Post Byzantine seals

Recent research on the history of confessional communities in the Ottoman Empire approaches the Orthodox church as not just an entity in and of itself with a long history prior to its capture by the Turks, but also as an Ottoman institution, recognized and regulated by the Porte as well as one privileged and with its own agency. This opens new perspectives for a more comprehensive understanding of the specific position and role of the Orthodox clergy in Ottoman society during the early modern period. Further studies of the role of the high clergy in Ottoman politics and social order should consider also the important evidence provided by bilingual Greek-Ottoman Turkish seals of some church hierarchs. The need to have legends in two languages on personal or church seals was dictated by the perpetual interaction of Orthodox clerics and church hierarchs with representatives of Ottoman administrative institutions. In such interactions both parties, while “governing” their flock or their subjects, had to be able to understand correctly each other’s official confirmations on various documents, and the imprints of bilingual clerical seals provided a means for that. We have not been able to locate any bilingual seal matrices used by Orthodox hierarchs serving in the Ottoman Empire. The seemingly total loss of such seal matrices notwithstanding, their existence is well attested by the imprints found on extant documents.

The present article discusses imprints of one such lost ecclesiastical bilingual seal, its owner, the documents stamped with it, and the documents’ significance for the mid-18th century.