Medieval Bronze Chess Piece Personal Seal Matrix with Fox-Bishop

14TH CENTURY A.D.

3/4 in. (7.09 grams, 18.65 mm high).

With a beaded border, a long-eared fox with a bishop’s crozier preaches to a congregation of birds; this hugely popular satirical motif in which the pastor becomes the predator, preying on his flock, was originally directed against the mendicant friars but soon came to criticise the regular
clergy too; the two pairs of letters, either side of the ‘preacher’, appear to read 'IE ME', perhaps Anglo-Norman for ‘I love’. [No Reserve]

Provenance

Found Gloucestershire, UK.
Acquired from the early 1980s.
From the private collection of a late Gloucestershire, UK, gentleman; thence by descent.

Literature

See Jones, M., The Secret Middle Ages, Cheltenham, 2025, pp.276-7, 282-3.

CONDITION

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LOT 1864