INFORMATION ON THE MANMAX LOGO

A paper by Andreas Zajic

The upper half of the SFB (Special Research Project) logo features Maximilian’s so-called “lesser” or “minor sign-manual” (p[er] reg[em] p[er] s[e], “by the king, by himself”).

As stated explicitly in the Weißkunig, Maximilian originally intended that this regal signature should authenticate documents issued under his name. In fact, not all documents issued under his name bear the “lesser” or “minor sign-manual”, nor was this signature always executed by his own hand. In 1507, the king had a stamp, the katschet, made with this quasi-iconic signature. The chancery staff stamped this “blind”, that is, without ink, on the parchment or paper, and a clerk subsequently traced it in ink. The “lesser” or “minor sign-manual”, which was intended to hint at Maximilian’s personal involvement in the issuing of a charter, was thus in many cases actually executed by his chancellors.

This signature therefore reflects a central endeavour of the SFB 92: to make visible the commitment of the many actors working behind the emperor, in his name or on his behalf. The acronym of the SFB, “MANMAX”, visible under the “lesser” or “minor sign-manual”, was composed from a font used by the print shop of Hieronymus Vietor in Vienna, which published many works by the Viennese humanists at the time of Maximilian, including several related to the Princely Conference at Vienna in 1515. The acronym in a typeface used by members of a university-educated functional elite around 1500 underlines the fact that Maximilian, even as a “media professional”, as recent studies portray him, was not a monomaniacal universal genius, but was in fact “managed” by a multitude of people.

Header Image Credits: Managing Maximilian