Most recently regranted 2002; originally granted in this form 1957; in use since roughly 1304
Blazon: Argent a monk proper, robed sable, trimmed or, shod gules; in the sinister hand, a book of oaths of the last, and the dexter hand taking an oath
Munich has used the monk as either a canting element (MĂśnch in German) or a symbol of the local monastery - perhaps both - essentially continuously for several hundred years. The motif has transcended heraldry to be a popular local theme for postcards, beer mugs, figurines, and numerous other trinkets. The MĂźnchner Kindl, as the figure has come to be known, also features in the cityâs Oktoberfest parade and serves as a sort of municipal mascot.
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Maltaâs national holiday, Victory Day, is probably the hardest-working national day, since it covers four separate events. In a predominantly Catholic country, the 8th is the Nativity of Mary, commemorating the birth of the Virgin Mary. The Great Siege of Malta also concluded on this day in 1565 when the Ottomans finally pulled back, leaving the city to be relieved by Spanish and Italian soldiers. The French gave up their two-year blockade almost exactly 235 years later, which confirmed British rule of the island. Finally, during World War II, the Italian Siege of Malta was called off on October 16th, 1942. (Itâs about a month off, but as long as youâre celebrating, might as well round up.)
Somewhat counterintuitively, the Maltese arms do not involve a Maltese cross. Instead, they feature the George Cross, the second-highest award in the United Kingdom. The entire island was granted the award for their courage and heroism under the Axis siege. When Malta declared independence in 1964, the collective award went directly on both the flag and their arms.
The Maltese cross makes only one appearance in Maltaâs heraldic history; starting in 1875, it used a colonial badge of per pale argent and gules, a Maltese cross argent. The field was almost certainly drawn from the city arms of Mdina. The cross was (correctly, in my opinion) removed in 1898, and in 1943, a chief azure was added with the George Cross proper.
Even with such a relatively short timespan, there is still a somewhat awkward coat of arms jammed in to Maltaâs history. In 1975, the new Republic of Malta decided to switch out the previous coat of arms, concerned about its visual recollection of the monarchy. Unfortunately, what they decided to switch it to was⌠shall we say, not particularly traditional? Designed by a class of art students, the new national emblem limped along, attracting criticism from heraldic experts, until it was mercifully replaced in 1988, with some modifications to the crest, supporters, and motto. (I should say that I donât remotely blame the art students; they evidently thought they were designing a new passport cover, and I think what they produced would suit that purpose quite well! Itâs just not really a coat of arms.)
Blazon: Per pale argent two palets azure and vert an ear of wheat and an olive branch in saltire of the first; pointĂŠ in base barry wavy argent and azure
Unfortunately, besides the original (fairly sparse) grant, I donât have much information on these arms at all. I would speculate that the dexter half and/or the base are possibly canting elements, given that âcanalâ has the same meaning in English and Spanish, and there does seem to be at least one stream in the area.
Blazon: Argent two harrow blades fesswise in pale, on a chief vert two crowns argent
These are canting arms; the townâs name comes from âEggeâ (harrow). I think they tried to do something fancy to bars to represent that, but since theyâre supposed to be harrow blades and they look like harrow blades, I just went with that. The colors are from the arms of the Dukes of Styria, and the two crowns represent St. Bartholomew and St. Florian. The former was the patron saint of the local church in the medieval era, and the latter is the current saint.
Blazon: Bleu-celeste on water in base azure a ship in full sail or edged gules
This one is actually pretty straightforward - the ship is a reference to the âmaritime activity typical of the Rimini Riviera.â The somewhat odd depiction (very weird perspective) is a reference to a specific bas-relief in the Tempio Malatestiano. Also, given the original blazonâs description of the water was blue and the field as âcielo,â I find myself returning to the âbleu-celesteâ term.
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Blazon: Argent from a triple mount in base proper a demi-lindworm sable
The townâs name (and probably also the arms) derive from an old legend about a lindworm that lived on a neighboring hill. I went with âlindwormâ in the blazon instead of âdragonâ because, although all the texts Iâve read donât bother to distinguish between winged and wingless dragons in heraldry, the reports of the legend Iâve found do specify that it was a âLindwurm,â and Iâm fairly confident of the connection between the legend, the arms, and the name.
Arms of Robert Fitz Neel (? - 1345?) from the Dering Roll (c. 1270-1300)
Blazon: Paly of six argent and gules on a fess azure three bezants
I canât find much out about Robert Fitz Neel besides the fact that he was a lord and landholder in Buckinghamshire. The Fitz Neels held various abbeys and manors in the region going back to at least the 1100s. After Robertâs death, his holdings passed to his daughter Grace, who died in 1350. Her minor son John de Nowers returned the properties back to Edward III.
For the department of Loire, Robert Louis borrowed the arms of the counts of Forez, which you can see in this lovely portrait of Anne of Auvergne and Louis II, duke of Bourbon in their heraldic regalia. The fleurs-de-lis and bend of Bourbon are evident both on his arms and hers (since she wouldâve had the right to bear them as his wife). She was an heiress, and you can see the two other coats she inherited on her dress. Forez is in the base half, and the chief has Auvergne.
âBut wait,â you say. âAs an avid reader of your blog and fan of medieval French heraldry, I know that Auvergne is the gonfanon gules fringed vert!â You are partially correct, dear reader; the gonfanon did indeed belong to the counts of Auvergne. The dauphins of Auvergne, post-1302, had or a dolphin azure. They were a mostly different family, descended from Count William VII the Young. (His uncle, William VIII, usurped him, kept the title Count of Auvergne and swore fealty to Louis VII; William VII swore to Henry II, and his descendants were dauphins. Complicating matters further, the Duchy of Auvergne is a distinct political entity that became part of the French crown.)
Anyway, the point is that Anne inherited the dauphinate from her father (hence its more prominent position on her arms) and Forez from her uncle. Forez would pass to her son John, Duke of Bourbon, and would eventually become its own province until the administrative reforms of 1790. Most of it is currently the central portion of the department of Loire.
The next element of heraldry Whitmore covers is the crest. While this is often used colloquially to refer to either the coat of arms itself, or the complete achievement, he points out (correctly) that the crest is just anything placed on top of the shield. The image below shows some of the more common âbasesâ of crests - the wreath, or torse (most common) and the cap of dignity or chapeau (generally only seen in achievements of higher nobility). The third, which Whitmore labels the âpanache,â is a sort of proto-crest which consists of feathers emerging from a coronet. These arenât particularly common in English heraldry, though they do pop up fairly often in Germanic heraldry, where multiple crests are common.Â
He also gives some examples of crests, sadly unidentified:
The only really remarkable thing in Whitmoreâs writeup of the crest is the ostensibly hard and fast rule that âno lady has a right to use a crest.â Much like his insistence that the lozenge is forbidden as a shield shape for men, I also havenât run across this specific rule. Itâs worth saying that I havenât seen any coat of arms borne by a non-royal woman with a crest, but it seems like a very odd thing to emphasize - with italics, no less.
Blazon: Per fess gules a castle triple-towered between on the dexter a fleur-de-lis and on the sinister a lion rampant or and of the last, a tree issuant from a mount in base proper
Unfortunately, I donât have anything on these arms either. The initial grant doesnât seem to be available online, but 2008 seems like a plausible date. It seems like the municipality was incorporated in 1971, so thatâs another possible date of granting. Sadly, the charges are generic enough that itâs hard to track them through the various influential figures and patron saints of the component towns. My best guess would be that the castle and lion are references to the arms of Castile and LeĂłn in the national arms, and the tree and mount are possibly a canting allusion to the name (âfields of Paradiseâ).
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Blazon: Per pale vert and argent a cog-wheel of four spokes counterchanged
Unfortunately, I canât find anything about the rationale behind these arms. Their active use and grant from local government is well-documented, but absolutely no explanation. If I had to guess, though, Iâd say that a preponderance of the local population works in industry.
Blazon: Per quarterly, I per fess azure and gules, a lion rampant or (Gustalla); II azure a sun in splendor environed by a strap or (Correggio); III azure a stairway in bend or, in chief an eagle counter-volant proper (Scandiano); IV per fess gules three fleurs-de-lis argent, azure as many molets of six points or and of the last a stag springing proper (Castelnuovo ne âMonti); overall in the fess point an escutcheon argent a cross gules between the letters S, P, Q, and R sable (Reggio Emilia)
While these arms were somewhat complicated to blazon, the reasoning behind them is fairly straightforward; they are the arms of four of the more prominent towns in the region, plus its capital. Corregioâs arms are canting - the townâs name is Italian for âstrap,â which explains why the blazon specifies a strap instead of a belt. I suspect that Scandianoâs are canting as well; âstaircaseâ or âscalinataâ is not too dissimilar.
Blazon: Azure a dyerâs wheel or; the chief spoke hooked, the rest in the form of the arms of a Maltese cross
The dyerâs reel (which doesnât show up in any other arms that Iâm aware of) is essentially a winch. It was probably used to lower the raw fabric into the vat of dye, but it could also have been used to wring the dye out of the dripping wet fabric. Iâm not entirely clear on the mechanics. It seems like the town was, at one point in the early fifteenth century, owned by a family named Färber (dyers), which may have something to do with the choice of charge.
Arms of Robert Malet (? - 1295) from the Dering Roll (c. 1270-1300)
Blazon: Sable three buckles argent
It is very tempting for me to connect this Robert Malet with Robert Malet, Lord of Eye and advisor to Henry I, but it seems very unlikely. The lord of Eyeâs son, William Malet, was banished from England and moved back to Normandy. I suppose itâs possible some of those Malets made their way back to England over the next two centuries, but I canât prove it. The Robert Malet featured here held a couple of small lordships in Quainton and Langley, as well as the position of Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in 1285.
Happy 29th birthday to Ukraine! (The Declaration of Independence was accepted by the Verkhovna Rada, or Ukranian parliament, on August 24th, 1991. It took a little while to finalize things with a referendum, but this is the formal national holiday.) The Ukrainian national arms are beautiful, striking, and (at least to me) not remotely obvious. Once you know that the tryzub is a trident, you can see that in the charge, but the elaborate, intertwined style isnât very common in other European styles of armory. This specific design goes back to 980, and a less stylized version to 945. It seems to have been the arms - or at least, the family symbol - of the Rurik dynasty, showing up on coins, seals, stones, and personal items.
The tryzub also might not have started out as a trident, although it definitely ended up that way. As a charge, it seems similar to the fleur-de-lis: itâs currently widely accepted as a specific shape with a specific name, but no one can quite agree on what it was originally intended to depict. Theories include a symbol of the Holy Trinity, a gyrfalcon (very likely), a bident, or the Cyrillic letter ĐŁ (extremely unlikely).
While the tryzub is very old, and definitely has seniority as a state symbol, there have been a number of different coats of arms associated with different regimes. In the twelfth through the mid-fourteenth centuries, West Ukraine was the Kingdom of GaliciaâVolhynia (or Ruthenia, starting in 1253) and bore azure a lion rampant or. After 1349, this particular region was incorporated into Poland, but the lion hung around as the arms of the Ruthenian Voivodeship, and it currently survives in the arms of Lviv. The short-lived Ukrainian State used azure a Cossack proper clothed and with a rifle or, which had formerly been used by the Zaporozhian Host. These arms also had the tryzub as a crest, but they didnât survive the collapse of the Ukranian State less than a year after its creation. The tinctures have been pretty consistent no matter the charges - always yellow on blue.
The less said about the deeply boring symbology of the Soviet era from 1919 through 1991, the better. If youâve ever seen anything related to the Soviet state, you already know what the emblem looks like - sickle, hammer, rising sun, etc. Thankfully, the current arms were granted in 1992, less than two months after vote on Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union was finalized, and they are a significant improvement. (That link, by the way, has very specific instructions on the measurements and proportions of the tryzub if youâd like to try your hand at it.)
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Whitmore helpfully breaks the elements of an achievement into five separate components, which weâll go through one by one. He seems to conflate âcoat of armsâ with âcomplete achievement,â though I canât quite tell whether this is an error or an outdated usage. For the record, a coat of arms (or âarmsâ for short) is whateverâs depicted on the shield itself; the complete achievement includes the shield plus any additional ornamentations.Â
Whitmore presents two examples, but notes that the shield âmay be of any form.â While the shape on the left below is certainly the most common, itâs absolutely true that they can come in pretty much any shape. I donât believe Whitmoreâs assertion that lozenges are reserved for female armigers only is accurate; Iâve seen several sources that say women must bear their arms on a lozenge, but none that state the lozenge is therefore reserved only for women. I think it is probably a safe bet that if you see arms on a lozenge, they most likely belong to a woman, but I havenât previously encountered âlozenge = womanâ as a hard and fast rule, only the contrary.Â
(One last note - the shield Whitmore depicts is plain argent, but the lozenge actually has a blazon - per pale gules and vert within a bordure argent. If youâre wondering how I know that, weâll cover tricking later on when we get to tinctures.)
Blazon: Per quarterly, I gules a castle triple-towered or windowed azure; II or a bend sable between two crocuses azure, stamens gules; III gules a chalice, in chief a molet of eight points or; IV chequy sable and or
The first and third quarters of the shield are presumably related to the townâs administrative history. The first quarter uses the castle of Castile, as the area belonged to that kingdom before being granted to an Aragonese noble as thanks for military assistance. (This noble most likely founded the town.) Except for the tincture of the molet, the third quarter is identical to the arms of Cuenca, so I suspect theyâre related. Unfortunately, Iâm not sure about the other two quarters.
