Localizing Identity and Devotion on the Seals of the Military Orders in England

As highly mobile and intrinsically visual artifacts, medieval seals both embody and convey individual or institutional identity, sometimes providing the most complete record of a group’s structure and self-conception. This is certainly true of the identified seals of the Knights Templar that survived the transnational suppression of the controversial order in 1311, and the catalogued seals of the Knights Hospitaller in archival collections throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.  They provide insight into the ways in which the international bodies of these vast corporations viewed themselves in relation to the Holy Land and their function as crusading orders. Like coinage, medieval seals had a wide circulation and traveled long distances throughout Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and beyond. Thus, the seals of the Military Orders had to address both local and international audiences, employing widely recognizable iconographic emblems. The goals of this paper are threefold. It will examine select Templar and Hospitaller seals in the context of the crusader ideals of self-sacrifice and triumph, illustrating the Military Order’s particular devotion to Christ and the holy city of Jerusalem. It will then consider major changes in the sigillographic imagery and sealing protocols of both orders after the devastating loss of Jerusalem in 1187. Over the course of the thirteenth century, the crusade movement’s popularity dramatically waxed and waned and the utility of the Military Orders was tested. This paper lastly will argue that changes to the seals of the Templars and Hospitallers were motivated by local customs, as the orders sought to publically identify themselves with more traditional forms of medieval monasticism.