Medievalism in the Works of French Early Modern Erudites (an Example of Sigillography)

The article reveals the epistemological potential of the heritage of Early Modern European scholars, who, as part of their historical, ecclesiastical and secular, local and national, ge-nealogical and diplomatics’, studies, left rich handwritten and published collections of cop-ies of medieval sources. Among them, due to the prevailing interest of historiographers of the 17th–18th centuries in archival originals, documents are primarily distinguished, but ma-terial monuments of the past are not left out, especially medieval seals sealing acts, endow-ing them with authenticity, and also serving as personal symbolic objects of their owners, reflecting their social status. Using the example of French scholars of the Early Modern pe-riod, the author of the article tries to prove their independent interest in seals as in a re-main of the glorious past, an "argument" of a historical fact and a valuable personal object. This interest produced a critical sigillographic discourse among scholars: they became at-tentive not only to the images on the seals, but also to their material features and to their owners. Although they were not devoid of engagement towards the seals’ owners, as to the authorities who financed their research, scholars based their "histories" solely on archival material, and, due to high-quality copies of drawings and engravings made by professional artists, their works contain a large number of medieval seals that have not come down to us in the original.