ABSTRACT
The popularity and prestige of holy figures have often been examined through hagiography, imagery, relics and in the context of pilgrimage or loca sancta. Large numbers of surviving Byzantine lead seals range in date from the 6th through the 15th centuries. The typological system of classification, which considers basic differences as iconic or aniconic, or the arrangement of the various inscriptions, offers only a broad, relative chronological framework. The employment of religious figures as motifs on smaller objects of domestic and private use is closer to the realm of seals themselves. The evidence of the seals for the chronological period both reflects the outcome of the Iconoclastic controversy and the relegation of the saints to a secondary status. The seals with portraits of the princes of the apostles, Peter and Paul, span the 6th to the 12th centuries, though the greater percentage of them belong to the pre-Iconoclastic period.
