Heraldry

Heraldry is the practice of designing and describing emblems called coats of arms. During the Middle Ages, knights painted these emblems on their shields to make their identities known on the battlefield. After the mid-1100s families began passing down their coats of arms from generation to generation. Eventually these emblems lost their military function and became status symbols.

Heraldic Rules and Terms. In medieval* combat, being able to recognize the shields of friends and foes was a matter of life and death. To make their emblems distinctive, knights adopted strict rules, such as declaring that a shield must contain one dark and one light color. Acceptable dark colors included black, blue, green, purple, and red. Light colors resembled precious metals—yellow for gold or white for silver.

The arrangement of colors on a coat of arms was called a blazon, from the German word blasen—referring to the trumpet blast that announced the arrival of a competitor in a jousting tournament. The rules of heraldry required the use of specific terms to describe a blazon. The description began with the background color, or field, of the coat of arms. Each color had a special name. Several came from French words: argent for silver; or for gold; vert for green; and purpure for purple. Blue was azure (from the Arabic word azraq) and red was gules (from the Persian word gûl, or rose). The name for black was sable, after the black-furred animal. In addition to these basic colors, knights could paint their shields in ermine or vair—two patterns designed to resemble animal fur.

There were several ways to divide a shield to display two colors. One color could be shown on the left and one on the right, an arrangement known as per pale. A shield could also be divided per fess (horizontally), per bend (diagonally), or in a more complicated pattern. The description of a divided blazon began with the color on the top or on the right side (from the shield-bearer's point of view). The right and left sides of the shield were called dexter and sinister, from the Latin words for right and left. For example, a description of "per fess, gules and argent" would indicate a shield divided in half by a horizontal line, with the top red and the bottom silver.

On top of the background color, a shield could display one or more shapes, or charges. The simplest types of charges were basic geometric shapes called ordinaries. For example, a shield could have a vertical line down the center, called a pale, or a horizontal line, called a fess. More complex charges covered a wide ranges of shapes, including animals, human figures, heavenly bodies, and inanimate objects. Often, the charge on a shield involved some sort of puns or wordplay. For example, the arms of humanist* Johann Reuchlin featured an altar with curling wisps of smoke. The word Räuchlein in German means "a little smoke." Playwright William SHAKESPEARE had a coat of arms with a falcon holding a lance, hinting at the phrase "shake spear."

In heraldry, individual colors and the order in which they appeared were very important. "A lion or in gules" indicated a completely different blazon from "a lion gules in or." This posed a problem because woodcuts*, engravings, and personal seals did not show color. However, in the late 1500s an engraver invented a system of hatching (drawing lines) to represent color: horizontal hatches for azure, vertical for gules, diagonal for vert, cross-hatched for sable, dotted for or, and blank for argent.

Uses of Heraldry. By the mid-1400s, advances in armor made the use of shields in combat unnecessary. But noble families continued to use their coats of arms as status symbols, and countries began establishing rules for their use. The English king Richard III established the College of Arms in 1484 for that purpose, and the Holy Roman Emperors* had officials who granted new arms and confirmed existing ones. Custom within the Holy Roman Empire allowed any free man to adopt a coat of arms. Middle-class workers often used basic designs that indicated their trade, while scholars and minor nobles tended to design their own blazons. Rules were established to distinguish the arms of noblemen from those of commoners.

Because shields now existed mainly to display the coat of arms, new shapes replaced the old-fashioned triangular battle shields. A U-shaped shield, which allowed for a more pleasing arrangement of charges, became common in many areas. Italians adopted an almond-shaped shield called a chanfron, which existed only for display purposes. The only shields that still served a military function were targes, the square shields used in tournaments. These included a cutout in the upper right corner to support the bearer's lance. Some targes had cutouts in both corners to make them look more balanced.

Some noble families used their coats of arms to show their heritage or the territories they owned. A shield could be divided into several parts to display the arms of several different territories. For example, when the kingdoms of Castile and Leon united in 1230, Spain developed a "quartered" coat of arms that combined the arms of the two kingdoms. Spanish arms also tended to include sayings, or mottoes, as part of the design. These elements eventually became popular throughout Europe. In the late 1400s and early 1500s, it became fashionable for coats of arms to include figures that supported the shield, such as lions or unicorns. Originally just decorations, these figures eventually became signs of rank with rules to govern their use.