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

Type History and Iconography

in Ulm (fig. 24).321 Art works containing this iconographic form were referred to most recently in connection with the engraved precious stones adorning the St Elizabeth reliquary of Marburg.322 The double cross, whose first appearance among royal insignia is on the orb on the great seal of King Enteric, could have derived from such Byzantine-modelled precursors as the Esztergom Staurotheke, the double cross of Salzburg (fig. 23) or the royal iconography of the Barbarossa era.323

In the second decade of Andrew IPs rule, a new version of the counter-seal, demonstrating the division of power between the king and the heir apparent started to be used by the Hungarian chancellery. Prince Béla, crowned junior king in 1214, had engraved for himself a princely seal in which - uniquely among Hungarian royal seals - he called himself the king “by the grace of God and the will of his father” (voliintate

321 Das Reich der Salier, pp. 441-442.

322 Amdick 2007, p. 32, Abb. IS.

323 K.g. the representation of Empress Beatrix with double cross

on the Charlemagne arm reliquary; Schramm 1, Nr. 211.

mi patris rex). A smaller seal matrix with a helmeted profile and legend, probably originating from an engraved gem (fig. 25), started to be used as a counterseal to his father’s great seal (Gat. 29).

It was the Carolingian rulers who most favoured the use of ancient engraved stones as secondary seals, a phenomenon related to the general interest in antiquity. The value of ancient intaglios never faltered during the Middle Ages.324 Charlemagne’s ring was adorned by a gem bearing the head of Jupiter, and we also know of an ancient profile portrait gem from his reign bearing a legend containing the name Charles.325 The profile portrait of the engraved crystal matrix set into the Cross of Lothair also follows a Roman gem precursor (fig. 26). The direct precursor of the Carolingian practice may be seen in a gem seal from the age of the Kingdom of the Franks: Childerich Ill’s seal, which has no legend, bears a profile portrait from the Roman imperial era.326

324 Ewald 1914, pp. 126-127. For the history of medieval use of ancient gems: Demay 1880.

325 Ewald 1914, p. 126, Taf. 16/1-2.

32h I leincecius 1719, p. 117, Taf. 111/5; ct. Ewald 1914, p. 126. Another bust-image signet ring imitating a gem image was that of Childeric I or II. The ring was found in Tournay in 1653, and is currently held in the Bibliothcquc Nationale in Paris: Seyler 1894, p. 56.

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