Heraldry, which is the practice of designing,
displaying, describing, and recording coats of arms
and heraldic badges, does not exist solely in fantasy
fiction, but actually dates back over 900 years and is
still in use today.
The origins of heraldry stretch back into ancient
times. Warriors often decorated their shields with
patterns and mythological motifs. Army units of the
Roman Empire were identified by the distinctive
markings on their shields. These were not heraldic
in the medieval sense, as they were associated with
military units, not individuals or families. Truly
heraldic devices seem to have been first used in
Europe during the reign of Charlemagne (768–814
AD).
The emergence of heraldry as we know it today was
linked to the need to distinguish participants quickly
and easily in combat. Distinguishing devices were
used on coats of arms, shields, and caparisoned
horses, and it would have been natural for knights
to use the same devices as those already used on
their banners and seals. A formal system of rules
developed into ever more complex forms of
heraldry to ensure that each knight’s arms were
unique (at least within the same jurisdiction).
The system of blazoning arms that is used in
English-speaking countries today was developed by
the officers of arms in the Middle Ages. This
includes a stylized description of the escutcheon
(shield), the crest, and, if present, supporters,
mottoes, and other insignia. Understanding heraldic
rules, most importantly the Rule of Ticture, is the
key to the art of heraldry. In the Temple Collection
are several encyclopedic texts that offer
descriptions of family crests. By following the
guidelines of heraldry, one would be able to create
a visual representation from the written outline.
Heraldry, defined as the systematic hereditary use
of an arrangement of charges or devices on a shield,
emerged at about the same moment in the midtwelfth century over a wide area of Europe. It is
often stated that heraldry in its early stages had
strong military associations, and that its original
purpose was the identification of knights in armour
on the battlefield. In the eleventh and twelfth
centuries the normal tactic of European warfare
was the massed cavalry charge with lance and
shield. This great set-piece formation could only be
executed once, and if the enemy was not
completely overwhelmed by the first charge, the
battle then broke up into a hand-to-hand fight
where some symbol or device, it is argued, was
necessary to identify the combatants since a man in
armour was very hard to recognise. Heraldic
theorists claimed that a man's arms came to be
painted on his shield so that he could be recognised
by his followers in battle, and that such a mark of
identification became essential after the
development of the closed helmet which
completely concealed a man's face. This argument
has been elaborated to show how heraldry was a
product of the feudal system of land-tenure in
Europe. A man held his land in return for military
service, and was bound by personal allegiance to his
lord under whom he must serve in war. Arms came
to be used so that knights could be distinguished by
their followers' in battle. The hereditary nature of
heraldry is also a result of the feudal system. If
service in war was the rent by which land was held,
the right of inheritance by the natural heir was an
understood condition of feudal tenure. At a time
when the right to lead or the duty to follow in battle
was inherited, the coat of arms was likely to
become hereditary too. In this way, it is argued,
heraldic devices became a symbol of the owner's
identity and also a mark of his status. Knights
needed to be distinguished by shields and coats of
arms, so arms thus became a mark of knightly
status or noble rank.
However, it seems likely that the depiction of arms
on a shield was subjective demonstration on the
part of individual warriors, a form of individual
"vanity" and display rather than a practical military
device. Nevertheless, even if marks by which
knights and lords might be readily known were not
absolutely called for by military needs, the social
and military order of the twelfth century was such
that, once invented, they found a ready market as
military status symbols, and were popularised
probably by the tournament rather than in real
warfare. The tournament is supposed to have been
invented in the mid-eleventh century in France, and
it developed as a popular form of regular training in
the handling of weapons and horses. It rapidly
became highly organised and hedged around with
rules and elaborate pageantry. Ambitious knights
travelled round Europe fighting in tournaments at
fortnightly intervals. It is probable that such
itinerant participants in tournaments helped to
spread the usages and conventions of heraldry
across Europe. Later in the Middle Ages the bearing
of arms came to be accepted as an essential
prerequisite of participation in a tournament.
The growing importance of military pageantry and
its association with the tournament would have
excluded those of insufficient social standing who
were unable to meet the expense, and this would
have helped to restrict the use of arms to the
knightly class. Thus, arms came to be seen as a mark
of noble status, and were granted by the Holy
Roman Emperor and the European kings as a
corollary to ennoblement. In early days, however,
most arms were self-assumed, and their owners
sometimes changed them at will but even in the
twelfth century, and before the rapid proliferation
of armorial devices led to a growing measure of
royal control, there was some equation between
nobility of blood and armorial bearings. This clue
suggests an alternative theory for the origins of
heraldry. Although heraldry came to have strong
military associations, it may have developed from
the civil personal mark, the seal device, of certain
north European ruling families descended from
Charlemagne, who perpetuated some of the
administrative organisation and possibly the
symbolic devices of his court. The latter included
the sun and the moon, the symbols of the
Evangelists: St Mark's lion and St John's eagle, and
the fleur-de-lis (which later became the symbol of
royalty in France).
Consequently, the origin of heraldry was not
Norman but Flemish. The Normans were not in a
position to know about the symbolic devices of
Charlemagne's court. It is most likely, therefore,
that the origins of English and Scottish armory are
to be found not in Normandy (the Normans were of
mixed Scandinavian and Frankish descent), but in
the system adopted by certain ruling families
descended from the Emperor Charlemagne, the
military and political colossus who ruled the
Frankish Empire of northern Europe from 768 to
814. These families perpetuated much of the
administrative organisation of the Carolingian
Empire, including the use of dynastic and territorial
emblems on seals, coinage, customs stamps and
flags. There is evidence to suggest that these
devices were common to families or groups linked
by blood or feudal tenure, and were of necessity
hereditary. With the redistribution of lands
following the Norman Conquest, the cadets in
England of Flemish families who were of Carolingian
descent, and the devices used by them, became
integrated in Anglo-Norman society. During the first
Crusade, only thirty years after the Conquest, the
mass cavalry charge of mail-clad knights remained
the standard tactic of warfare. Order was
maintained in the ensuing fight by the use of
mustering flags bearing the personal devices of
commanders and it is clear that these were
sufficiently distinctive to be recognised, even in the
heat of battle. It is likely that they also possessed a
peacetime function - that of marking territory and
symbolising authority - and that the devices used
for this purpose also came to be engraved on seals
by which documents were authenticated. The
proto-heraldic devices were displayed, not on
shields at that stage (many similar shields are
shown on the Bayeux Tapestry but rather on seals
and banners. Hereditary devices may have been
known in 1066, and symbolic banners seem to have
been carried at the battle of Hastings and in the
First Crusade.
If the undoubted links of the ruling families of
Flanders with Charlemagne had any heraldic
connotations, the political decline of Flanders in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the
misfortunes that overwhelmed its ruing houses,
would have given their descendants in England an
additional urge to preserve their heritage and
promote their armorial devices. Whatever its
origins, it is clear that what had been, in the late
eleventh century, the inheritance of a small group
of interrelated families in north-west Europe,
spread through the upper ranks of society in the
twelfth century. This widespread adoption of
colourful devices and symbols was one aspect of
the twelfth-century renaissance. Once symbols
were transferred to the shield, they gave rise to
what is accepted as heraldry, and this practice
spread across Europe in a period of less than thirty
years.
By the beginning of the thirteenth century,
admission to the tournament was established as the
prerogative of the knightly class. Heralds were
attached to royal or magnatial households as
advisers and emissaries and it was they who were
responsible for arranging and supervising
tournaments: they determined the eligibility of
participants and declaimed their prowess,
marshalled the contestants and adjudicated at the
fight. The heralds thereby acquired an expertise
which was peculiarly their own. This was concerned,
not only with the management of ceremonial and
protocol, but also with the ordering and recording
of personal devices used on seals, at tournaments
and, increasingly, in warfare and because it was
they who exercised this expertise, it became known
as "heraldry."
Heralds were the motivating force which enabled
armory to develop systematically: it was they who
devised its conventions and terminology, and it was
they who benefited most from the approbation of
the medieval establishment. The earliest recorded
seal showing an armorial shield dates from 1136,
and thereafter the increasing importance of the
shield as a vehicle for armorial display had more to
do with the development of armory as a well
regulated system than with military expediency.
The shield was itself a symbol of the mounted
warrior and, while the devices placed upon it were
peculiar to the individual, the fact that they were
carried on a representation of a shield served to
emphasise the status of armiger. Clearly, it was
considered both convenient and desirable that an
heir, on coming to his estate, shall adopt the same
device as his father as a symbol of familial and
feudal continuity.
Although there is evidence to suggest that in
northern Europe proto-heraldic devices were often
adopted by succeeding generations of the same
family, the emergence of an hereditary system
based on the shield (in other words, armory as it is
now defined) is said to date from 1127 when Henry
I of England invested his son-in-law, Geoffrey
Plantagenet, with a blue shield charged with gold
lions. The same shield later appears on the tomb at
Salisbury Cathedral of Geoffrey's bastard grandson,
William Longespee, Earl of Salisbury (d. 1226) and
the device would, therefore, seem to have acquired
an hereditary significance. The earliest shields of
arms were simple and uncluttered and consisted for
the most part of geometrical shapes derived from
the practice of decorating the raised ribs, bosses
and struts of early wooden shields.
From its simple origins in the twelfth century
heraldry developed in complexity and elaboration.
By the thirteenth century it was acquiring the rules
and terminology which are the basis of its present
laws and language. As time passed, it became
increasingly complex in its design with the
introduction of a number of fabulous and chimerical
creatures, and patterns which moved far away from
the simple vigorous geometry of the early days. A
later development, originating in Spain, was the
incorporation of quarterings of other arms inherited
via heraldic heiresses, creating ever more complex
patterns.
In its early stages heraldry was remarkably uniform
throughout Europe. Similar armorial bearings were
adopted in the middle of the twelfth century in
most western countries. The sudden and
widespread emergence of heraldry is thought to
have been associated with the Crusades and the
rise of tournaments, which brought together
knights from all over Latin Christendom, and
emphasised the universality of western civilisation.
During the thirteenth century the science of
heraldry crystallised into approximately the form
we know today, with the same range of colours,
metals, and furs, and the same rules for marshalling
arms. The principle that arms were personal
property and could not be used by another was
generally accepted throughout most of Europe,
though this was only enforced nationally, so that
similar arms do appear in different countries.
Gradually all the leading ruling houses came to have
officers of arms or heralds, whose job it was to
regulate heraldry and to record arms.
It is thought that the heralds originated as roving
minstrels who attached themselves to tournaments,
and gradually acquired special knowledge of arms
by this means. As a result they came to exercise
supervision over arms, and were called upon to
adjudicate in cases of dispute. In the fifteenth
century in France and England, the heralds were
formed into colleges with permanent headquarters
and library
https://sites.google.com/site/caroluschess/heraldy/
origin-of-heraldry
Does your family’s moniker depict a dragon
symbolizing that you are “Valiant defender of
treasure”? Or perhaps a stag to show that you are
“One who will not fight unless provoked”? It is
orange to represent your family’s ambition or blue,
showing that you value truth and loyalty? Every
aspect of a coat of arms is symbolic, from the
coloring and patterns, to the shapes and layout.
Heraldry flourishes in the modern world;
institutions, companies, and private persons
continue using coats of arms as their pictorial
identification. Members of the VT community will
likely recognize the official coat of arms of the Corps
of Cadets, shown here. Designed in 1965 by Col.
Harry D. Temple when he was commanding officer
of the Army’s Institute of Heraldry, the coat of arms
was granted to the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets by
the U.S. Army. The symbols are as follows:
Flaming grenade = preparation for war
Four gold stars = four major wars in which Tech
cadets had fought before 1965 (Spanish-American
War, World War I, World War II, and Korean War)
Laurel wreath = the presidential citation given to
the cadet band for Spanish-American War service
Color red = strength and courage
Sword = command
Similarly, the University has an official seal
containing a shield divided into four quadrants
depicting the obverse side of the Great Seal of the
Commonwealth of Virginia, the surveyor’s level and
leveling rod superimposed over a scroll, a partially
husked standing ear of corn, and a chemical retort
and graduate. Above the shield is the left side of the
flaming lamp of learning with a right hand
suspended above it. Created in 1896 and officially
adopted by the board of visitors in 1963, the seal
has remained unchanged (with the exception of the
name of the institution and the alteration of the
commonwealth portion) for more than 11 decades
and reflects the agricultural/mechanical emphasis in
the Virginia Tech curriculum during its first century.
Special Collections is open to researchers looking to
better understand the symbolism of coats of arms
connected with particular family names, churches,
universities, fraternal orders and organizations, as
well as those who simply wish to learn more about
the governing rules of the art form and design a
crest of personal meaning.
Heraldry was a very important part of life for the
higher social classes in Medieval England. A heraldic
shield and coat of arms was an implicit statement
that you and your family were part of the social
hierarchy that upheld Medieval England at that
time. However, along with many other aspects of
social life in Medieval England, there were clear
rules by which anyone associated with heraldry had
to abide by. These rules have essentially stood the
test of time as well as many of those found in
Medieval times still exist in the 21st Century. In this
sense, heraldry is one of the most enduring aspects
of Medieval England.
A heraldic device was first perceived so that a
knight could be recognised in battle. If a knight
wished to impress his peers, or even the king, with
acts of bravery, he could not do so solely dressed in
his armour, which covered him from head to toe
and disallowed any form of recognition. In an era
where your credibility as a lord or knight was a
measured in your deeds of bravery, such
recognition was vital. Hence the creation of heraldic
devices, which if seen in battle would identify one
knight only as only one knight had such a device.
Heraldic devices were first seen in the twelfth
century. Likewise, in tournaments where a knight
had to demonstrate his bravery against other
knights, a full set of armour would disguise a
competitor. Hence the use of heraldic devices at
jousting tournaments, for example.
Any individual knight not only had a shield with his
heraldic ‘badge’ on – the same pattern would be
found on his banners, the coverings of his horse and
on his surcoat that covered his body armour. The
phrase ‘coat of arms’ came from this practise of
having your heraldic device/pattern of your surcoat.
Knights also took to wearing a crest on the tops of
their helmets.
A heraldic device became family property and a
father who had impressed in battle desired to pass
on to his sons the same heraldic pattern. In this way
a family’s reputation was maintained.
However, a heraldic shield was not only the
preserve of fighting noblemen. It became a sign of
others making in society and churchmen, lawyers,
lord mayors etc all wanted a heraldic device as a
statement of who they had become in society.
Towns of importance and medieval guilds also
wanted a heraldic device for the same reason.
In an era when few could read or write, the best
source for who owned what heraldic device was
rolls of arms. A roll of arms contained a list of who
owned what in heraldic terms – and it was done in
paintings and descriptions so that people could link
a shield with a name. Heralds did this work. Heralds
visited tournaments, battlefields and castles to
ensure that rolls of arms were correct. In times of
peace, heralds toured counties in what were called
‘visitations’. Their task was not only to ensure that
the rolls of arms were accurate. They also checked
that heraldic rules were being adhered to.
In 1555 heralds were given a permanent base in
London where all heraldic records were kept. The
College of Arms was burned down during the Great
Fire of London in 1666 but a new College was built
on the same site. Heralds are members of the Royal
Household and the Earl Marshal, the Duke of
Norfolk, oversees their work. The College is divided
into three Kings of Arms, six heralds and four
pursuivants (junior heralds).
Heraldry evolved in 12th-century Western Europe,
probably in response to the growing difficulty of
recognising men in armour as that armour became
heavier and more enveloping. At Hastings, when a
rumour spread among the Normans that WILLIAM I
(THE CONQUEROR) had been killed, he had only to
tilt his helmet back as he rode among them for all to
see that he was alive. Two hundred years later such
a feat would have required considerable exertion
and the help of a squire. Men in armour could by
now only distinguish one another by devices on
their shields or on the surcoats worn over their
armour. Noblemen's devices were used by their
followers as badges on their own shields and coats,
and in the feudal army men were accustomed to
muster under the banner of their lord, which was
marked with his coat of arms. Crests, which were
also distinguishing marks, came later.
Heraldic devices became hereditary as first the son
then the more remote descendants of the original
feudal lord retained the original device so as to
guide their followers in battle. The devices outlived
the use of armour, however, and by the 17th
century were being widely used in non-military
ways. By now the granting and use of coats of arms
in England had come under the supervision of a
body of heralds called the College of Arms, which
had been set up under royal authority in 1483. In
Scotland the Lord Lyon, supervised the use of arms.
It is probable that arms were not originally granted
by anyone but were assumed by various persons as
and when they pleased. Thus from time to time two
or more people might be using the same device. In
the Scrope-Grosvenor case in the late 14th century,
when Lord Scrope (see BLG 1965) challenged the
right of Sir Robert Grosvenor (see WESTMINSTER,
D) to use the same coat of arms that he did himself,
the duplication was accidental. Indeed there was a
third person mentioned as using those arms, a
Cornish knight called Carminow.
This celebrated case was only finally settled by the
King, RICHARD II, who found for Scrope. By now the
Crown was assuming jurisdiction over the use of
arms. A century later this had become firmly
established, and since then it has been heraldic law
that arms can only be borne in accordance with the
rules drawn up by the heralds under royal authority;
unfortunately, the forum for prosecuting illicit
assumptions of arms in England, the Court of
Chivalry, is obsolescent, despite a brief revival in the
early 1950s. In Scotland the Court of the Lord Lyon
has more teeth and still enforces laws against the
irregular or illicit assumption of arms.
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