Seals

 We use signatures symbolically to indicate our agreement to something or to authorize it.  Go into the bank to set up an account or apply for a loan, and you'll have to sign in a great many places.  A presidential executive order is not official until signed.  A piece of paper with maybe a flower on it that says "this piece of paper is worth $346.18" (ie a check) takes its validity from your signature.  When you agree that you have read and accepted the terms and conditions of a website (yeah, like you've actually read them all), you "sign electronically" by checking a box.

Medieval people occasionally signed, but more often they used seals.  The Romans had used seals, generally lead.  Hot lead would be dribbled onto something, then imprinted with a signet (note the similarity to the word signature).  This might have a small image of something but would have the official name as well.

The Byzantine emperors, heir to the Romans, continued using lead seals.  But they, and the popes, who also were heirs to Rome, soon switched from hot lead to cold lead.  Because lead is quite a soft metal, one could use a powerful press to mark the lead with the signet.  Instead of an uneven blob of (originally molten) lead, one would have a nice round seal, previously made in an even shape, then imprinted.  Of course the imprinting would sometimes be a little off center, but it was still a lot better than a blob.

During the early Middle Ages, wax rather than lead became the standard for most seals.  Lead seals had been used by emperors and popes (who continued to use lead, just as they continued to use papyrus when everyone else was using parchment, as I have discussed previously).  But wax seals slowly worked its way down the social ladder, to kings, to great dukes and counts, to lords of castles, to bishops and abbots, to city mayors by the thirteenth century.

Originally the way to seal with wax was to cut a slit in the parchment and dribble soft wax through, then press a signet on both sides (different images, seal and counter-seal).  But soon instead documents began to be sealed by folding up the bottom an inch or so, cutting a slit through both layers, running a cord or a strip of parchment through the slits, and attaching the two ends together with a ball of soft wax that was sealed on both sides.

 

The above image of Magna Carta shows the document King John was forced to sign, with his seal hung off the bottom.

As was the case here, seals were usually colored red.  But cream colored seals (natural wax color) are also found.  In the nineteenth century some collectors cut the seals off charters, just leaving the slits by which they had previously been attached.  Some people living in farms that had once been monastic buildings melted down the seals to make wax to seal their jars of jam.  This is very depressing for medievalists.

 © C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on medieval documents and other aspects of medieval social history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms. Also available in paperback.

Reims cathedral

 Reims cathedral is now considered one of the glories of Gothic architecture, built in the thirteenth century more or less to a single plan, unlike some other cathedrals that might have their construction last for generations, meaning the style kept changing.

 Unlike Notre Dame, where the flying buttresses had to be added later, when the lead roof started pushing down on the walls so they started bowing out, Reims had flying buttresses from the beginning.  It also has lovely sculptures, like this angel with a Mona Lisa smile.

But Reims' importance went back far before the thirteenth century.  Saint Remigius, who was bishop of Reims at the end of the fifth century, baptized Clovis, king of the Franks, making him the first Christian king of the Franks and, in subsequent generations, considered the first king of France.  There is a plaque today in the thirteenth-century cathedral showing the exact spot where this is supposed to have happened.

Down the street from the cathedral is the old monastery of St.-Remi, dedicated to Saint Remigius.  The monastery and the cathedral have had a constant low-level dispute since the sixth century over who the saint loves best, the cathedral where he was bishop or the monastery where he was buried.  St.-Remi built a new, lovely Romanesque church in the twelfth century, totally outshining the then cathedral (300 years old at the time), but then the bishop and cathedral canons built their thirteenth-century church, much bigger and snazzier, and were able to sneer.

Because Clovis was baptized at Reims, the Carolingian kings of France in the ninth-tenth centuries started being crowned there, as an effort to connect themselves with their Merovingian predecessors.  French kings continued being crowned at Reims, with few exceptions.  Joan of Arc had to lead an army to clear a path to Reims to get the dauphin there to be crowned.  Paris really only became France's capital at the end of the tenth century, when the Capetian dynasty came to power (they'd previously been counts of Paris), and nobody wanted to break with tradition.

Reims cathedral was, deplorably, shelled during World War I (battle of the Marne and all that).  However, the walls were still there and most of the outside statues (like the angel).  It was rebuilt over many years, finished just in time for World War II, though fortunately it escaped damage then.  Its rebuilding gave hope to those rebuilding Notre Dame of Paris, which was in fact less badly damaged (the roof went but much of the interior survived, due to a stone ceiling below the lead roof).  Notre Dame will not be finished by the summer 2024 Olympics, the original goal, but it's coming right along.

The word Reims, by the way, may be hard to pronounce (it's something like "rhanz").  The British spell it Rheims and pronounce it "reemz."  Just so you know.

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on the medieval church, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.