Tavernier relates that in his time, the last half of the seventeenth century, the secret treasure of the Sultans in Constantinople was guarded in an innermost treasure-chamber of the Serail. This chamber was only opened at intervals to receive the surplus gold that had been collected from the Empire or received in any way, when the total sum had reached 18,000,000 livres (over $7,000,000] according to the value of the livre in Tavernier’s day). The gold was contained in sacks, each of which held 15,000 ducats. When an addition to the treasure was to be deposited, the Sultan himself led the way to the treasure-chamber and stamped his seal, with his own hand, on red wax spread over the knot of the cord with which the sack was secured. This seal was engraved on the bezel of a gold ring and constituted no design, but simply the name of the reigning sovereign, the characters being probably intricately combined in the elaborate and cryptic manner used in the case of the imperial name and titles.[247]
A Byzantine signet ring of the sixth or seventh century of our era, in the British Museum, shows the head of Christ, beneath which bending figures of two angels in profound adoration are depicted. Angel-figures almost exactly similar may be seen in Byzantine ivory carvings of this later period, the type evidently being one of those rigidly defined in the hieratic art of the school. With this ring were found coins of Heraclius (610–641), the Greek emperor in whose reign fell the death of Mohammed (June 8, 632) and the overthrow of the Sassanian Persian monarchy by the Mohammedans.[248]
How important the possession of a royal seal-ring was considered to be, as proving the title of a successor, appears in the story that at the death-bed of Alexius Comnenus (1084–1118), Emperor of the East, when the son and rightful successor, John Comnenus, perceived that his mother Irene was working to exclude him from the throne and to seat thereon his blue-stocking sister Anna, he took off the imperial ring from the hand of his dying father and thus ensured for himself the title to the Eastern Empire.[249]
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091–1153), the enthusiastic preacher of the Second Crusade in 1147, excuses himself in some of his letters that he has failed to seal them, because he could not lay his hand on his signet. In a letter to Pope Eugene III, the saint complains that several spurious letters bearing his name have been circulated, sealed with a counterfeit seal; he also notifies the pontiff that from this time his letters will bear a new seal, on which will be his portrait and his name.[250]
Well-to-do merchants of mediæval times, not entitled to armorial bearings, often had special individual marks or symbols engraved upon their signets. This custom obtained on the continent as well as in England, and allusion is made in the Old English poem of the fourteenth century, “Piers Plowman,” to “merchantes merkes ymedeled in glasse.”[251] Probably emblems of this kind came to have a certain association with the business which in many cases descended from father to son through a number of generations.
A royal signet ring once believed to be that of Saint Louis (Louis IX, 1214–1270) and long preserved in the treasury of St. Denis, as an object of reverent care, is now in the Louvre Museum. The fact that the crescent is introduced as a symbol fails to connect the ring with the Crusader St. Louis, as this symbol was not used by the Saracens of his time, but was only adopted as a Mohammedan device after the Turks captured Constantinople, the crescent having been a recognised symbol in ancient times in Byzantium long before the city came to be called Constantinople.[252]
The engraved stone in the ring is a table-cut sapphire, the monarch being figured standing, with a nimbus around his head; he is crowned and bears a sceptre. The letters S L on the stone have been interpreted to mean rather sigillum Ludovici than Sanctus Ludovicus, and one critic suggests the possibility that it may have been executed in Constantinople, in Byzantine times, for Louis VII, who was there in 1147, and was received with high honors by Manuel Comnenus, the Greek emperor’s courtesy being rather bred of fear of French aggression than of affection for the French crusader. As we have good evidence that gem-cutting was not practised at this time in France, it seems plausible enough that Louis VII should have availed himself of this opportunity to have a signet engraved for him by a Greek gem-cutter.[253]
The signet ring of King Charles V of France (1337–1380) was set with an Oriental ruby on which was engraved “the bearded head of a king.” This signet was used by King Charles to seal the letters written by his own hand. The somewhat vague description in the inventory suggests that this may have been an antique gem, the supposedly royal head being that of some Greek divinity. The art of engraving on such hard stones as the ruby does not seem to have been practised in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, the revival of this art belonging to a later period. Evidently the head was not that of Charles himself or of any of his predecessors, for, had this been the case the inventory would hardly fail to note the fact.[254]
When a certain Bratilos was sent as a messenger by the eastern emperor Cantacuzene (1341–1355) to his empress Irene, to announce the outbreak of a dangerous revolt, he bore a sealed letter from the emperor.[255] While on his journey, however, he began to fear that he might be waylaid and robbed of the important document. This peril he effectively provided against by memorizing the letter and then destroying it, after he had removed the wax impression of the imperial signet, which he could safely guard in his mouth, and which served to accredit him when he came before the empress.[256] Not long afterward Cantacuzene was defeated and deposed by John V, Palæologus, and retired to a monastery, where he lived until 1411, composing a history of his own times in his leisure moments; his wife also took the religious vows under the name of Eugenia.
Much has been written about the ring or rather the engraved seal of Michelangelo. This gem enjoyed such high esteem that it was very often copied, the copies sometimes acquiring the repute of being originals. Four of them, two in paste, one in amethyst, and one in carnelian, exist in Denmark, the two latter having the dimensions of the original gem. The copy in carnelian—the stone in which the original was cut—is exceptionally well executed.[257] The original seal is now in the Bibliothêque Nationale in Paris and came into the possession of Louis XIV in 1680. The king wore it set in a ring.