ПЕЧАТИ КАНТАКУЗИНЕ-КАТАРИНЕ БРАНКОВИЋ ЦЕЉСКЕ
SEALS OF KANTAKUZINA-KATHERINA BRANKOVIĆ OF CILLI

Summary/Abstract: In this paper all of the known preserved seals of countess Katherina of Cilli will be published for the first time. Born as Kantakuzina, the younger daughter of Serbian despot Đurađ Branković, she became the last heiress of the Austrian and Hungarian noble family of Cilli as the widow of count Ulric II. Although she took part in politics and governance even before her husband’s death in 1456, the major part of Kantakuzina’s preserved sealed documents comes from the period after Ulric’s death, when she independently ruled former Hungarian possessions of the House of Cilli in Slavonia for almost five years. Kantakuzina’s seals, all made of wax, bore her heraldic emblem, often with an inscription with her name and titulature. In analysing the seals, their inscriptions have been reconstructed, their typology has been established according to size and manner of affixing, the tentative number of used matrices and tentative dates of their creation have been determined, as well as their place in the broader diplomatic patterns of Kantakuzina’s documentary production, and a comparison was made with the sigillographic patterns of Slavonian noblewoman, despotess Barbara Frankopan Branković, who was Kantakuzina’s contemporary and relative. Kantakuzina’s seals were also analysed in detail from a heraldic perspective, in view of the peculiarity of her coat of arms.

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