Sphragistics studies the history of the emergence and development of seals, or rather, their matrices and imprints. This is an auxiliary historical science, which often opens the veil of secrets of many events in ancient Russia. For example, the emergence of the unusual seal of Ivan the Great on letters granted to nephews.
The tradition of signing documents with an autograph appeared in Russia only in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It was borrowed by merchants from the merchants of the East, who, in order to speed up the exchange of letters, used not personalized wax impressions, but paintings. Until that moment, all wealthy townspeople used family heraldic seals, and the royal court used royal and later imperial impressions on sealing wax, which were used to fasten the edge of the letter so that it was impossible to read the contents without breaking the seal.
Printing history
The diploma, which was awarded by Ivan the Third the Great to his nephews, the princes Fyodor Borisovich and Ivan Borisovich, was no different from similar certificates that were issued to resolve inheritance rights, grants, exchange and recusal certificates. But it was this letter that was first sealed by the personal seal of Ivan III, which attracted attention.
On the obverse was a horseman striking a winged serpent with a spear. On the front side there was a circular inscription "Seal of the Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich". There was no image on the reverse, there was only a continuation of the inscription on the front side of "All Russia". Historians rightly believe that the horseman on the first seal is St. George the Victorious, but his image was uncanonical, free, and therefore very different from those impressions that were left later on credentials.
History of Russia in print
When Ivan the Third completed the unification of the appanage principalities around Moscow, the inscription on the reverse side of the seal was supplemented with "and the Grand Duke of Moscow, Vladimir, Vyatka, Novgorod, Tver, Pskov, Perm and Bulgarian."
Only in 1472, in the year of the wedding with Sophia Palaeologus, a drawing with a two-headed eagle, whose heads were crowned with crowns, was added to the back of the matrix. Sophia Palaeologus was the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine Palaeologus, and at his behest the two-headed eagle was handed over to Russia as a symbol of the fallen empire.
Since 1479, on the seal of Ivan the Third, St. George the Victorious in canonical embodiment has been depicted on the obverse, killing a winged serpent. Since that time, George the Victorious has become a symbol of Moscow. On the reverse side of the seal is a double-headed eagle. The inscriptions have been preserved. In this form, the seal was preserved in the reign of Vasily III - the son of Ivan the Great, and only during the reign of Ivan the Terrible was the seal changed.
