An 11th century seal belonging to the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor has been rediscovered after disappearing for more than four decades.
Known as the Saint-Denis seal, it’s the best-preserved of only three surviving wax impressions of the English king and offers a sense of his governing style and influences. As such, its apparent absence from France’s National Archives in Paris caused considerable dismay among Medieval historians. It turns out nothing untoward had taken place; rather, a clerical hiccup was to blame.
Sometime between the late-1950s and the mid-1980s, the seal was separated from its original document and moved to the detached seals section of the National Archives for conservation purposes. No recording was made of the transfer and it was only in 2021 that Guilhem Dorandeu rediscovered the seal while carrying out research for doctoral studies.
The seal’s reemergence has prompted Dorandeu to take a fresh look at the 970-year-old artifact alongside Levi Roach, a medievalist at the University of Exeter. In a paper published in the academic journal, the pair detail the broad sources of the seal’s iconography and Edward the Confessor’s innovative use of seals to authenticate documents.
Seal of Otto III in 997. Photo: Archives Cantonales Vaudoises.
On the obverse, the brown wax pendant depicts a crowned Edward enthroned and holding a fleur-de-lis scepter in his right hand and an orb in his left. The image of an enthroned sovereign was first used by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III in the late-10th century and may have reached England through German craftsmen who worked in London during Edward’s reign. The orb and the fleur-de-lis scepter draw directly from Byzantine seals dating to the end of the 8th century, as do the words “Anglorum basileus” (Ruler of the English). Despite this cultural borrowing, the script uses Anglo-Saxon capitals, tying the seal and the king to older English traditions.
On the reverse, Edward holds a sword that rests on his shoulder, an image that though commonly associated with sovereigns today, was first used by the Byzantine ruler Constantine IX Monomachos a mere five to 10 years earlier. In his other hand, rests a bird scepter, one drawing off East Frankish and Anglo-Saxon traditions (Edward’s father Æthelred II used the dove on his coinage).
The Agnus Dei Coin of Æthelred II from 1009. Photo: The Economy Museum, Sweden.
“[The details] are striking manifestations of a ‘new and stronger concept of kingship,'” the authors wrote in their study. “Articulated through the deliberate assemblage of multiple images and formulae of imperial legitimacy, both western and Byzantine, further enriched by the inclusion of specifically English elements.”
Saint-Denis Writ and Diploma of Edward the Confessor. Photo: Paris, Archives Nationales.
The seal, which was once affixed to a document granting an area of Oxfordshire to Saint-Denis monastery, formed a primary component of the sealed writ-charter, an innovation of Edward’s administration. Traditionally, royal directives were typically long, unsealed, and closed. Beginning in the mid-11th century, however, Edward the Confessor began issuing writ-charters that were shorter and whose legitimacy was affirmed through an attached seal. It was, in essence, a more practical instrument for daily governance and shows the importance of standardization and efficiency to Edward’s administration.
“In the long term, this method of authentication would become the norm across much of mainland Europe,” the authors wrote. “Edward, a man whose own life and career spanned the Channel, would have been pleased to know this.”