Monks and their Seals : a Review of the Situation (France, XIIe-XVe Centuries) Les sceaux de moines : un premier état des lieux (France, XIIe-XVe siècle) En Fr

Résumé En

Very few monks, friars, regular canons owned personal seals. This paper, based on inventories and catalogues of seals available at the Centre de Sigillographie of the Archives nationales in Paris, analyses 171 french seals. Dated from 1182 to 1485, they belonged to monks per se (mostly benedictines, cistercians and clunisians), friars (mendicant, hospital and military orders) and canons (mainly augustinians). Only 6 seal owners were women. Abbots, priors and officers of the cloister are left out of this survey. However, the two oldest seals of this corpus belonged to a former bishop for one, and to a former abbot for the other. Monks were supposed to shed all personal belongings when entering their religious community. Possessing a seal was a special situation to them. So those 171 monastic seals represent a significant number. More than half of the corpus consists in matrices, thus making it difficult to give a date of use or to clarify the seal owner’s order without the help of a charter. Despite this, it’s possible to indicate monks’seals were probably more frequent in 1250-1350. Legends often lack of precision concerning titles, especially monastic orders and places. A seal referring to a « frater » could belong either to a franciscan, a templar or even a monk. And images give no indication about the order. Iconography is varied but showing mostly religious subjects. Devotional scenes and coats of arms account for a large proportion of the corpus. It is a surprise however to note that seal owners’ standing figures were engraved on a few seals, which was quite daring when you consider the stature of such iconography. There were probably a few hundred monks’ seals in Europe during medieval and modern era, maybe a thousand. It’s a lot, if one considers that monks were not allowed a seal theoritically. But it’s very few compared to abbots, priors and officer of cloiters’ seals which were probably tens of thousands during the same period.