The Beautiful Game: Courtly Love Posies in Anglo-Norman Inscribed on Jewellery and Seals

For Dana It is often forgotten that a variety of French peculiar to the British Isles, known as Anglo-Norman was, for more than four centuries post-Conquest, the default language for inscriptions of an amatory nature, on jewellery especially. The large number of inscribed rings, brooches and seal matrices unearthed by metal-detectorists in recent decades whose finds are recorded in detail on the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) database have prompted this consideration of these legends — often simple rhyming couplets or 'posies' — especially in the context of that set of romantic conventions retrospectively termed 'Courtly Love'.Footnote1