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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Meg, these days the best place to start looking at any seals question is the 2014 bibliographic article by Brigitte Bedos-Rezak in /Oxford Bibliographies Online/. Unfortunately full access is by subscription, but the articles are worth it! Genevra On 11/15/2015 11:09 AM, Cormack, Margaret Jean wrote: > medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture > > Greetings learned ones, > This is really a question for an art historian - Genevra? But I thought the list as a whole might be able to shed some light on the subject. In the Middle Ages there must have been a large industry in creating seals for individuals and corporations, but, unlike coins, the seal would presumably be made only once. Then again, one can imagine 'standardized' seals which only needed to have the individualīs name added. Do we have any knowledge of the process of creating such items? Would the abbess of a new monastery, for example, order (from whom?) a seal, specifying the size, shape, text, perhaps type of script, and image? Could she send a sketch of what the image should look like, or trust to the maker to have a set of images on hand? Maybe she went and had a look at them? The trouble with this is that my abbess is in Iceland, and Iīm guessing (with no real evidence) that her seal would have been produced in Norway, so that would have been quite a journey. The woman in question was, however, quite well off, so the journey is not out of the question. We canīt examine the object itself, all we have is a drawing of the wax impression. I can also imagine that seals with ready-made images were imported, and the desired text then added. Iīm sure there must be literature about this somewhere, but donīt know where to start! > Meg ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion