In his 1335 reform constitution, Fulgens sicut stella, the Cistercian pope Benedict XII instituted a conventual seal for the Cistercians. This was to be round, made of copper. and bear an image of the Virgin Mary.¹ⁱ In the twelfth century each Cistercian abbey employed its abbot’s seal for the business of the house. In contrast to the Benedictines, the Cistercians did not at first have a common house or conventual seal.² If the pastoral staff was the emblem of the abbot’s spiritual authority, then the abbatial seal represented his temporal rule. It provided him with the means whereby he administered the monastery’s business. The possession of a crozier and seal distinguished the abbot from the monks in his care. His seal was the tool he employed in authenticating all official transactions. The importance attached to the seal is reflected in the detailed provisions in the statutes of the General Chapter as to its design and use.³ The greater the authority vested in the Cistercian abbot as the sole user and guardian of the only official seal matrix – that is, the die from which an impression was made in wax – made it that much more important to guard against misuse. 

Bernard’s first seal, which is known from three extant impressions. followed the usual shape and design of early Cistercian abbatial seals. It was a pointed oval, or so-called vesica piscis, from the most ancient emblem of Christ, the form based on the intersection of two segments of circles.⁴ It depicted a cowled forearm from the right holding a crozier without a figure and with the legend +SIGNUM.ABBATIS.CLAREVALLIS. 

Like many early abbatial seals, SIGNUM was used rather than the later SIGILLUM. One of the impressions has been dated 1115,⁵ probably for no better reason than that it is thought to be Bernard’s first seal and that he became abbot in that year.⁶”  

Elsewhere it is dated more realistically to 1146 and 1127–1147, respectively.⁷ Another impression is attached to a chatter in favour of the abbey of Saint Victor and is dated 1144.⁸ The third is attached to a document in Ghent and is not dated.⁹ Bernard refers to the fate of this seal matrix in a letter dated 11511/1152 to his old disciple from Clairvaux, Bernardo Pignatelli, now Pope Eugene III, in which he complains of being in danger from false brethren. 

‘Many forged letters have gone out under a forgery of my seal. And what I fear may have happened: these forgeries are said to have reached even you. This is why I have rejected my old seal and am, as you see, using a new one for the future, containing both my image and name.’¹⁰  

Bernard asks the pope no longer to accept the ‘old’ seal, except in the case of a letter he had given to the bishop of Clermont and scaled before the new one was made. In another letter to Eugene Bernard tells him of how his secretary, Nicholas, had fled  

‘…. leaving behind him foul traces… When he left, there were found on his person, besides books, money, and much gold, three seals: one his own, the other the prior’s, and the third mine, not the old one. but the new one which I was obliged to have made on account of his cunning and frauds.’¹¹ 

Bernard goes on to say that it was Nicholas he had had in mind when he had previously written to the pope of ‘false brethren’. 

We knew from Bernard’s two letters that he was obliged to discontinue using the old seal and to have a new one made and that, had Nicholas not been searched before he left, Bernard would also have lost his new seal. From this Bernard’s motivation in deciding to include ‘both my image and my name’ (continente et imaginem nostrum et nomen)¹² was first and foremost security. He had learnt from experience that the utmost care was needed in storing and using his seal, an issue which dictated a number of General Chapter statutes on seals.¹³ At the same time, his decision to incorporate his imaginum as well as his nomen is a powerful indicator that he was not the iconophobe that he has often made out to be. 

A matrix which includes both Bernard’s image and name and therefore corresponds to the seal he described in the letter to the pope as a replacement for the earlier seal is today found in the Musée des Antiquités in Rouen.¹⁴ 

In a letter to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions dated 16 August 1837, the then-director of the Rouen Museum, Achille Deville, describes the matrix and continues: 

The effigy and name of S. Bernard are engraved on it: its shape and execution   correspond exactly with the style of the time when S. Bernard informs us that he   had had it made; it has in every way all the marks of genuineness that can be wished for.¹⁵ 

He then explains how the museum acquired it: it was bought from the Collegiate Church of Saint Cyr in Issoudun, which was in some way connected with Clairvaux, by a merchant who then sold it to a retired officer who donated it to the museum. 

The matrix is pointed oval and made of copper, four centimetres long and three centimetres wide.¹⁶ The legend around the edge reads: + SIGILLUM : BERNARDI : ABBATIS : CLAREVALL, and not the more usual, less personal SIGILLUM ABBATIS CLAREVALL. Unusually, the punctuation between the words is not double but triple point. The ’d’ in Bernard is of uncial form, while most of the letters are square. The ’e’ of Clarevall is also uncial, although the same letter in ’Bernard’ is square. There are three instances of letters conjoined: AR in Bernardi and Clarevall and ‘AB’ in Abbatis.  

Within the legend, a tonsured Bernard is shown wearing a cowl – and not, as is sometimes stated,¹⁷ sacerdotal vestments. His frontal figure is seated on a faldstool, the arms of which terminate in a serpent’s or lion’s head. The frontal position and the faldstool – the official seat of prelates – underline the abbot’s authority in Cistercian governance. 

It was precisely by the imposition of his seal that Bernard exercised his authority. The matrix depicts him holding in his right hand – which in the waxen impression becomes his left – another symbol of his authority, a very simple pastoral staff of the earliest design with the crook turned inwards. The crook and the staff are separated by a circular knob. In his left hand, which becomes his right in the impression, he holds what has been described as ‘an object of singular aspect, which has given rise to various conjectures’ and ‘an object whose roughness and minuteness of the work make it difficult to recognise’.¹⁸ It has been referred to in almost as many different ways as the number of scholars who have described it: Mabillon said it was a book;¹⁹ others, ’without doubt a book’,²⁰ a book or roll,²¹ a tablet or roll,²² a church door divided into two parts by a column surmounted by a capital,²³ an hourglass, and ’an object of singular aspect’ – a tabula pacis or pax-board. It is, in fact, none of these things; it is, as T.A. Heslop has pointed out, a writing tablet in the form of an arch-topped diptych and stylus – a design which occurs on a number of seals.²⁵ One end of the stylus is pointed, to be used to write in the wax, while the other end, to erase by smoothing out the wax, is flat. As Bernard refers to the use of this seal on letters, and as letters, unlike charters, were written on wax tablets, it is quite possible that the seal was primarily intended for authenticating his correspondence and not for official documents of the abbey. 

Original seal matrices as early as Bernard’s have been described as ‘of considerable rarity’. Bernard’s matrix corresponds to Bernard’s own description, and the features of size, design, inclusion of his name, and style of lettering can all be paralleled in the twelfth century, suggesting that there are no serious grounds for questioning authenticity. 

Its existence makes Bernard seem closer to us, and it is of considerable interest as it represents one of the only two images from Bernard’s lifetime. 

This article can be found in James France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Michigan, CS 210, pp. 56-64 

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Abbreviations:  

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Footnotes 

1. Statuta 3:437 (1335:2) 
   
2. On Cistercian seals see Heslop 1986, Clay 1928, and Williams 1998, 108-111 
   
3. Details of statutes relating to seals are given in Heslop (1986.282-283). 
   
4. Pedrick 1902, 26 
   
5. The date given in Walford & Way 1857 on the caption to illustration facing 48 and Paris 1990, 264 
   
6. H.675 Auxerre, Archives départementales (Yonne); PL 185:1747 
   
7. Schmitt 1992, 641; and Pontigny 1999, 106 
   
8. It is now in Archives nationales, Paris, L888A No. 75; Douët-d’Arcq 1968, 3:73 (No. 8645) 
   
9. Ghent, Archives, reproduced in PL 185:3-4 
   
10. Ep 284; SBOp 8:199; trans. James 431 & James 1998, 548 
    
11. Ep298, SBOp 8:214; trans James 435-436. Gastaldelli’s dating to 1152 (after May), James (1998), 548 
    
12. Ep 284; SBOp 8:199 
    
13. For this, see Williams (1998, 105-111). 
    
14. See seal depicted at the head of this article 
    
15. Th letter is printed in full in Eales 1889, 2:247-459. See also PL 185:1745–1748. 
    
16. Roun, Musée des Antiquités de la Seine-Maritime, Inv. 152 
    
17. Berard de Clairvaux 1953, 325 
    
18. Walford & Way 157, 50-2; an Eales 1889, 58WWW 
    
19. PL 18:1451748 
    
20. Schmitt 1992, 642 
    
21. Birch, 188-1890, 5:257 
    
22. Paris 1990, 265 
    
23. Eales 1889, 2:458 
    
24. Walford & Way 1857, 50-52, where it is called a ‘pax-board’ and where it is also said that the man who sold the matrix called it an ‘hourglass’ and that the man who bought it also thought it was a door of a church 
    
25. Heslop (1986, 268) suggests that it was not primarily a charter seal, which may be why it names Bernard 
    
26. Walford & Way 1857, 50-52