Takács Imre: Az Árpád-házi királyok pecsétjei (Corpus sigillorum hungariae mediaevalis 1. Budapest, 2012)
Type History and Iconography
from the reign of Béla I (1060-1063) (Cat. 6).293 We have a nearly complete, continuous series of royal seals starting from the 1070s, the reign of Ladislaus I. St Ladislaus’ seal may be found on the earliest royally- endorsed Hungarian private document surviving in its original form, the charter by which his nephew Prince David made a donation to Tihany (Cat 9).294 The wax seal suspended from the lower third of the small parchment document is in severely damaged condition, broken into several pieces, and its surface is incomplete (fig. 14). Observations of the seal can thus to little more than determine the general features of the image type and reconstruct the legend. The figure of the king is clearly seated on a vertical-sided bench-shaped throne; his right arm is slightly raised and extended to the side, and it holds a long rod which rests on the ground (fig. 15). The upper end of the rod can no longer be made out, but it is unlikely to be the revival of the royal lance-insignia taken as booty' in the Battle of Ménfő, which appeared during the reign of St Stephen. Much more credible is a depiction of a stall' similar to the royal sceptre.295 The representation of the long king’s staff can be traced to antiquity and the Carolingian iconographie tradition,296 and also occurred frequently in the eleventh century, above all on German royal seals, alternating with shorter sceptre forms decorated with lily or bird forms (fig. 16).297 It is difficult to infer from this much-degraded seal image the adoption in Hungary of the imperial insignia, and perhaps the entire imperial ornamentation; it may merely reflect the influence of contemporary royal seals. Also unique is the lapidary terseness of the legend on St Ladislaus’ seal. Not only is the Dei gratia formula absent, it does not say which people or kingdom he is the king of. This absence is all the more striking for its departure from eleventh century Hungarian tradition. St Ladislaus’ seal has three known epigraphic precursors: King Peter’s lead bulla, Andrew Ts seal of summons 293 Györffy 1966, p. 150-157. 294 Original: Pannonhalma, Benedictine Abbey Archive, Tihany, fasc.l. n. 27. Critical edition of the charter and its associated literature: DHA I, pp. 264-265. Latest image and description of seal in: Paradisum plantavit, 68, no. 1.12. 295 László Kovács has dealt with the history of the Hungarian lance a regis in several studies, which imply that the occurrence of the lance insignia in the era of King Ladislaus is not plausible: Kovács L. 1975, pp. 257-274; Kovács L. 1976, pp. 123-146; Kovács L. 1994, pp. 363-380; Kovács L. 2000, p. 571. 296 Lothair I holds a long ball-ended rod in his miniature portraits in the Paris Evangeliarium and the London Psalterium: Schramm - Miitherich 1983, p. 49, Nr. 21-22. The same insignia occurs on the dedication picture of the Vivian Bible in the time of Charles the Bald; ibid., Nr. 36. 297 Most relevant is the long-staffed sceptre of the contemporaries of King Ladislaus, Henry III and Henry IV: Schramm- Miitherich 1983, Nr. 146-147, p. 169. and of Solomon’s lead bulla. All three incorporate the words Deigracia ungariorum (or ungrorum) rex, and the name of the king is everywhere in the nominative.298 There is as yet no dear explanation for why the composer of Ladislaus’ seal legend dispensed with the full version, or why he used the genitive. The seal is relatively small (75 mm), but this in no way justifies the abbreviation of the wording. The next example of a comparably brief seal legend is Géza II’s lead bulla of 1158, but its composition in other respects is completely different. There, the name and title of the king fills the entire surface of the reverse of the small disc. The omission of the name of the people or kingdom, like the use of the royal staff, may also be attributed to the influence of the German model,299 unless the minimalised formulation is manifesting the temporary conditions of the years of contention for the throne between Solomon and Ladislaus (1077- 1081). The coincidence of the wording with the legend of two twelfth-century metal seals (Géza II and Béla III), and the Agnus Dei medallion does not seem at all relevant. The two surviving seals of King Coloman are in much better condition than their predecessors. We have already discussed their connection with the use of seals by St Stephen (Cat. 10). The throne has the same bench form as on the seals of Andrew I and St Ladislaus, and the position of the figure’s hands and the regalia are the same as the corresponding details on King Peter’s bulla and Andrew I’s seal of summons. The wording of the legend returns to the version - with the nominative - used in Hungarian royal seals before the era of King Ladislaus, and for the last time on a Hungarian royal seal the genitive form of the people — ungarorum - instead of the name of the kingdom. We do not know whether Coloman’s successor Stephen 11(1116-1131) carried on the tradition of the previous century, or whether he started the closely interrelated series that subsequently lasted until the end of the century. We know four members of the series: the royal seals of Béla II (113-1141), his son Géza II (1141-1162) and two grandsons Stephen III (1162-1172) and (1172-1196), but we could also stretch it to include that of Béla Ill’s first-born son 298 Linguistic features of the eleventh-century seal legends as regard Hungarian royal seals: Jakubovich 1933, p. 56; Kubinyi 1999, pp. 319-320. 299 A legend reduced to minimal dimensions, for example, is Henry IV’s royal seal from between 1057 and 1060; Posse I, 16.1; Schramm - Miitherich 1983, p. 238, Nr. 166. It may also be relevant that counter-king Rudolf of Swabia, Ladislaus’ father-in-law had a seal from 1079 whose legend also left out the name of the kingdom (RVDOLFVS DI GRA REX). Rudolf’s seal published in: Posse I, 18.1; Schramm - Miitherich 1983, p. 245, Nr. 176. 60
