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252 chapter eleven Visual Self-Fashioning and the Seals of the Knights Hospitaller in England laura j. whatley As highly mobile and intrinsically visual artifacts, medieval seals both embody and convey individual or institutional identity, sometimes providing the most complete record of a group’s structure and selfconception . This is certainly true of the seals of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England, whose visual culture was mostly eradicated during the Reformation. Representative seals of the English order, many of which are still affixed to the original document, survive from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, allowing the seal to be roughly dated and perhaps identifying the sealer. In this chapter, I discuss both the pictorial content and inscriptions of select Hospitaller seals from England, locating these seals in their immediate social context, both international and local. Not only can the seals used by the Hospitallers in England be understood in relation to the crusade movement and the order’s central authoritative body in the Latin East, but they can also be investigated within their domestic religious, political, and social milieu.∞ They provide important and unique insight into how the Order of the Hospital of St. John identified or fashioned itself in England, as both a military order and an international monastic foundation. Importantly, this selfpresentation changed most dramatically over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, following the establishment of the English order after 1128 and its subsequent independence from the Grand Priory of St. Gilles in France in the 1180s. I therefore consider the ways in which the English seals reference or break from the seals produced in the Latin East and France, analyzing changes in the iconography on the English seals as public statements of an emerging corporate autonomy in England and the desire to propagate a distinct sigillographic identity. The Seals of the Knights Hospitaller in England 253 That the seal played a role in the formulation and expression of medieval identity has been well established by Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, who suggested that ‘‘seal users came to develop a new awareness of themselves in relation to an object, the seal, whose operational principles were categorization , replication, and verification.’’≤ In general, sealing was a process for establishing ownership, signing commitment, designating identity, representing authority, and of course authenticating documents.≥ Seals have two key features: (1) the pictorial symbol, which could be personalized or highly conventional, and (2) the inscription around it, which identified the author or authorial body of the document to which the seal was attached. Medieval written records refer to both the engraved matrix, also known as the die, and its impressions as seals, but the matrix was, without doubt, an exceptional object, which was the personal property of its owner. There is evidence that personal seal-dies were either kept among one’s treasure or were worn on the body as pendants, rings, or brooches.∂ Institutional seals, like those of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, are most often described in written records as being kept locked in an ironbound chest with several locks, and most institutions strictly regulated access to their seals.∑ The first seal instituted by the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem was the lead bulla of the master, the original great, or common, seal of the order. This seal, with only slight modifications, was used for the entire history of the order (see fig. 11.1) The master’s seal is circular in shape, generally with a diameter of one and one-half inches. Double-sided, it features pictures and legends on both the obverse and reverse, much like a coin. On the obverse, the master kneels in prayer before a patriarchal cross, which is usually accompanied by the sacred letters a (alpha) and v (omega). The patriarchal, or double-beam, cross embodied the crucifixion ; Christ’s body was affixed to the lower crossbeam, and the upper crossbeam bore the plaque with the initials inri, iesvs nazarenvs rex ivdaeorvm.∏ Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the seal was slightly modified. For example, on the earliest seals the master knelt to the right before the cross, whereas on later seals he faced left. Also, the patriarchal cross became larger and more defined, with a round knob or ornamental foot for the base, which gave it the appearance of an altar cross, a liturgical object. This is evident, for example, on...

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