CONGRESS CANCELED Seal the Real: Documentary Records, Seals, and Authentications I
Description
This pair of sessions explores the presentation and attestation of documentary records in the medieval and early modern periods, in the long transition to the modern custom of signatures as autographs. Methods of attestation include names written by the person, as well as ‘signatures’ or identifiers made by proxy, whether by cross-signs, names inscribed by others on behalf of the signatory, personal or official seals, or other forms. Mildred Budny
The time-honored human determination to establish recognized — that is, effective — modes of authenticating intentions and actions by individuals and institutions alike underpins the historical transmission (or disruption, willful and otherwise) of formal records of agreements, sales, transfers, decisions over grievances and feuds, and other impactful official arrangements across the centuries.
Examining case studies for these sessions, we adopt multiple approaches, subject matters, and methodologies for analyzing the strategies adopted (successfully or otherwise) in the pursuit of such a quest for authentication. Case-studies include the seals in Matthew Paris's Chronica Maiora, antique gems in medieval English seals, Thomas Hoccleve's ambiguous 'Seal Poetics, and a puzzling seal, apparently exhibiting cranial deformation, from 14th-century Toulouse.
CONGRESS CANCELED Seal the Real: Documentary Records, Seals, and Authentications I
Fetzer 2040
This pair of sessions explores the presentation and attestation of documentary records in the medieval and early modern periods, in the long transition to the modern custom of signatures as autographs. Methods of attestation include names written by the person, as well as ‘signatures’ or identifiers made by proxy, whether by cross-signs, names inscribed by others on behalf of the signatory, personal or official seals, or other forms. Mildred Budny
The time-honored human determination to establish recognized — that is, effective — modes of authenticating intentions and actions by individuals and institutions alike underpins the historical transmission (or disruption, willful and otherwise) of formal records of agreements, sales, transfers, decisions over grievances and feuds, and other impactful official arrangements across the centuries.
Examining case studies for these sessions, we adopt multiple approaches, subject matters, and methodologies for analyzing the strategies adopted (successfully or otherwise) in the pursuit of such a quest for authentication. Case-studies include the seals in Matthew Paris's Chronica Maiora, antique gems in medieval English seals, Thomas Hoccleve's ambiguous 'Seal Poetics, and a puzzling seal, apparently exhibiting cranial deformation, from 14th-century Toulouse.