Welsh Journals

THE SEALS OF STRATA FLORIDA ABBEY In much of medieval Europe the use of a seal, recognisable and per- sonal to the owner, be it an individual or a corporation, was a sine qua non when deeds of any importance were executed. This was no less true in the transactions of ecclesiastics as in secular affairs. The Cistercian Order, in particular, with its hall-marks of simplicity and uniformity, regularised, by means of the statutes issued by the abbots convened at its annual General Chapter, the shape and imagery which the seals of its member monasteries ought to adopt.1 In the twelfth century, as the Order expanded rapidly throughout Europe, a certain divergence in seal types ensued. Some abbeys had as their seal an image of a seated abbot, others a depiction of a standing abbot three- quarters length (i.e. his feet were not shown), yet others simply displayed only the cowled fore-arm of an abbot grasping his pastoral staff. Regrettably, in the case of Strata Florida, none of the seals it used in the twelfth century have survived; we may well never know, therefore, the style of seal used by the monastery at that time. This variety of seal-type came to be deprecated by the Order. The General Chapter of the year 1200 therefore gave a choice of two images which might be adopted, either the effigy of the abbot holding his staff, or else a cowled wrist with hand clutching the staff. In neither instance was the name of the abbot to appear in the legend for, at that time, the abbot's seal was also the common seal of a monastery, and passed on down the years as one abbot might die and another take his place.2 A further devel- opment came, not later than 1257, when the Chapter ruled that henceforth the figure of an abbot was to be the compulsory image, though the 'hand and staff device was to be used upon the second ('lesser' or 'counter' seal) now permitted.3 The first extant seal of Strata Florida (Fig. 1) is attached, as are the seals of other Welsh Cistercian abbots, to a deed of 1256 setting out the terms of an arbitration agreement following a dispute between Llantarnam and Margam Abbeys.4 The employment of the several seals of the abbot-arbitra- tors and witnesses was meant to give greater force to the binding terms of the agreement reached between the two monasteries. Unfortunately, the green wax of the Strata Florida seal is fragmentary and the legend has hardly sur- vived, but it clearly shows an abbot (vested in apparelled alb and chasuble)