Takács Imre: Az Árpád-házi királyok pecsétjei (Corpus sigillorum hungariae mediaevalis 1. Budapest, 2012)

Type History and Iconography

his patron) who so carefully copied the hand of the original scriptor of more than a hundred years before, even writing the interpolations in the same way, might have also considered it important that the seal to be placed on the restored document should be reminiscent of the probably still well-known seal of St Stephen.258 Could it be that the blurring of the image and inscription of King Coloman’s seal as it appears on the interpolated charter was actually a deliberate “forgery”, or rather an attempt at feigned imitation, taking the place of St Stephen’s seal? Was the painstaking maker of the charter trying to generate the impression that a document which looked as if it dated from around 1000 also bore a seal from that time?259

King Stephen modelled his charters on - and drew his chancellery staff from - the imperial milieu, and so it would not be such a great surprise if he looked to the same source for devices of monarchical representation. László Fejérpataky’s proposal that “the appointees to St Stephen’s chancellery were previously members of the German chancellery, and imported its style and organisation into Hungary,”260 was taken further by Harry Bresslau of Strasbourg in 1916 in a text analysis of charters from the era of Stephen I.261 His comparative study of the script of copy of the Pannonhalma charter identified the writer of these texts as a notary who left the imperial chancellery in 1002 following the death of Otto III. Bresslau’s finding, transmitted by Imre Szentpétery, was quickly embraced by Hungarian historians, and has never been doubted since.262 The presence in Hungary of a notary who previously worked for Heribert, chancellor to Otto III and Henry II, could not have been an isolated phenomenon in Stephen’s kingdom.263

If the seal used by Stephen in 1001/1002 really was a maiestas seal, its model could hardly have been anything other than the conceptually ground-breaking imperial maiestas seal introduced by Otto III in

258 Cautious linkage of the Pannonhalma charter to Coloman’s seal and St Stephen’s seal, without resolving every uncertainty: Gerevich 1938, p. 210.

2=9 Extending the forgery hypothesis to the seal is not a

straightforward matter. The sticking point is the attachment of the pendent seal at the bottom of the charter. This follows the custom current around 1100 rather than the original date of issue. By inference from German practice, the original must have had a through-pressed seal. On the forgery connections of the seal on the interpolated Pannonhalma charter: Baróti 1896; Szentpétery 1930, pp. 37-38.

260 Fejérpataky 1878, p. 150.

261 Bresslau 1916, pp. 65-76.

262 Szentpétery 1918. For an account of the historiography of the Pannonhalma charter see: Thoroczkay 1996, pp. 90-109.

263 Relevant to the German cultural and artistic orientation is the

western apse type of the first church of Pannonhalma Abbey

revealed in the excavation of the 1990s, built just around the

millennium. Latest on this: Takács 2000, pp. 617-620.

997/998 (fig. 6). The literature of royal symbols and likenesses generally links the maiestas motif - which first appeared in imperial seals in the final years of the tenth century - to Christ iconography and the underlying liturgical-theological texts, especially the idea of the vicarious Christi associated with Otto III himself.264 The maiestas seal imputed to the first king of Hungary a few years later is more titan a salient example of following the imperial model. It makes clear that Stephen’s depiction could not have been untouched by the transcendental allusions associated with the throne seal of his great contemporary. We are restricted to supposition here, as so often, but it is consistent with a historic figure acting in response to a calling, a characteristic that Eva Kovács, speaking at a conference held on the 950th anniversary of Stephen’s death, summed up in her analysis of the Székesfehérvár casula-. “Stephen was an active and purposeful figure in salvation history. He was blessed with what is held above all else in a Christian king, dignity... he was like Tamar in the Old Testament stories of Thomas Mann, steadfastly seeking out the way he could play his part in human history. Rex et sacerdos.. .”265

Another item worth considering in relation to the supposed image on the first Hungarian royal seal is a depiction of Stephen from the same time which survives on the Székesfehérvár chasuble, which was later made into a coronation robe (fig. 3). The entire surface of the chasuble is covered with gold- embroidered figures, inscriptions and ornamentation, and the donors, the royal couple, are placed on the bottom series of images on each side of the trunk of the Y-shaped cross, in the company of the saints. It is also significant that among the saints lined up in the lower region of the hierarchical iconographical system and bearing the royal insignia (crown, orb and lance), the donor couple Stephen and Gisella occupy the most elevated place among the first martyrs of the church. “Stephen assimilates to the saints - or they to him?”266 This is not an utterly unique case of the depiction of a king in the elevated company of the celestial hierarchy, the “steadfast search” for a part in salvation history. The iconographic sanctification of the ruler is also present in Byzantine representation, but the picture of the ruler being crowned by Christ is intended to convey a sacred allegory of the origin of earthly power, not to place the emperor in the heavenly kingdom and the communion of saints during his own lifetime. The representatives of the heavenly host, or Christ himself, descend to a place above or beside the emperor. The

264 Schramm 1924, pp. 205-206; Schramm - Miitherich 1983, p. 199. Abb. 100. The latest on Otto Ill’s seal: Keller 2000, pp. 767-773.

265 Kovács 1988, p. 140.

266 Kovács 1988, p. 138.

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