seal matrix

Seal matrices were employed to ensure the authenticity of documents. Equally, they were an important means of displaying the ‘right impression’ to the outside world. This example says much about the turbulent times that were associated with the Protestant reformation in England, and the religious communities caught up with the changes.

It is large and one half of what would have been used to produce a double-sided wax seal. The circular outer border has an inscription: ‘+SIGILLUM ECCLESIE CATHEDRALIS TRINITATIS NORWICENIS’, or ‘seal of the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity of Norwich’. Within is depicted the cathedral building, its central spired tower flanked by two further spired towers. The central tower is flanked by the letters ‘GG’, referring to the Dean, George Gardiner, who was the incumbent between 1573-89. At the base are the arms of the Norwich Dean and Chapter.

The design copies that of the cathedral priory’s second conventual seal, made in 1258, which carries the figure of a bishop with the inscription ‘HERBERTUS FUNDATOR’ (‘Herbert the founder’), referring to Herbert de Losinga who moved his cathedral to Norwich and founded a Benedictine priory there. Subtle changes in detail emphasize the continuity in design; it provides a statement of binding the old monastic and new post-Dissolution chapter communities based around the Cathedral. It also reflects the pragmatic Protestantism exercised under Elizabeth I where such communities continued the spiritual life of the cathedral, while allowing the institution to retain the distinction and honour of its forebear.

Damage at its centre is possibly the result of deliberate defacement: the abolition of the Dean and Chapter between 1649-60 may provide an explicable context for this to have occurred as the more rigorous Protestantism of the Commonwealth took hold.