Heraldic

Definitions

Blason is a word of obscure origin, which perhaps comes from the Francique blâsjan (ignited torch, glory). “Blasonner” means to describe armorial bearings according to the rules of heraldic science. In a strict sense, the blazon is thus a statement, which can be oral or writing. It is the description of the armorial bearings made in a technical language, the heraldic language. Blasonnement is the action which consists in describing armorial bearings (and thus to state the blazon which is represented). The science of the blazon is very old, it was based less than one century after the fashion of the armorial bearings was established with the Moyen-âge. In Fencing, the blazons (yellow, red, blue…) are examinations allowing to prove an acquired technical level, to arbitrate or take part in certain competitions. Some are also distributed after a victory (in championship of France in particular). They are concretized by a part of fabric (the color changing according to the level) to sew or scratcher on the not armed shoulder.

Arms, ecu, blazon and armorial bearings

The definitions below are precise, but this precision is far from reflecting the real use, and thus remains very theoretical. In practice, terms blazon , weapons , ecu … the ones for the others are often employed, as well in popularizing works, as in work of authors making authority.

the weapons are emblems painted on one ecu, which must be able to be described in the language of the blazon, and which designate somebody or something. They have the same role as a mark or a logo, or a proper name: they are the heraldic manner to identify, represent or evoke a person, physics or morals (house or family, city, corporation…). The weapons are generally regarded as the property (intellectual) of this person, who is titular.
the ecu or escutcheon (the shield) is the central element and the main thing of the armorial bearings, it is the privileged support on which the weapons are represented. However, several weapons can be represented on the same ecu, without necessarily representing a single person: it can be the union of two weapons representing a marriage, or the superposition many weapons. One ecu thus represents weapons, or an alliance of weapons. In all the cases, the ecu graphically delimits the subject about which the composition speaks, and is sufficient to identify weapons or an alliance.
the armorial bearings are what is represented graphically on an object armorié (example: the ecu). The armorial bearings include/understand the whole of the panoply formed by the ecu, which indicates the subject, and its possible external ornaments (support, crown, collar of order…), which says something on this subject. Certain external ornaments (cimiers, holding) belong to the weapons (and are systematically associated for them), some are arbitrary or whimsical (lambrequins, symbols allegorical or votive), but the majority are the heraldic representation of titles, loads or dignities: they are allotted officially, and can vary according to the state of the holder at a given moment.
Blasonner means to describe armorial bearings. The blazon is what results from it: it is description (in heraldic terms) of all that is significant in armorial bearings, and more specifically on the ecu. The correspondence between a blazon and its representation is in the center of the heraldic one: the data of a blazon must make it possible to represent armorial bearings correctly, and the correct reading of armorial bearings must lead to a blazon which gives an account of all its significant features. Two representations (or armorial bearings) are equivalent if they answer the same blazon, they are then the same weapons (but there can be several equivalent manners of blasonner weapons).

Heraldic sciences

The heraldic one is what is relating to the language of the blazon, with the science of the heralds, the drawing of the armorial bearings. More specifically, it is the discipline having for object the knowledge and the study of the armorial bearings. The heraldic one recovers four related disciplines:

the blasonnement . Historically, the heraldic one is the science of the heralds, who in the tournaments announce the knights in describing in their own language the armorial bearings that they carry on their shield. This discipline is prolonged in the theoretical heraldic , which have the aim of specifying the rules of the blazon , its vocabulary, its grammar and its semantics. It can become a intellectual sport with whole share, consisting in describing in term of blazon of the very varied and original figures, sometimes very far away from the traditional compositions, whose legitimacy is to remain faithful to a certain heraldic genius.
the composition. The traditional branch of heraldic sticks to the creation and the composition of the weapons and blazons, for the account of that which wishes to become titular about it. This heraldic is based on the one hand on the genealogy of the holder, on the other hand on the particular symbolic system which it wishes to attach to his weapons. The heraldic one being regulated as such (except in certain countries), this composition pushed by the vanity of the customer can sometimes lead to excesses: the heraldic one has conduit has to create very many useless pieces of furniture, by simple preoccupation with an originality. The fundamental rule of the nobility is that is to the holder to give prestige to its weapons, not the reverse, and a careful sobriety is of setting.
the decoration . The artistic branch of heraldic is interested in the chart of the blazons in the form of weapons and armorial bearings, for armorier any kind of supports.
the heraldic history , finally, is an auxiliary science of the history. On the one hand, it is pressed on the documents and movable armoriés to obtain particular information on the history of their holder. In addition, it analyzes the composition of these weapons and blazons, to study the social symbolic systems generally.

Historical roots of the heraldic one

Knights and battles

; Knight The use of the armorial bearings comes from the evolution from the military equipment between XIe and XIIe century, which makes gradually impossible to recognize the face of a knight. The helmet of the knights (which still appears in the external ornaments) wrapped the face gradually: the nose becomes protected by nasal, the cap of the Haubert (which protects the head and the neck) tends to cover the bottom of the face, then the helmet is closed by a vantaille (grid), then definitively closed by a mézail (mobile visor).

To be made recognize in the frays of the battles and the tournaments, the knights then take the practice to paint distinctive figures on their shield S (pieces of furniture and parts, or geometrical figures).

; Rider The rider is a gentleman who accompanied a knight and carried his ecu. As from the moment when the ecu carries distinctive figures, the rider which carries the ecu can represent the knight, even in his absence. The rider is probably at the origin of the representation of holding, in the external ornaments.

The five principal areas of the ecu (chief, heart, sides dextral and sinistral, point) return to the parts of the body of the rider who carries the blazon on his chest and arises of face. As the rider is seen of face, “dextral” and “sinistral” are reversed into heraldic compared to their primitive significance: the dextral one of the rider is with the left of the observer, and conversely.

; Tournament S and battles The raison d'être of the knight is to fight battle. The battle enables him to prove its value, through its feats of arms, and the ransoms taken on overcome come to increase its tangible properties.

At the beginning, there are not a very large difference between unfolding of a battle and that in a tournament. In both cases, it is about a great armed fray organized on a battle field between two camps, where the participants comply with certain rules of good manners all the same. The difference is in the stake of confrontation.

the tournaments proceed per time of peace, to make it possible to the knights to gain glory and richness, and to show which is the most prestigious camp most extremely and, for the collective honor.
Conversely, the battles are organized in time of war to show which is the camp most extremely, for example to slice which must order on such or such territory. They also make it possible to the participating knights to gain glory and richnesses (and thus it would be stupid to kill the knight adversary, since it could not pay ransom any more).
What characterizes the state of war, at that time, it is the Chevauchée. It consists in crossing the enemy territory by burning and massacring all on its passage. The ride is not very dangerous for the armed troop (still that the churls have sometimes forgeries, and the claim to make use of it). It is used especially as provocation against the lord of the places: supposed to protect its grounds and its churls against the enemy aggressions, it is some unable, and is thus dishonoured (moreover, as harvests were burned, it is private financial incomes of its grounds).

The Bataille of Crécy is the first great battle where the “rules of the game” were not complied with: the English troops delivered battles not to obtain glory and ransom, but to neutralize the French troops (and succeeded very well there). The French protested that the English had not complied with the rules of the game (treacherously, from where perfidious phrase the “Albion”), but these rules had simply changed. As from this time, the kinds separate. The tournaments proceed in closed field, or in string S (space of circulation to the interior foot of the walls), and the battles become more and more a business of mercenaries and soldiers, not of knights.

Herald

For the large lords, the role of the rider takes a diplomatic dimension gradually, and specializes in the function of Héraut. Disarmed, without value of ransom, they profit from a diplomatic immunity before the letter, and can move freely to ensure their mission, including in the enemy camps and countries. They are consequently held with a strict impartiality and a discretion. The activity of the heralds is governed by a whole code of rights and obligations.

The heralds carry a tunic, the tabar, which makes them immediately identifiable. It is thick and goes down to the knees, armoriée with the weapons of their lord in front of, behind, and on the handles. It is a clothing which indicates that its carrier profits from the privileges of immunity of the heralds. The tabar transforms the herald into symbol living of the weapons and the honor of its lord.

With the Middle Ages, the herald becomes a public officer with the service of a prince or a lord. In the unfolding of the war, it is charged to carry the declarations of war, the summations. For knights which takes part in a fray (that it either battles or tournament), it can receive crowned wills or deposits, and it ensures of worthy funeral where necessary. Its role extends finally on all that milked with the honor: he recognizes the noble weapons and supervises the blazons, he regulates the ceremonies and the plays and testifies to the acts of value.

; Creation of the heraldic one In the tournaments and tournaments, the heralds announced the knight by stating his blazon, i.e. the description of the figures covering its shield, before naming its holder. This practice is at the origin of the heraldic language, at the origin natural and included/understood of all the public. It is this practice which founds and stabilizes the heraldic one.

On the one hand, it fixes the bond between a holder and his weapons, which imposes as first rule not to take the weapons carried by others.
In addition, it implies heraldic equivalence between the chart (armoriée) and the oral description (the blazon), which retains only the significant elements of them.

As from xive the century, the heralds became the specialists in heraldic, or science of the armorial bearings and blazons. They codify the composition of it and description, while formulating the rules of the blazon in particular, travel and establish the armoriaux ones to paint and retain those which they meet.

The judge of weapons is that which is established to judge armorial bearings (and titles of nobility).

The heraldic one in the company

; To represent an identity The figures painted on the ecu, stabilized and stated by heralds, give rise to the heraldic one. The heraldic one is primarily the science of the heralds, and its origin can be included/understood only through their role.

The first element to be armorié, with a military aim, was thus the ecu of the knight. Then these elements were taken again on all its equipment, to make it possible to recognize the holder (on the coat of arms) but also to represent it (banner) or to mark its property (let us caparaçons, cover or flanchières of the horses)…

This bond between weapons and their holder was then included in the composition of the seals. The armorial bearings thus became the image of the legal personality. The practice of the armoriés seals extended the use of the armorial bearings to all the entities able to have a seal. This practice is still alive in the use of armoriées signet rings, which are in theory intended to be used as seals (this is why they are engraved in hollow, and normally carried to the little finger).

; Historical development Initially held to the war leaders who are reproduced them on their shield (fine of XIe century), the use of the armorial bearings gradually extends to the knights, then with the nobility adoubée or not (XIIIe). Through the identification of the person by the armorial bearings, in particular in the seal, the use extends to the noble women and prelates (end XIIe), and of the prelates to the middle-class men, with the craftsmen and aldermen, chapters and corporations (XIIIe beginning), urban communities (XIIIe beginning), ecclesiastical communities and religious orders (XIVe), seigniories, strongholds, provinces, universities and administrations civil… Become a sign of social identity, the weapons become hereditary, and indicate houses, i.e. families and family ties (XIVe), then more generally of the social links, which gradually brings to compose them more and more.

Until XVIe century, the figures employed are mainly animal figures (see in this chapter), of rather restricted number (about fifteen everyday usage), like some inanimate pieces of furniture (often abstract), and especially of the geometrical figures. Thereafter, the repertory is extended to the objects, weapons, parts of the body, buildings,…

; Study of the armoriés objects Armorier an object adds a decorative element, and affirms to it a bond with the holder, readable including by those which could not read. The armorial bearings meet thus on all testimonys of the last one: documents, books, tapestries, monuments, firebacks, pieces of furniture, jewels, vehicles… The identification of the armorial bearings (when they are not whimsical) makes it possible to replace their support in time and social space, and to partly recall of it the history or the geographical source. The identification of the holder is facilitated by the external ornaments, in particular the orders of knighthood represented. It can lead to a very high degree of accuracy (of about a year), when this one frequently modified the composition of its weapons, and the conjunction of weapons on the same support can lead to conclusions even more precise.

Nobility and weapons

The composition of a blazon graphically represents the situation of a holder compared to a certain social order, between XIIe and the XIXe century. The study of the blazon thus supposes a certain knowledge of the company and its organization in nobility, rows, orders, habits…

However, to have armorial bearings forever historically be prerogative of a noble class.

The weapons are not noble by nature, they are at the beginning only the sign of their holder. It is with this holder that it belongs “to be ennoblir”, i.e. to express his nobility by its acts, by attracting glory and honor on its weapons. The official social recognition of this noble nature, or “ennoblement”, comes only to recognize one nobility which was acquired beforehand.

The noble one is primarily the “chief” of something, that from which it draws glory and honor. The means of reaching it can be by the weapons, by violence or usurpation, heritage of possessions, while being titular of a load… In this logic, the effective and durable exercise of the capacity is its own legitimation, and only the result counts in the long run. A person is recognized as noble when it durably occupies a situation of command or responsibility, at the point to identify her social person there. The weapons represent at the same time the person, her current capacity, and the glory accumulated since sometimes of the generations.

Success attracts success, including on the members of its family, and a “noble” house thus tends to remain it. The direction of a ground or a territory is generally hereditary, and it is not always possible to distinguish the weapons from a ground of those of the house which directed it. On the other hand, a load is generally personal, so that it is more readily illustrated in the external ornaments than in the weapons themselves.

The most famous weapons are the sign of a collective membership to which one must or wishes to be attached. Fastening is translated by taking again the weapons completely (case of the chief of line), with a crack, or in a composition. This fastening is obtained from right (title, heritage and line), by acquisition (had stronghold), or by acquired or conceded privilege. It is an honor to carry famous weapons, and this honor obliges in theory its holder to contribute to the glory of these weapons. It is what “Nobility translates for the expression obliges”: the noble wearing of weapons means simply that one is of noble line, but does not say anything more on its own character.

; Holder The holder of a blazon is the “person” whom this blazon designates. The weapons belong to a certain holder, whose attributes are represented by the external ornaments. It is the whole of this relation which represents the armorial bearings. The holder can be of any nature (individual, family, community, institution…).

The composition of new weapons translates what the holder proposes compared to a fabric of bonds and social rights: primitive symbolic system, but also membership of a line (by the weapons of its family), assertion of its genealogy (by composition of the weapons of his/her parents, large parents), marriage (by composition of the weapons of the spouse), strongholds on which one has rights in rem or supposed, current or passed… The weapons of cities or institutions compose in the same way those of their founder or lord.

The weapons themselves are generally invariable, but the external ornaments generally depend on the holder: its titles, dignities and qualities, its function or its social condition.

; Order of knighthood The orders of knighthood are born with the crusades, around religious orders with military vocation (order of the temple, order of Holy Sepulchre, order of hospital…). Like all the monastic orders, these orders can associate with the not-monks: the membership of an order expresses its association with a certain vocation (variable according to the order), and the prestige of the order flashes back on the associated member. At the end of the Middle Ages, orders of court without religious vocation will be created, most prestigious being the order of the Golden Fleece.

The orders can be sovereign (for example, the order of Malta). Generally, they are attached to the country or the dynastic house which created it.

The badges of order of knighthood generally form part of the ornaments external of the armorial bearings. Certain orders are registered however as a chief, in the ecu of the holder. Generally, it is about a collar of a nature surrounding the ecu. When the holder is member of several kinds, the most prestigious order is placed outside.

The admission in an order is the instrument object and recorded. So the representation of a collar of order in armorial bearings makes it possible to identify the holder much more precisely than the simple data of the family weapons.

In France, national orders of knighthood (Saint-Michel, Holy Spirit…) were removed by the constituent assembly, at the same time as the attributes of the nobility. Napoleon created the national order of the Legion of honor, and the national order of the Merit was created at the XXe century.

; Nobility and armorial bearings In France, the constituent assembly issued on June 19th, 1790 the suppression of the nobility (as a statute of the person) and of her real or supposed attributes: titles and strongholds, privileges, orders of knighthood, armorial bearings and delivered,… Prohibited a time, the armorial bearings were restored at the beginning of the XIXe century by Napoleon by decree of March 1st, 1808 (which limited during the empire the use of it to noble, limitation abolished by Louis XVIII with the restoration). The armorial bearings are now the social stake only they had become at the end of the old mode.

Right of the weapons

Juridically, the weapons are the drawn equivalent of a proper name (family name or place name), and are additional with this name. The weapons are a property regular, hereditarily transmissible, and likely to be acquired or conferred. The right associated with the armorial bearings is connected with that of the marks, and it is probably the first subject on which an international law (usual) was elaborate.

In general, each one can be composed of the weapons, subject to not usurping those of others. Certain countries which preserved a nobility (United Kingdom in particular) impose him a specific regulation however, even a dedicated court (Scotland). However, the “right” to the port of such or such weapons is very largely a business of habit.

The main issue of the right of the weapons is, for a holder, to prove anteriority in the use of a blazon which he asserts. This proof is generally brought by means of instruments, which record a given blazon, or grant a modification in preexistent weapons.

The rules of the blazon itself, i.e. those which relate to the composition of the weapons, are implicit and usual. The character made up well or badly of a blazon is evaluated according to a “heraldic spirit”. The evaluation is based on opinion of eminent authorities, which state their lessons in treaties of heraldic referring. These rules are thus moderate and moving like those of the good tone: when the informed verdicts are unanimous, the judgment can be distinct, it must be moderate if not, for the more marginal cases.

Creation and evolution of the blazons

The creation of the blazons although left on the initiative of their future owners, was equipped, as of the beginning, of more or less strict rules, aiming at making the identification effective: easy reading by the use of frank colors slicing the ones on the others, reasons for big size to easily readable simplified contours, and especially unicity of the armorial bearings (often non-observance - more by ignorance that by will of plagiarism). This identity will also results in the use of symbols, recalls of striking facts or translations of characteristic features related to the owner ( Armes by allusion ), or even figuration of the patronym, not hesitating in front of the approximation, even the word game ( speaking Armes ) (cf opposite the “rebus” that constitute in the weapons of Gonesse , commune of the Val-d'Oise, the intertwined hinge of a letter S).

But the blazon is not solidified and it can evolve/move in function:

of a alliance , where the blazons of allied do not meet to form any more but one of them, meeting codified by rules translating the type of union (see low “partition”);
of a heritage , which sometimes imposes on the heir a modification (a Brisure ) to the initial blazon according to the degree of relationship;
of a honorary distinction granted by a suzerain, which gives to vassal right to add on its blazon a distinctive element of his (a Augmentation );
of a distinction or modification to distinguish a new blazon from that from which it was derived (a Brisure).

It can even disappear and be replaced by a blazon of substitution, when the original blazon “was dishonoured” for an action little reluisante of its owner… or an ancestor of the owner! (see with lion, lion couard, vilené etc).

Rules of the blazon

In fact one knows only one rule which can be stated in indisputable terms (i.e. for which one can determine with certainty if it is respected or not): “ No metal on metal, nor enamel on enamel ”, known as Rule of contrariety of the colors. (See the specific article).

One states sometimes:

the blazon must be regular, complete and short: this rule means primarily that it must be possible of blasonner according to the usual rules (regular), and that the blazon must be specific (it is not possible to retain for blazon “of azure with three gold pieces of furniture” without specifying the pieces of furniture, for example). The blazon should be short, i.e. not very charged. This rule largely lost its relevance by the proliferation of the composed blazons, of the cracks and other increases
the pieces of furniture appearing number are identical, therefore inter alia of the same color.
La third rule means that one cannot vary the attributes from one piece of furniture to another, but there exists an exception: the pieces of furniture repeated on a field divided into two zones can be “one in the other”, i.e. to be color of the field on which they are not placed. If some of these pieces of furniture are placed on the partition, they are then partitionnés with the identical one, and each formed zone is coloured opposite field. This rule is far from being absolute, and one knows many cases of nonhomogeneous groups.

Significance of the weapons

The weapons are unquestionably meaning, and of the precise and complete systems of interpretation symbolic system of the weapons were defined, but such systems are connected with a “mancie” (divinatory art). Even if weapons were deliberately made up in reference to such a system, it is not the general case, and the precise identification of the system used is hazardous in any case.

The value which a figure in a particular system can take is specific to this system, and cannot be generalized. So much of crusaders a cross carried, if besant it load often the blazon of a former crusader, one cannot say in so far as all the heraldic crosses result from the crusades, nor even as the honourable part in the shape of cross always has a religious raison d'être: it can be only purely geometrical, or result from a composition.

Even if one can pose as principle that there is always a significance with each choice, many weapons do not have known significances, and those given for the others are generally only assumptions. The interpretation of the symbolic system must be careful in the identification of the context: the holder of the weapons did not always compose them freely, and a significance can be given afterwards to preexistent weapons.

Made up weapons

The made up ecus can correspond to marriages, parts conceded by the grace of the King, or to acquisitions, which involve rights on the corresponding weapons, which right result graphically in the composition of the armorial bearings.

Simplest of the composition consists in joining two ecus, by maintaining some the form individual. With the Middle Ages, one was accustomed to joining the blazons of the couple, the husband posed with dextral (the place of honor…) and the woman with sinistral. Then this fashion evolved/moved, and one rather put oneself to quarter the blazons with the weapons of the wives (of the first and the fourth to the weapons of the spouse, the second and the third to those of the wife).

With 18th and 18th centuries, double-compound weapons sought (very artificially) systematically to represent all alliances and ascents of a character, by his districts of nobility, at the point to become overall illegible about it. In these excesses, which singent the large weapons, the composition is opposed to the first rule of the blazon, which forces the weapons to be simple. It is completely legitimate (still that a little conceited) to represent on the same ecu the weapons of all its aïeux, bisaïeux, great-great-grandparents or even quadrisaïeux (respectively to post 8,16,32 or 64 districts of nobility), but this composition is artificial, and shows only alliances. The personal weapons must remain simple.

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