ABSTRACT
The large number of lead seals provides a unique means of investigating the relationship between individual identity and the pictorial expression of one’s personal piety not found in other media. Religious figural images begin to appear on seals in the 6th century and continue until the end of the empire. Both men and women turned to the Mother of God as the most popular devotional figure and with similar needs: onomastic relations; devotional concerns; institutional affiliations; and a host of intercessory invocations. The chronological trend in the sphragistic data exhibiting greater freedom in placing various saints on seals, and even the chronological preference for homonymous saints, is piece of evidence in our understanding of the 11th century as a time of increasing individualism and atomization within Byzantine society.
