Terry and I were talking the other day and we ran into this work by [wiki]Hristofor Zhefarovich[/wiki].
Quote:
Zhefarovich’s work of greatest importance for the South Slavic Revival was his Stemmatographia published in Vienna in 1741. During its composition he used the Stemmatographia of Croatian Pavao Ritter Vitezović of 1701, who on his part used Kingdom of the Slavs of Mauro Orbini of 1601. Stemmatographia was illustrated by Zhefarovich with copper engravings and black and white drawings. It contains 20 images of Bulgarian and Serbian rulers and saints, as well as 56 coats of arms of Slavic and other Balkan countries with descriptive quatrains under them, regarded as the first example of modern secular Bulgarian and Serbian poetry. Stemmatographia had a crucial influence on the Bulgarian and Serbian Revival and made a great impact on the entire Bulgarian heraldry of the 19th century, when it became most influential among all generations of Bulgarian enlighteners and revolutionaries during the period of national awakening of Bulgaria and shaped the idea for a modern Bulgarian national symbol.
The pattern of Bulgarian coat of arms of Stemmatographia was used as the state symbol of the royal Bulgarian administration in 1878, but set in an ermine mantle and with a prince’s crown above it. This coat of arms continued to be used on the state seal and the seals of state institutions well after an official one (also influenced by the one in Stemmatographia) was introduced by the National Assembly. The coat of arms of the short-lived Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia was also created after the coat of arms of Constantinople (called "coat of arms of Romania") in Zhefarovich’s work.
A link to the book is: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bgrbshv/stemmatographia/
Though I wasn’t able to read the text, I was able to decipher the names most of the arms.
A wonderful book!
Stemmatographia, what a wonderful Latin word! Its increased use would further mistify the subject of heraldry to the uninitiated.
kimon;62755 wrote:
It’s actually Greek but… it’s all Greek to me
It may be composed of two words of Greek origin but I doubt that the actual term was created by a Greek. I strongly suspect that stemmatographia was a term created by a Medieval scholar writing about heraldry in Latin. In modern Italian, the term for blazon is stemmato and stemma is the word for a coat-of-arms.
....resisting….the…urge….to…take….the…..bait…...
I am not getting into the Greek discussion, its all μαλακιες.
Zefarovic his work is interesting not because of its content but because of the copper plating work which was unique at that time there. Regardless, its a beautifull work.