UN INEDITO SIGILLO DI UNO DEI PRIMI PATRIARCHI LATINI INEDITO SIGILLO DI UNO DEI PRIMI PATRIARCHI LATINI DI ANTIOCHIA

The lead seal was surely found during the excavation in the area of the church of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Lower Galilee - Israel), at the end of the seventies of the XXth Century, and it represents a unicum of great value. It is, indeed, a new patriarchal seal of Antioch under Latin rule. Although the very rough epigraphy prevents a clear reading, the comparison with some very rare seals of the other patriarchs of Antiochia allows the identification with the Antioochian patriarch Bernard (1075-1135), perhaps just in the initial phase of his installation, in contention with John the Oxite, the other Orthodox/Constantinopolitan patriarch from 1089 to 1100. This object should be, therefore, the seal of the first Latin patriarch of the church of Antioch, a papal legate in the First Crusade. This chronology harmonizes well with the fact that the engraver of the matrices of the bull echoed Byzantine style, and he did not yet master the ductus of the Latin-Gothic writing.