Sigillography

Abstract: Diplomatics is an auxiliary science of history created by the French monk Dom Jean Mabillon in 1681 to establish the authenticity of medieval charters. It played a major role in legitimizing archival documentation for historical research and in the education and work of European archivists, many of whom in the twentieth century have come to recognize its potential value for the study of modern and contemporary records. Special diplomatics could be developed to assist American archivists in understanding and working with legal documents, accounting records, and other distinctive forms of record-keeping; the same could be done to aid in the identification of forgeries and the authentication of electronic records.

Abstract: Byzantine sigillography is intrinsically interdisciplinary. Unlike other sister auxiliary disciplines, such as epigraphy or numismatics, sigillography has not yet benefited from the experience gained within the Digital Humanities. SigiDoc, the newborn encoding standard for Byzantine seals, is the first attempt to bridge this gap. This paper is aimed at investigating the interactive fusion of aspects of interdisciplinarity between Byzantine Sigillography and the Digital Humanities whilst illustrating the ‘digital genealogy’ of SigiDoc in the broader context of TEI, as well as its relationship of reciprocity with open source initiatives and tools, such as EpiDoc and EFES (EpiDoc Front-End Services).

Abstract: For several years now, sigillography as an independent subarea in the field of Byzantine studies has received increasing attention from both Byzantine studies and related disciplines, as it is the only area still able to provide academia with large amounts of material not previously analysed. The articles of Studies in Byzantine Sigillography deal with all aspects of Byzantine sigillography: presentation of new finds, discussion of new methods, questions of the political and ecclesiastical administration of Byzantium, prosopography, historical geography, and art-historical and iconographical problems.

Abstract: The author looks at the science of diplomatics within the context of documents generated from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The study of documents according to set diplomatics categories was complicated by the sheer bulk of documentation due to two reasons—the decentralization of the chancery and the emergence of new types of documents linked to the development of the administrative monarchy. The author advocates the application of diplomatics methods to the study of these modern documents. He also presents several examples that underscore the importance of the form of the document in undertaking the decision processes and activities of an administrative body; also that text edition remains for our own time as well as for earlier periods, the ideal testing ground for the techniques of diplomatics.