Flat ring (or annular) brooch inscribed and filled with niello in Anglo-Norman with Lombardic letters on the front and reverse.  One side bears the inscription ‘+IO SVI:ICI:EN LIV:DAMI’, (modern French = je suis ici en lieu d’ami, tr. English = I am here in place of your lover). The other side is inscribed in cipher ‘+RMOABREG.REDET RIE:AV’.  This is decoded by reading every second letter, which yields the names ‘ROBERDT’ and ‘MARGEERIE’.  The remaining letters ‘AV’, perhaps stand for Latin ‘AVE’ (greetings) or for French ‘A V' (a vous, meaning “for you”).  The pin attached to the ring with a hoop.  In excellent condition.

Provenance:

Found before 1846 in Kent in the town of Rochester and published in 1846 in The Archaeological Journal 3 (1946) p. 77; Private Collection, England (casts of the ring are found in the British Museum).

Literature:

Brooches made of precious metals were worn during the medieval period to signify status, and they also had a practical use in fastening garments. The inscription on this brooch, conveying an intimate message of love, was presumably given to Margery by her lover Robert.  The hidden nature of the lover’s names written in cipher was part of the game of courtly love, of which one of the tenets was that love should be kept secret.  This is spelled out as the third requirement of the courtly lover in an early fourteenth-century Anglo-Normal work on the “Art of Love” (London, College of Arms, MS Arundel XIV; see ed. Södergârd: 

Le tierz point de fyne amaunt        [The third point for the courtly lover

Si est d'estre bien celaunt...            is to be truly concealing (his love) ...

Pur ceo qui voelt bien amer           For him who wishes to love well

Covient qu'il sache bien celer        it is necessary that he know how to conceal well]

Brooches were often given as tokens of love.  As discreet symbols of affection, they could even have been worn as a symbol of forbidden or adulterous love. However, brooch inscriptions show that they were also thought to have a protective significance. A brooch, by fastening a garment, symbolically protected the wearer from amatory and sexual advances. In this sense brooches could be worn as symbols of fidelity, virginity, or chastity. A lady giving her brooch as a love token was thus a symbol of her letting down her defenses and accepting the amorous and sexual petitions of an admirer.  For an excellent overview of amatory brooches, posy rings, and seal matrices, see Jones 2023 (as below).  He found this inscription (“Je suis ici …”) on many brooches, posy rings, and other small decorative items.  The love inscription “I am here in place of your lover/ friend” was a favored romantic expression on medieval jewels but rare is the inclusion of the names of the couple

A ring brooch of similar form and date can be found in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Accession number: M.49-1975 ttps://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O15219/ring-brooch-unknown, published in Lightbown 1992, p. 492, cat. No. 6.  Another ring brooch of a similar date with the same inscription (‘+IO SVI:ICI:EN LIV:DAMI’) can be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Accession Number: 2018.355 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/773198.  A third example of this inscription on a ring in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Accession number: M.178-1962 https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O121948/ring-unknown/

Further references:

For bronze casts of the present ring brooch see:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_OA-1111

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_OA-1113

Malcolm Jones, “The Beautiful Game: Courtly Love Posies in Anglo-Norman Inscribed on Jewellery and Seals,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 176 (2023), pp. 1-30.

R. Lightbown, Medieval European Jewellery, London, 1992, pp. 147-160.

Ő. Södergârd, “Un art d’aimer anglo-normand,” Romania 77 (1956), pp. 289-330 (ed. London, College of Arms, MS Arundel XIV, c. 1300).