HISTORIANS will be reviewing more than 5,000 medieval seals relating to Wales, held at the National Library of Wales, as part of a new research project.
The team from Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities will look at the seals – used to authenticate and close documents – to find out what they actually tell us about the people who commissioned them, interpreting how they saw themselves and wanted others to see them and what they can tell us about the society that produced them.
Uniquely, one strand of the project will also be concentrating on images of medieval women.
The project is funded by an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research grant of £490,000. Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities are collaborating their expertise for the work. The research project also includes digitising the collection, making it more accessible to the general public and creating a travelling exhibition based on the collection.
At a time when only kings or the very powerful of the day could expect to commission a portrait or be pictured in a rare book, the image on your seal was one way of visually expressing your standing in society. The seal of a town corporation, for example, might show a castle tower and walls and that might be because they were proud to be defined as a borough.
“In the past the seals have been appreciated for their pictorial beauty,” said Sue Johns of Bangor University’s School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology. “We will be looking at the way the images were used to provide a sense of identity.
“Seals moved from being something that only the highest in the land had at the beginning of the 12th century to a must-have status symbol by the end of the thirteenth. The 12th century marks a period of transition from an oral culture to a written one so seals were being used more often to authenticate written land transactions and so forth.
“By the end of this period, many well-to-do farmers and merchants had their own seals, and indeed by the late Middle Ages most landholders, even of quite low social status, had them. Changes in culture and fashion can be traced in images on seals through the period, medieval women’s wear changes as does the armour of knights seen in seals. They often depict heraldry or other symbolic images.”
One of the main challenges which faces the team is that many of the seals have become separated from their documents over the centuries. Having the document attached gives clues to the background of the owner of the seal and helps with the interpretation.
Professor Phillipp Schofield, a medieval historian at Aberystwyth, said: “One of the particular themes which I’m looking forward to exploring in this project relates to everyday exchange of property and the insights seals offer us into such dealing in medieval Welsh society, but there are so many other potential avenues for investigation including piety, personal expression, political affiliation and so on.
“There has been relatively little work done on this in any context, and this project presents us with an excellent opportunity to lead the way in the study of this important medieval source.
“The project will assemble a first-rate team of medievalists, including Dr Elizabeth New, a noted specialist in the use and interpretation of medieval seals, and a second research appointment to the project will be made later this year.
“This is all most exciting and will allow us to develop a highly valuable theme in the study both of seals and of medieval Welsh history.”