Пячаткі і пломбы XI ст. з выявай св. пакутніка Фёдара

The study of medieval artefacts of Ancient Rus’ has significantly intensified in the last decade, having acquired a previously inaccessible technical instrumentary. Purely humanitarian, general (no matter how erudite) reflection on certain specimens known to researchers is no longer enough. Numismatics and sigillography are acquiring features of more «strict sciences», using scrupulous graphical reconstruction of stamps, restoring technological processes, studying the metrology of artefacts that are becoming available for research in increasing quantities, and applying mathematical models. Compared to coins, the study of medieval seals requires much greater intellectual and organizational effort from their researchers, which leads to a superficial level of our understanding of their functioning as a system. The authors of this article aim to fill the gap.

The type depicting St. Theodore (the Martyr), selected for the research, belongs to rather early examples of ancient Russian sigillography. In 1970, V.L. Yanin clarified the opinion of N.P. Likhachev, who first dated them, as a first approximation, to the 11th century. In the early 2010s, a hypothesis appeared that the seals with the image of St. Theodore the Martyr belong to Vseslav Bryachislavich of Połack (1044–1101) (Valeri V. Nechitaylo in 2012; Igor A. Zhukov in 2013). In the second half of the decade, several Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian authors published numerous, previously unknown specimens of this type, primarily small monetary seals. In two articles, one of the authors of this publication formulated additional arguments in favour of attributing this type to Vseslav. In this work, authors collected all known stamp varieties of the described type, identified technological connections between them, and performed their graphic reconstruction.