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

The Chronology of the Seals of Ladislaus IV

THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE SEALS OF LADISLAUS IV

“The reign of Ladislaus, who became king at the age often after the sudden death of Stephen V on 6 August 1272, was marked by a continual struggle for power between baronial alliances, bringing the kingdom into anarchy and its institutions into sustained crisis and disintegration. The provenance of this state was the ferocious, unrelenting fighting between the ruthless Kőszegi and Csáki families and their accomplices, who frequently also turned their violence against the King. Throughout the kingdom, ‘everyone was at war with everyone else.’”402 Baronial cliques were not a new phenomenon. Together with the use of the word “baron”, they had their roots in an earlier period that was no less beset by dynastic and social tensions. This was the reign of Ladislaus’ grandfather Andrew II, and the trouble began with his new policy of land grants. Unbridled royal generosity' through “grants in perpetuity” reinforced the power-hungry aristocracy, who in the final decades of the thirteenth century arrogated to themselves the economic and political affairs of the kingdom.

Andrew II’s strikingly frequent need to change the royal seal - with its symbols of royal power and its own great symbolic significance - is perhaps no surprise. It was something no previous Árpád king had experienced, and in the twelfth century there were signs of an opposite trend among royal seals: Géza II and Stephen II used their predecessors’ seal matrices engraved with new legends (figs. 17-19). The first replacement of the roval seal during Andrew II’s reign was necessitated by the 1213 plot leading to the death of the Queen, and the second by the political changes of the 1220s. The seal clause of a 1216 charter reveals the link between Gertrude’s murder and the replacement of the first great seal, which had been used since 1205.403 The destruction of the second typarium was declared, and the reason for doing so implied, by the legend of the third great seal, made in 1229, by the words: alia sigilla sunt falsa istud sigillum est verum.404 A total of

402 Engel 1990, p. 236.

•tos Verum quia prcsentis privilegii series prioris sigilli nostri inunimine, quod in oceisione regine Gertrudis nostre dilectissime coniugis tbit deperditum, consignata fiierat, presentem paginarn rcnovandam fore dignum duximus et alio sigillo, quod contra false canillacionis dolositates, quae possent accidere, parari fecimus, ...in perpetuum roboravimus... OL Dl

80.; Wenzel XI, p. 134.

41,4 Ut igitur hec a nobis deliberacione regia facta donacio ncc longa tcmporum canicie dilui, nec insoptio malignacium impetu nostris nostrorumque uccessorum temporibus retractari valeat, prcsenti paginc commcndavimus ac sigillo nostro

six seals are known from Andrew II’s thirty-year reign. Some were used concurrently: for example, there is evidence that from 1217 at the latest the gold seal was used together with the second and third great seals.405 Similarly, Andrew II introduced the double seal, which the chancellery used in parallel with the great seal and Andrew’s successors used exclusively. This had the image of the king on one side and the coat of arms on the other (figs. 72-73). In this respect, Andrew II’s reign is a transition from the way the kings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries used seals to the practices of the chancellery in subsequent centuries. The gold seal used by Emeric in 1202 served as the compositional model for the double seal, first documented in 1213. The maiestas figure of the king holding the sovereign insignia in his turned-in hands, and the barry-of-eight heraldic bearings with lion figures on the other side, are distinctive features that appeared consistently from Enteric’s gold seal up to both of Andrew II’s double seals. The double seal mentioned as early as 1213 was still in use in 1231, but in the year of his death, 1235, we hear of it being changed.406 *

Compared with the three replacement seals during the thirty years of Andrew II’s reign, his successor Béla IV changed his only once after he came to the throne, after the Mongol Invasion, probably because the previous one was lost. Stephen V used the same royal double seal during his brief two-year reign. All the more striking, then, is the chaotic series of seals on the charters of Ladislaus IV’s chancellery. The royal double seal was changed a total of six times during Ladislaus IV’s reign, four of which involved a completely new matrix, and two the engraving of new signs to change the image. This far surpassed any of his predecessors in quantity. We know that he also used a signet ring in addition to the double seal.40/ These seals provide a series ofillustrations of age, and permit the construction

privilegiali novo, quod in prcjudicium prioris cassandum parari

fecimus in gcncracionum generaciones illibate observandum regia auctoritate roboravimus. Smiciklas III, p. 319 ; cf.

Szentpétery 1916, p. 6.

405 For a thirteenth century description of the gold seal suspended from a 1217 Andrew II charter, see Kropf 1896, p. 134.

406200 ... ad universorum noticiam volumus pervenire, quod cum de adulteratione duplicis sigilli nostri antiqui nobis liquido consti- terit, propter quod ipsum in medium secari fecimus coram nobis ; fratrcs Capituli Strigoniensis nobis litteras, sub eodem sigillo con- tinentes, exhibuerunt, humiliter supplicando, ut ipsas auctoritate renovati sigilli nostri dignaremur renovarc. MonStrig I, p. 310.

4(17 Mentioned in connection with a charter issued on 11 July 1275: Szentpétery 1923, p. 317.

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