In the Siena paintings, Justice is shown with her balance held aloft by a winged figure of Wisdom, and one cord from each of its pans passes into the hands of Concord. She in turn entwines the cords to form a vinculum cordiae, which she hands to a procession of richly-clad citizens. Skinner also sees the figure on the northern wall as representing not so much the commune, but rather the type of signoria that the city needs to elect, if justice is to be pursued. While some aspects are specific to Siena, such as the letters C S C V (Commune Senarum, Civitatis Virginis) on his clothes, the representation of this regal figure, enthroned on a seat of judgement presents us with a secularised image of the Last Judgement.12 Another parallel for the figure of Giovanni is the more contemporary representation of Justice on the Ducal palace, or, rather, the Palace of the Republic – palacium comunis – in Venice (Fig. 9.4), which may be dated between 1342 and 1348.13
Lastly, the figure of Giovanni/Justice may be compared with the earlier seated sculptural figure of Charles 1 of Anjou (1226–1285) by Arnolfo di Cambio (now in the Capitoline Museum Rome), which may be interpreted in a judicial sense since the ends of the throne on which Charles sits are decorated with lions.14 This fascinating and complex seal shows Giovanni, as a ruler in his law making capacity. Not for him was authentification by a notarial flourish, but by a large circular wax seal. The Prefect of Rome had nominated notaries since the administrative changes known as the ‘renovatio senatus’ of 1144. Later notaries in Rome could be nominated by the Pope and by Counts Palatine on behalf of the Emperor. The seal of Giovanni de Vico has a curious connection with England, since at least six of the notaries, that Professor Christopher Cheney records as operating in England before 1320, use the same formula as appears on this seal, and were appointed by the Prefect of Rome – one of Giovanni’s predecessors. Indeed the way in which they are styled suggest to Cheney that they had received their commission at the hands of the Prefect as representative of the Emperor. This may well be reflected by the comparison between the Prefect’s seal and the Bull of Louis of Bavaria.15 His status as the personification of Iustitia in Rome is shown on a large scale. The lawyers who actually did the work are kept in their place as diminutive figures.
The notary authenticated documents in Italy with the sign or signum, often based on the cross and sometimes including the initials of the notary. Many such cases and documents, if they occurred north of the Alps, might well be sealed with a wax seal or the seals of those agreeing or witnessing the agreement. In Italy Bascapé comments that, although it was often held that notaries did not use wax seals, notaries certainly used metal bulls with their names before the ninth century. Furthermore seal matrices (for wax) for notaries occur from the late thirteenth century onwards (the copper-alloy seal of Henry Gratiadei in Bologna Museum appears to be the earliest).16 Bascapé divided notaries seals into six iconographic types – the heraldic, rebus, image of seated lawyer, with the notaries’ sign (tabellion), with a saint or other holy image and finally with a fantastic image.17 There are later documents sealed by notaries in wax notably in Barletta, on the Adriatic coast, between 1356 and 1382.18
Robert Brentano did not find it easy to draw any clear line of distinction between the use of the notary and the use of the wax seal, even in the more closely defined and relatively well-documented Italian bishoprics that he studied. Generally the notary drew up documents, but Brentano notes that some bishops produced documents, that were in no way notarial in style, but might be taken as letters patent.19 There are nine copper alloy seal matrices of Italian notaries in the Rawlinson collection (nos R4, R77, R92, R148, R182, R194, R296, R739, and R790. All appear to be Italian and are dated to the thirteenth– fifteenth centuries. Eight are probably genuine and the ninth (R790) appears to be a cast (of uncertain date) of a medieval seal. In addition there are two doubtful examples R92, R214. For details and illustrations of these see Appendix 9.2. Three have the signum as a central device (R173, R182, R739). They are the fifteenth-century seal of Giovanni Silvri of Spello, notary (R173), the fourteenth-century seal of Angeluccio Tinti, notary of an uncertain town (R182), and the fourteenth-century seal of Giovanni Thomasi, notary of Agnani (R739). Two are heraldic (R77 and R194). Heraldry may be an indication of social status and possibly the richness of some notaries. Robert Brentano notes that they were often men of property. Three of the four bronze matrices of notaries in the British Museum are heraldic, one puns on castles (Simon di Castello). The most notable is the fourteenth-century notary’s seal of Guido Benvenuto in the British Museum.20
Two seal matrices are ‘decorative’. Bartolomeo of Veroli, notary, son of Giovanni of Sora, has a bird and bush (R4; Italian fourteenth century). This finely engraved seal shows a bird perched on a shrub, outside on the left hand side of its nest, feeding three young. Whether those notaries’ seals that have a fish, flower or fleur de lis as their main device reflect the use of such a device in their signa is not clear to me. The second decorative seal is the fifteenth-century seal (R296) of Bartolomeo, Notary, of Benevento, in the Campania, which shows a mermaid holding up something in her right hand (possibly a fleur de lis), and in her left a mirror. It is an example of the fantastic type of notary’s seal.21 Mermaids clearly had an amuletic power, although they also represented the vices that led men astray. Perhaps here the mermaid represents the knowledge with which they tempted Odysseus – not carnal knowledge but wisdom, a vast new understanding of the world. Ovid called them ‘doctae sirenes’ – skilled in song – but implying learned.22
The use by a lawyer of a naked female image occurs later. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the naked female figure was seen as a personification of Truth. It appears thus in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia Roma in 1603, and, in Richard Rawlinson’s own collection, there is a brass seal matrix of an English notary called Abraham Fitter (R822). This displays a nearly naked figure of Veritas (Truth) whose well-curved flesh emphasises Abraham’s motto Veritas non quaerit angulos (‘There are no corners in Truth’). One of the notary’s seals, possibly a cast, (R790) might best be described as ‘the seated doctor’ type. It may be compared with doctor’s seal of Bertoluccio de Pretis, Doctor of Law, in the Rawlinson collection.
What were such notarial seals used for? They may, of course, have been made for purely personal use by the notary, and not used in the formal authentification of documents by the notary, who used his signum for that purpose. However, bronze seal matrices were widely used by notaries from the late thirteenth century, though the exact date beginning of their authenticating with a wax seal in Italy is not at all certain.23 It may be that these matrices were only used in a personal capacity, and here the use of the term notary would have no greater signification for the authentification of documents than the seal of a merchant or craftsman.
Lastly, since judicial proceedings were usually recorded by notaries in Italy, the use of seals by judges is limited.24 Judges used their seals to validate acts between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The designs are those of judges sentencing, images of saints or the archangel St Michael. Judges in ecclesiastical courts were certainly assisted by notaries. There is an interesting question of how this use of seals of judges in Italy relates to the development north of the Alps for instance the development of seals of courts and the use of seals ad causas. It may be that seals of judges were only used in their personal capacity.
Ruth Wolff, in her study of the representation of St Francis of Assisi on medieval Italian seals, draws attention to the fact that Franciscans in Italy used both kinds of authentication in their documents – namely both sealing and endorsement though the official hand of the notary, testified by his signature and sign. She sees a distinction between the use of the seal by the general curia of the Order and its provincial government, and the convents, guardians, and vicars of the Order, who often used local notaries, even though they had the right to possess and use seals. It is this hierarchy of the use of the seal as opposed to the use of the notary that enables us to begin to comprehend the use of the seal by the notary in medieval Italy.
For instance Robert Brentano comments that ‘The problem of sealing or notarising was obviously a bothersome one in the thirteenth-century [Italian] church’, and in this he reflects earlier comments by Bascapé.25 In Brentano’s study of the seals of the archbishops of Amalfi in the south of Italy, he comments that the archbishop used a wax seal in 1274, but thereafter sealed in lead until the end of the fifteenth century. The archbishops used notaries and Brentano comments that unsealed instruments were very similar to sealed acta. Giorgio Cencetti, in his study of Bolognese seals, suggests that wax seals were mainly used for letters, schedules, witness statements, judicial and medical opinions, while private agreements were notarised.26 He distinguished between a more public use of the wax seal and a private use of the notarised document. By the end of the fifteenth century in Florence on 27 July 1491 a codicil to a will is sealed by seven witnesses and a notary, Andreas Antonii, who authenticates both with his signum (me cum solito signo subscripxi) and also his wax seal (sigillum meum…. in quo sigillo meo scultum est caput et sue vultus cuiusdam hominis cum litteris circumcirca …).
His wax seal might have been produced by a metal seal matrix or by a signet ring. Rings, which belonged to notaries and which could be used for sealing, are known from the fourteenth century.27 So here the notary was using both methods of authentication.
Dual use of seal and sign occurs in some peripheral parts of Italy. In the north-east of Italy, the two systems of the notary drawing up the document and then authenticating it with a wax seal functioned at the same time. Reinhard Härtel draws attention to this in dealing with the difference between the more Germanic customs in the region of Carinthia with the Italian customs in Friuli and Acquilea.28 Harald Toniatti notes that the same dual use of notary’s tabellion and wax seal also occurs in the Bishopric of Bressanone.29 It is clear that variations in use were present in different parts of Italy.
Also it is possible that different approaches existed in the secular and commercial world in Italy as opposed to the religious. This distinction between may be hinted at by the division of sealed and notarised documents in the picture of George Gisze of Danzig (1497–1562) one of the leading merchants in the London Hanseatic Stahlhof. He was a member of a Cologne family that had settled in Danzig. In the picture by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), he is depicted with his bills carefully filed by his left shoulder, dividing the sealed on our left from the notarised on our right. Holbein may have divided them up for visual effect, but it is more likely that the division had some significance.30 All that can be concluded is that, at present, it is clear that the borderline between sealing and notarising fluctuated from place to place, from time to time, and may well have depended on the type of document to be sealed or notarised. The problem of sealing as opposed to, or, in addition to, notarising remains. It demonstrates how the use, or, rather the nonuse, of seals reflects both varied culture and diplomatic usage.
Giovanni Vico, Prefect of Rome. Italian, after 1337 and before 1348. Bronze, circular 94 mm diameter.
Inscription
Outer circle + HOHIS [sic] DEI : GRA : ALME : URB : PREFECTUS : CESARI : ABSE’TE : SUMI : POTIFICIS : DUCTOR
[John, by the grace of God, leader in the absence of the Pope of the City and prefect of Caesar]
Inner circle (on two scrolls, with pearled borders)
(Begins at bottom left of seal) IMPERII : SACRI : IUSTICIE : QINCRO (recommences at bottom right, and faces outwards) ANNU?M? PAPALE MUNUS AUREA ROSA
[The sacred rule of justice is given every five years by the gift of a Papal rose]
Across centre of seal, within beaded borders, S P(line above)FECTORIE / DIGNITATIS
[The dignity of the Prefect]
DICTA IPS FIDEL’IT SCRIB’T / IUSTE IUD(ligate)ICAT(ligature and line above)
[Words are faithfully written/justly judged]
In scrolls with pearled borders underneath central scene and divided by the shield
NOTARII / IUDICES
[Notaries/Judges]
All Lombardic. The outer inscription has on its outside an elaborate border with toothed inner side, and a pearled border above the letters the same combination of borders is repeated inside the outer inscription.
Description
A figure, seated on a stool, decorated with two lions’ (or dogs’) heads and claws, holding in the right hand a sword point upwards and, in the left, a Rose, with two tiers of petals, by the stalk. The seated figure has a band around the head, a cloak linked at the breast by a brooch and a belt with crosses.
On the ledge, upon which rest the figure’s feet, is an inkpot open with pen by the right foot, with two notaries kneeling facing towards the pot, with an identifying inscription beneath. By the left foot, is a book, by which two judges kneel facing towards the book and with an identifying inscription beneath them. Between the two words is a heater-shaped shield: An eagle displayed, head facing left, with six pellets in the field.
Giovanni
This is the seal of Giovanni da Vico, Prefect of Rome. The arms (an eagle displayed, head facing left, with six pellets in the field) are those of Vico.1
The Prefects of Rome
Giovanni III who was Prefect of Rome from at least 1337 to 1365 is the one who used this seal. In 1348 he was entitled as appears on this seal.2
He succeeded his father in the Prefecture, murdered his brother in 1338, and set up as tyrant in Viterbo. In 1347 Cola da Rienzi deprived him of the Prefecture and assumed the title of Prefect by a decree of the Roman parliament. Cola attacked Viterbo, defeated Giovanni, who came to Rome submitted himself to Cola and received the prefecture as his vassal. The matrix for wax seal from which this metal cast was taken may have been engraved in 1337, but if Giovanni had two matrices in succession (see below) even this is uncertain.
According to Calisse, Giovanni used this seal up to 1348 since he used it on an agreement of the 17 July 1348 concerning the ‘castello di Carcari dai Normani di Roma’. Calisse also notes that Giovanni, in 1354 ‘in un trattato di accordo con Legato, fatto con solenne istrumento, pose il proprio sigillo accanto a quello di Legato’.3
The seal
A seal of Giovanni was published by Silvester Pietra Sancta in 1638 and over 100 years later by Francesco Vettori. This seal has differences to R105 in that there are three figures on each side instead of two, differences in the position of the inscriptions and the design of the Papal rose. This may mean that the draughtsman of Pietra Sancta made errors, or that there were two different seals. Pietra Santa said that he had given it to D. Taddeo Barberini, who was created the last Prefect of Rome and whose portrait appears on the title page of his book.4
The seal of Giovanni was also noted by Feliciano Bussi in 1742. He quotes the description by Abate Francesco Valesio, which is presumably the written description in Valesio’s catalogue (now Rawlinson MS I 907), Since Rawlinson brought Valesio’s catalogue with him to England in 1726, Bussi must have seen the catalogue before Rawlinson acquired the Lorenzani collection in 1721 (unless there was another copy of the catalogue).5
The best modern discussion of this seal is by Enea Gualandi in 1904. He refers to the cast now possessed by the University Library of Bologna. This is accompanied by an anonymous note describing the seal, which Gualandi thought was written by the Bolognese Canon Giacomo Amadei, (who died in 1768). At the end of this quotation, the unknown writer, perhaps Amadei, comments: ‘The original seal fell into the hands of Francesco Valesio: he made a cast of it ‘egli ne fece tirare il Gesso, sul quale poi fece gettare in metallo questo nostro esemplare’, (from this metal cast, he made our example), which was sold after his death in the sale of many antiquities already possessed by that most notable man.’6
R4. (Fig. 9.5) Bartolomeo of Veroli, notary, son of Giovanni of Sora.
Italian, 14th century.
Bronze. P 45 × 29 mm.
Legend: + S : BARTH’OI • NOT(line above) D’ VERL’ • NATI • IOH’IS • D’SORA.
In Lombardic script with pearled borders
This finely engraved seal shows a bird perched on a shrub, outside on the left hand side of its nest, feeding three young. The pelican feeding three young was sometime seen as an image of the Trinity.
R77. (Fig. 9.6) Ribaldo Paulutio, Notary.
Italian, thirteenth or fourteenth century.
Bronze. Diam. 26 mm.
Legend: + S RIBALDI : PAULATII • NOT. In Lombardic script with pearled borders.
A heater-shaped shield: Three chevronels, on a chief (which partly conceals the upper chevronel) two lions passant respectant. The spaces between the shield and the inner line of the legend space are decorated with fronds. The Italian form of the surname may be Paluzzi. There is a cast in the British Library no. clxxxix.27 from the collection of Dr Kathleen M. L. Hall of Oxford.