It is passing strange that Maud should have retained, indeed that she should ever have possessed, a seal which gave her no higher style than that of "Queen of the Romans." It is true that at the time of her actual betrothal (1110), her husband was not, in strictness, "emperor," not having yet been crowned at Rome; yet the performance of that ceremony a few months later (April, 1111) made him fully "emperor." At the time therefore of their marriage and joint coronation (1114), they were, one would imagine, "emperor" and "empress;" and indeed we read in the _Lüneburg Chronicle_, "dar makede he se to _keiserinne_." At the same time, as has been well observed, "matters of phrase and title are never unimportant, least of all in an age ignorant and superstitiously antiquarian,"[874] and there must be some good reason for what appears to be a singular contradiction, though the point is overlooked by Mr. Birch. Two explanations suggest themselves. The one is that while Henry was fully and strictly "emperor," having been duly crowned at Rome, his wife, having only been crowned in Germany (1114), was not entitled to the style of "empress," but only to that of "Queen of the Romans." As against this, it would seem impossible that the wife of a crowned emperor can have been anything but an empress. Moreover, from the pleadings of her advocate at Rome, in 1136 (see p. 257 _n._), we learn incidentally that she had duly been "anointed to empress." The only other explanation is that her seal had been engraved in 1110—when the emperor was, as I have shown, only "Rex Romanorum"—and had not been altered since. It is important to remember that a seal is evidence of formal style, and not of current phraseology. In spite of the efforts of Messrs. Bryce and Freeman to insist on accuracy in the matter, it is certain that at the time of which I write a most loose usage prevailed. Thus William of Malmesbury, although he specially records the solemn coronation of Henry V. as "Imperator Romanorum," at Rome in 1111, speaks of him as "Imperator Alemanniæ," or "Imperator Alemannorum," both before and after that event. This circumstance is the more notable, because I cannot find that style recognized in Mr. Bryce's work, where the terms "German Emperor" and "Emperor of Germany" are treated as recent corruptions.[875] Its common use in the twelfth century is shown by the scene, in the next reign, between Herbert of Bosham and the king (May 1, 1166), when the latter takes the former to task for speaking of Frederick as "King," not as "Emperor" _of the Germans_. Had Henry enjoyed the advantage of sitting under our own professors, he would have insisted on Frederick being styled Emperor _of the Romans_; but as he lived in the twelfth century, he employed, to the annoyance of modern pedants, the current language of his day.[876]