Yes, guys..of course. You can find lots of examples where things vary or don’t hold true. Stop banging on the examples, it’s the point that’s important. And the point is that there is an underlying etiquette. If the etiquette is made clear, then maybe (just maybe) there will be fewer "Oh, my God will you look at that" kind of mistakes.
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I recognize that some private organizations prescribe certain heraldic accoutrements for their members. I believe that is the case with some of the groups affiliated with the Augustan Society, and someone brought up the case of the Westphalian Heraldry Society in Germany, which appoints heralds and pursuivants and such and prescribes various coronets and batons and mantles and what not for these officers of the society. Let me be clear: I don’t like this, either.
That would be Fr. Guy; hardly a troubadour for the display everything crowd. He provided the arms of one such member.
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This is where the snicker test that Dennis hates so much comes in.
Come, come now Joe please don’t put words in my mouth. I don’t hate the “test”. Rather, I hate the fact that others are so snobbish and self-righteous so to think that their stuff don’t stink and therefore have a “right” to caste glances down their nose at others. When I see something I find distasteful (there are many things I do) I do not point, stare, mock, ridicule, snicker, etc. as though I am looking down my nose at them and thanking God I am so much better than them because I am not like them. No, not at all; I just ignore them and the idiocy I find with what they are doing. That is, after all, good manners. There’s a difference Joe between hating the test and hating the elitism of the tester. Even if the act those others would snicker at is a stupid one.
For example I hate the attitude of the ‘blue-haired’ old ladies in my parish when they judge me as being unworthy of sitting in the pews next to them because I have long and/or colored hair, ear piercings, wearing clothing they wouldn’t be caught dead in and driving into the parking lot listening to Pink Floyd or some other such thing. These people are no better than me simply because they wear more traditional clothing, have more traditional hairdos, have few if any piercings, and listen to classical music. This is the sort of elitism that I find repugnant and that is what I find repugnant with the “snicker test”. I hope this time this is clear…geesh.
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People in a civilized society ought to be interested in what other people think about their behavior.
Ought is very strong. On the whole I agree with it, but I do not see it as absolute. One should care if others find him to be disgusting if he is urinating in public (exposing himself and therefore breaking the law). But need not if he is dressed in grunge coming out of a Starbucks with his band mates etc.
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Those who intentionally defy social convention are going to provoke snickers at best, outrage at worst. That’s fine if they’re prepared to deal with the consequences and choose to flout convention on purpose.
Your opinion and not fact. In fact I find this rather distasteful (the philosophy not you), for it validates the mean spiritedness that can accompany elitists, or worse, of whatever stripe they come in. This is like saying that a woman is inviting herself to be sexually harassed or gocked at because she wears a skirt and v-neck blouse to work. Sure we might find it inappropriate, but certainly not an OK to do something wrong or mean-spirited. My God this is the same logic that people used to use to justify their stupid, mean, unethical, or illegal acts when this was making headway in the 1980s. People do not ‘invite’ people to do mean or illegal things simply by the way they look or do things. This is a dangerous philosophy and only leads to the worst levels of elitism and possibly worse.
All that said I think that in mixed company less is more and only prudent.
As a general observation, this thread is a good example of why we’re working on a code of "best practices" in the members-only section—once its agreed to & posted publically, newbies will have a ready resource to answer many of their questions (or at least they’ll have our preferred answers!).
Not that I’m complaining about the thread—our "code" isn’t published yet so there’s no other way to get answers than to ask.
And discussions like this one do nicely (well, tolerably nicely) illustrate that not everything is cut & dried; there are differences of opinion, some quite passionate, others more academic or historical, which is fine. Disagreement is fine, so long as we’re not disagreeable in the ways we express it. If we all thought alike all the time, we wouldn’t all need to be here!
(Headline: Supreme Court rules sun rises in East, 5 to 4…)
Michael F. McCartney wrote:
As a general observation, this thread is a good example of why we’re working on a code of "best practices" in the members-only section—once its agreed to & posted publically, newbies will have a ready resource to answer many of their questions (or at least they’ll have our preferred answers!).
Not that I’m complaining about the thread—our "code" isn’t published yet so there’s no other way to get answers than to ask.
And discussions like this one do nicely (well, tolerably nicely) illustrate that not everything is cut & dried; there are differences of opinion, some quite passionate, others more academic or historical, which is fine. Disagreement is fine, so long as we’re not disagreeable in the ways we express it. If we all thought alike all the time, we wouldn’t all need to be here!
(Headline: Supreme Court rules sun rises in East, 5 to 4…)
Uncle Karl told me, when I was a boy, that on February 30th. the Sun rises in the North!
st_louis_herald wrote:
Uncle Karl told me, when I was a boy, that on February 30th. the Sun rises in the North!
Was Uncle Karl one of the two justices in the majority who filed separate concurring opinions?
Joseph McMillan wrote:
Was Uncle Karl one of the two justices in the majority who filed separate concurring opinions?
O! My Gosh, How did you ever find out !
Ideally, not legally; I thought helmet styles should comport with the styles of the times in which the arms were merited. That is, for example: first crusade simple, not fancy; last crusade fancy, not plain; intermediate crusade, intermediate helmet. Is that incorrect? For contemporary American arms, a WWI, or WWII, helmet would be OK?
Oh, dear. I think some stuff that heraldic authors have written has created a serious misunderstanding.
The notion of arms being earned or merited is somewhat off track. Without going through all of the comparative heraldic law, arms in the US (and most of the rest of the world) can lawfully be assumed by anyone who wishes to bear them. There’s no issue of who is or isn’t deserving. The Brits and some of their imperial heraldic offspring (apologies to our Canadian friends, but it’s early and I couldn’t think of better terminology) maintain the fiction that a grant of arms is an honor, but in fact at most it reflects a judgment on the part of the granting authority that the recipient is a gentleman or lady, not that they’ve done some specific meritorious thing for which they’re being rewarded with arms.
Where the conception that you’re setting forth may come from is the theory expressed by some heraldic authors (such as Carl Alexander von Volborth) that for esthetic reasons the style of the helmet depicted should match the style and content of the shield. Thus, to avoid anachronism, he says, a shield with a field artillery piece or a 19th century naval frigate on it should not be paired with a 13th-century style barrel helm. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t help much when the charges are even more modern. The helmet is supposed to be a knight’s helmet, just as the shield is supposed to be a knight’s shield. It would be an even worse anachronism to tack a 20th century infantryman’s helmet—from an era in which painted heraldic shields weren’t borne at all—onto a shield of any shape or content.
The norm is that anyone may use a barrel helm, tilting helm, or late mediaeval/renaissance armet with closed visor, independent of the origin or content of the shield itself.
The notion of the granting of armorial bearings by either of the heraldic authorities in the United Kingdom confers gentility in the rank of gentleman or for some, the rank of esquire, is not a fiction. All honours and dignities stem from the Sovereign as the fount of honour. A grant of arms from either the Lord Lyon King of Arms or from the Kings of Arms in London is at the end of the day, a Crown document granted by the Kings of Arms to the petitioner concerned using delegated powers from the Sovereign. Therefore, a grant of arms must at the very least be considered a species of dignity held from the Crown to be hereditarily transmitted (generally) to the descendants of the original grantee according the limitation cited in the grant. It must be remembered that those Life Peers or the few hereditary peers who have never petitioned for arms may be noble by reason of their peerage, but they are not technically gentle in that they do not bear arms which are the index of gentility, likewise with the few non armigerous baronets and knights. This idea may often bemuse many, but that plain fact is that the Crown has controlled the use of arms through its duly appointed officers, the heralds, for quite a few centuries. The concept of self-assumed arms, or burgher arms that is often common on the continent (of Europe) does not technically have a wide acceptance here.
With regard to the use of unconventional helmets in heraldic achievements. I can presently think of only one example being exemplified in a grant from the Kings of Arms at the College of Arms in the recent past; and that was in the grant of arms to the former Royal Air Force Staff College. This particular grant dates, I believe, from 1970. Instead of the use of a tilting helm on which to place the crest above the shield; there was used a representation of ‘a Royal Air Force Pilot’s Helmet proper’. If I remember correctly, Sir Colin Cole, when Windsor Herald was the agent for this grant.
John,
I know this is controversial, but my understanding is that the College of Arms does not claim to grant gentility but only to recognize it. That this was the early interpretation can be seen in the language of letters patent from the 16th century or thereabouts. In any case, the idea that gentility is granted by the crown or its agents is belied by a large body of legal writing on the nature of the fuzzy concept gentility going back at least 350 years.
And, of course, the custom of asserting that Scottish grantees are "nobles in the noblesse of Scotland" dates back only to the tenure of Innes of Learney about 40-50 years ago. The statute under which Lyon grants arms speaks only of recipients being virtuous and well-deserving.
As for arms being an honor, I would love for someone to come up with the earliest expression of that concept. I’m familiar with the common lawyers’ principle that "arms are in the nature of a dignity," but it strikes me that that’s merely a formula by which the common law could comprehend something that wasn’t within their jurisdiction (arms) into the framework of something they understood (property law). Likewise Coke’s dictum that arms are held by a kind of gavelkind (non-primogeniture) tenure. When they said that arms were "in the nature of" a dignity, that’s not the same thing as saying that arms "are" a dignity, or an honor. Can you shed any light on the history of this concept of arms as honor? When was it first enunciated?
In any case, I’ve seen many challenges on rec.heraldry in which people have asked someone to come up with a case in which the English kings of arms have denied a grant to someone one the grounds that he/she was insufficiently "eminent" to receive such an "honor." I know you spent some time at the College; do you know of a case such as this?
Thanks and (although it’s our holiday and not yours) happy Thanksgiving.
Regards,
Joe
Joe,
In my very first conversation with my good friend Robert Noel (Lancaster Herald), he explicitly stated that arms were indeed an honor issuant from the Crown.
I’ll be happy to elaborate on this further later tonight, but right now it’s time to "get my grub on!"
Happy Thanksgiving!:D
Let’s remember the American context of this forum—not that other views aren’t welcome, for their historical and cultural interest & for purposes of "compare & contrast" which is a useful tool in more clearly defining & understanding the various concepts under discussion. The variety of cultural backgrounds represented here has been a joy and a blessing!
But the context of this forum IMO is. what does all this contribute to & mean for American heraldry. In this context we still need to remember that, whatever arms may be elsewhere - tokens of gentility, honors, incorporeal hereditament (sp?), personal or family property, hausmarks, visual substitutes for a signature, or whatever—they are not necessarily the same thing here. Some of these foreign concepts (e.g. anything suggestive of noblesse or social caste) they cannot ever be here. Doesn’t make those notions unsuitable for their own traditional origins, just not exportable. When in Rome etc.—but given our international membership, we’re not all living in the same Rome. Here, its Rome, Georgia or Rome, New York…
Andrew J Vidal wrote:
Joe,
In my very first conversation with my good friend Robert Noel (Lancaster Herald), he explicitly stated that arms were indeed an honor issuant from the Crown.
Andrew,
I’m sure he did, as that’s the established position of the College (also expressed very ably by John Tunesi of Liongam). What I’m questioning is whether it’s really the case—what is the authority for it within the wider English legal and historical literature on honors and dignities?
This does have a relevance to American heraldry, if only because American attitudes toward heraldry (including the belief that it is un-American) have been shaped by the British position that arms are an honor, or at least an official recognition of social status.
Also some Americans get the idea that arms, and the use of them, are somehow represenative of a kind of "Upper Class elitests". I think this has to do with the fact that It is viewed as a high ranking honor or nobility, and in turn the "Elitest" schools such as Harvard, Yale, etc are more famous for using arms (even though many schools, governments etc use them)
Joseph McMillan wrote:
Andrew,
I’m sure he did, as that’s the established position of the College (also expressed very ably by John Tunesi of Liongam). What I’m questioning is whether it’s really the case—what is the authority for it within the wider English legal and historical literature on honors and dignities?
This does have a relevance to American heraldry, if only because American attitudes toward heraldry (including the belief that it is un-American) have been shaped by the British position that arms are an honor, or at least an official recognition of social status.
I think all one’s needs to ask, to settle the question, is what they are honoring, i.e., what special qualities or achievements must one possess. If it is only the ability to write a check, then it is not an honor, in the usual sense of the word,