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s. In documents of minor importance it was sometimes the custom to impress the seal or seals on one or more strips of the parchment of the deed itself, cut, but not entirely detached, from the lower margin, and left to hang loose. Besides waxen impressions of seals, impressions in metal, bearing a device on both faces, after the fashion of a coin, and suspended, were employed from an early period. The most widely known instances are the _bullae_ attached to papal documents, generally of lead. The earliest surviving papal _bulla_ is one of Pope Zacharias, A.D. 746, but earlier examples are known from drawings. The papal _bulla_ was a disk of metal stamped on both sides. From the time of Boniface V. to Leo IV., A.D. 617-855, the name of the pontiff, in the genitive case, was impressed on the obverse, and his title as pope on the reverse, e.g. _Bonifati/ papae_. After that period, for some time, the name was inscribed in a circle round a central ornament. Other variations followed; but at length in the pontificate of Paschal II., A.D. 1099, the _bulla_ took the form which it afterwards retained: on the obverse, the heads of the apostles St Peter and St Paul; on the reverse, the pope's name, title and number in succession. In the period of time between his election and consecration, the pope made use of the half-bull, that is, the obverse only was impressed. It should be mentioned that, in order to conform to modern conditions and for convenience of despatch through the post, Leo XII., in 1878, substituted for the leaden _bulla_ a red ink stamp bearing the heads of the two apostles with the name of the pope inscribed as a legend. The Carolingian monarchs also used metal _bullae_. None of Charlemagne's have survived, but there are still extant leaden examples of Charles the Bald. The use of lead was not persisted in either in the chancery of France or in that of Germany. Golden _bullae_ were employed on special occasions by both popes and temporal monarchs; for example, they were attached to the confirmations of the elections of the emperors in the 12th and 13th centuries; the bull of Leo X. conferring the title of Defender of the Faith on Henry VIII. in 1524, and the deed of alliance between Henry and Francis I. in 1527, had golden _bullae_; and other examples could be cited. But lead has always been the common metal to be thus employed. In the southern
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