Viktor N. Chkhaidze

Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow (chkhaidze.v@yandex.ru)

Key words: Gothia, the Crimea, Taman, the Chersonese, Byzantine, bullae.

The article considers two lead seals of John, the Archbishop of Gothia, dated back to the 10th–11th cc. The first one was found in 1885 during the excavation of the Chersonese and has become almost forgotten by the researches. The second one was found in 2014 in the sea at the Taman fortified settlement. The Archbishop John, the information of whom has been kept on two seals only, was one of the functionaries of the Gothian eparchy of the Constantinople patriarchy appeared in the Crimea in the beginning of the 10th c. and seized to exist in the 18th c. The meaning of these two finds is being considered not only for the Gothian eparchy and its church contacts but also for the Black Sea Region as a whole in the context of rare seals of another hierarchy.