928. 222Wenzel III, p. 237. 223 Posse V,p. 139. 224 Posse V, p. 140. 52
