A Seal of Leo Spelaiotis from the Crimea

Sigillographic sources from the Taurica supply information on the relations of this region with the central government along with provincial administrations and representatives of aristocratic circles of the Byzantine Empire, as well as with various Orthodox Church institutions. An illustration to the latter could be an eleventh-­century mollybdoboullon discovered in the Crimea, which features a rare image of the Mother of God Spelaiotissa (of the Cave) and belonged to the monk Leo Spelaiotis. From the combination of the sigillographic type and the nickname of the seal’s owner there are reasons to suppose that the monument introduced into the scholarship is not a seal of the Byzantine noble families but belonged to a representative of a famous pilgrimage centre in the Peloponnesus. The find of the seal of a clergyman of the Mother of God Spelaiotissa’s Monastery in the Crimea widens the geography of the region’s pilgrimage connections and uncovers the contacts of the Taurica priests with the monasteries in the South Pontic coast, the Asia Minor, and Central Greece.