Enter the world of prestige, tradition, and history.
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STORES PRODUCTSCONTACT
| INTRODUCTION TO HERALDRY |
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Heraldry is both an art and a science used to describe the design, implementation, and display of coats-of-arms, which are also known as “armorial bearings”, or simply “arms.”
Heraldry arose during early battles when combatants had their faces covered by steel helmets. The coat of arms became hereditary just as the knight inherited the right to lead or his responsibility to follow his leader into battle.
During the Middle Ages, coats of arms became military status symbols, as jousting flourished. Starting in the early 16th Century, heraldry moved from an unregulated discipline to one that was regulated by professional heralds. Heralds were specialists in the field, and regulators. Their task was to document all arms in existence to insure that duplication did not occur.
In heraldry history the decline of jousts did not bring an end to heraldry; instead, it remained a popular way to identify a person through the centuries. The arms might be used on official documents or contracts by impressing it in sealing wax, a flag flown over a home, or used on the tomb for a family’s final resting place.
The original purpose for the coat of arms was to allow speedy recognition of friend or foe during a hectic time on the battlefield. It is claimed that William the Conqueror had to remove his helmet in the midst of the battle of Hastings to show his men that he still lived.
Coats of arms have been created from a variety of materials, including embroidery, stonework, stained glass, painted wood, and even enamel. Heraldry normally only uses six tinctures (or colors) for this purpose: red, blue, green, black, yellow, and white. Purple is rarely used, although it can be.
In heraldry many people believe that small elements such as the angle or width of a stripe, number of lion’s claws, or the size or placement of charges on a field are important, however this is generally not so. Blazon is a concise jargon used to describe coats of arms and their components, and blazon ignores details that cannot be quickly identified on a battlefield.
There is also a general understanding that specific colors on a coat of arms has a specific meaning, for example blue means loyalty, red for courage, and white for honor. This may have been the conventional meaning, and the original coat of arms bearer may have had this in mind, but there is not reason to believe that this meaning will carry forward from one coat of arms to the next. It is very difficult in practice to describe what a coat of arms “means” by simply looking at these elements.
The one exception is the common practice of incorporating a pun based on the bearer’s name. Canting arms is a technique used in European coat of arms whereby the name of the individual represented is made into a visual pun. For most other cases, coats of arms are usually arbitrary.
In heraldry's evolution, after the development of portable firearms, plate armor was made nearly obsolete. Heraldry’s original purpose then, to identify battlefield combatants in full armor, needed to evolve. More and more elaborate forms became common, from 18th century battle landscapes to presentations of rococo frames that dominated the entire shield area. The 20th century took a turn back to more simple or iconic forms and emblems, so we came full circle to styles familiar to those used in early heraldry again.
Coats of arms are passed down and remain strictly regulated by inheritance. Only those that are actual descendants of a particular arms-bearing person is entitled to the family’s arms, or a slightly different version of them.
The popular idea that one surname such as Smith has the same coat of arms as all other people using the surname Smith is therefore based on a misunderstanding of arms. Heraldry today is an exciting hobby in most countries, but some countries such as Scotland take it very seriously still, and it remains highly regulated by heralds. The taking of another’s coat of arms there is highly illegal, and is to be avoided if you want to stay out of trouble! The illegal use of arms in Scotland is a real injury, actionable under the common law of the country.
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© Gems of History 2008