Or and argent
by Bruno Bernard Heim
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Description
As a record of past glories, nothing delights the student as much as heraldry. The information that a coat of arms can give the serious scholar is considerable, and over the past 800 years rules have been evolved to control what can be put in one's personal arms and how to show one's descent from other armigerous families. One of the most intriguing rules is that one is not allowed to put metal on metal - gold and silver (Or and Argent in heraldic terms) - or next to each other. Similarly show more one must not put colour on colour. The reasoning behind these rules has long been suspect, however, so Archbishop Heim's work on the history of, and rules concerning, this subject is most timely. While many authorities maintain that the rules of heraldry forbid such neighbourliness, the author here provides ample evidence that this rule is broken as often as it is adhered to. As a lifelong heraldist and one whose own arms break this 'sacred' rule, Archbishop Heim has always been interested in where and when it was made, so he has researched hundreds of works, some dating from the twelfth century, in an attempt to track down its origins. As a result of his detective work he has painted many examples of arms that break the rule, and also shows how earlier writers have got round such a tricky subject. Or and Argent contains twenty-four full colour plates containing over 360 coats of arms, with examples from every European country, and many others in black and white in the text, all of which break this so-called immutable rule, and a bibliography giving the most important authorities. show lessTags
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Or and argent
- Original title
- Heraldry in the Vatican
- Original publication date
- 1994
- Dedication
- To Alice and Cecil Humphery-Smith with blessings and thanks for their friendship and invaluable help
- First words
- Preface (by His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, K. G.): To have a claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem which hardly lasted a century, from 1099-1187, is awesome enough, but to find that, as Earl Marshal and head of the College of He... (show all)ralds, in a special way one is contravening one of the text-book rules of heraldry is something very terrible.
Introduction: Most manuals written about heraldry place great emphasis on the 'sacred' rule that on a shield, colour must not appear upon colour, nor metal upon metal. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)(These arms are still publicly exposed in Boningen, Solothurn, Switzerland, two miles from where Johannes Heimb lived and had his house and land.)
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- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
