Corpus sigillorum Poloniae

Aim:

To produce an edition of a corpus of medieval seals related to Poland.

Description:

Seals appeared in Poland no later than in the eleventh century, and they became the main tool to corroborate the authenticity of documents in the thirteenth century. These artefacts, scattered across historical material, constitute a significant element of the culture and history of Poland. Combining inscription and image, they convey information about the people, institutions, and material culture of the era. Their symbols show the political and theological concepts espoused by their users.

Vocabularium Internationale Sigillographicum defines the corpus of seals as a full catalogue of seals in a given country or region, used by a particular type of users, of a particular kind or of a specific time. The first attempts to prepare national corpora of seals were made in the mid-nineteenth century. The publications have started to be released relatively recently due to the amount of work necessary for preparing them. In France, the first volume of the corpus was released only in 1980, despite the fact that the work on it commenced in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The idea of preparing a corpus of Polish seals was formed in the first half of the twentieth century. However, these initial concepts were very general. They reflected the need to create a corpus, but they did not lay out how to carry out such a project. In the communist era, the idea became more detailed and concrete as a result of the involvement of the State Archives Head Office. Unfortunately, the project was not completed. At the beginning of the 1990s, this work was taken over by historians from Lublin. Their work resulted in creating an inventory of sigillographic materials connected with Polish lands, but the collected sources have not been published.

The Centre for Medieval Studies project aims to prepare a publication consisting of the identified medieval seals connected with the Polish lands, which will result in an edition of sigillographic materials and a digital repository of medieval seals. The data on those which have been studied will be included; some seals will be verified using material available in archives, libraries and museums; information on the previously unpublished seals will be added. In the first of three stages, which is expected to be conducted in the years 2023-2027, we plan to create an online tool for collecting data and a repository of information regarding medieval Polish seals.