Based upon an analysis of two large data-sets of seal impressions from medieval England and Wales, it is apparent that, confirming previous assumptions, radial motifs are found across the whole country on seals used by both men and women.¹⁴ The generic motif appears in the twelfth century and was still employed in the sixteenth century, but the greatest number of seal impressions with this image is found in the thirteenth century.¹⁵ One immediate question is why the radial motif was used as a sigillographic image at all. The motif is not based upon the representation of the human form and therefore does not classify by social type in the same manner as, for example, the image of an equestrian warrior on the seal of a nobleman.¹⁶ Instead it has far closer affinities with heraldic devices, and it is no coincidence that motifs later categorised as genuinely armorial bearings were being employed as sigillographic designs at exactly the same time as the radial pattern emerges as a common motif on seals.¹⁷ It may therefore be proposed that these motifs operate within the same semiotic framework as devices which retrospectively are frequently termed ‘armorial’ or ‘proto-armorial’ and should be read in this manner, that is as signs encoded with culture-specific meaning. This in turn may start to challenge some existing preconceptions about the development of heraldry and what contemporaries considered a ‘true’ heraldic device.¹⁸

Furthermore, Andrew McGuinness warned that ‘there are dangers in employing terms such as ‘conventional’ to describe seal designs because even within the broad term there are often subtle differences’. In making this point, he observes the ‘enormous’ variety in stylised flower motif.¹⁹ The variety within the category of radial device is indeed considerable; on closer inspection however some notable subsets and apparently unique instances emerge. We can explore these points further through a survey of seal impressions attached to documents relating to Margam Abbey, in south Wales (Glamorgan).

At first glance the impression of the seal of John Mygnoth, validating a grant to Margam Abbey in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, fits comfortably within the radial category (Fig. 11.1). The image is of a stylized flower with broad petals and long stamens, the matrix clearly having been carefully engraved even though it is quite small for the period.²⁰ On a closer inspection of the image, however, something quite remarkable is revealed. There are chalices on each of the petals, the stamens are nails, and the centre of the flower appears to be a lion’s head full face. It is in fact a ‘passion flower’, the chalices being the ‘cup of suffering’ as well as receptacles for Christ’s blood and the Eucharistic wine, with the number of petals and nails alluding to the Five Wounds of Christ.²¹ The lion’s head at the centre has been interpreted as the lion of Judah, but since leonine imagery permeates the Bible this part of the design is open to multiple interpretations.²² It is a powerful, theologically mutable and yet devotionally specific and highly sophisticated image.²³ What is perhaps most striking about this seal is that it displays what superficially appears to be a ‘conventional’ motif, but whoever designed the seal deliberately encoded within the imagery layers of meaning.