The coat of arms of Joseph E. Strickland who will be ordained and installed on Nov. 28th as the 4th Bishop of Tyler, Texas, USA. His mother was Australian so he wanted the Southern Cross depicted although he did want to avoid Australia’s seven pointed stars. The arms of the diocese were designed in 1986 at the time the diocese was erected by Pope John Paul II.
I actually like both the diocesan and personal arms, which is well above Mike McC’s "we’ve seen worse" standard.
And isn’t this a simplification/improvement of the previous arms of the diocese? In my records I have "Argent a cross Sable offset to dexter chief between a star Gules, a hurt, three pine trees couped Vert, and a Paschal lamb maintaining his banner proper couchant upon a cushion Gules." No idea of my source for that, though.
Yes, we’ve definitely seen much worse!!*
Joe’s old notes re: the diocesan arms seem to echo the theory that nature abhors a vacuum—i.e. some heraldic wanna-bee’s seem to abhor an empty quarter, like hoarders who can’t stop themselves from stashing odd collections of junk in every square inch of their garage.
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*Used to be that my contribution to heraldry was the refrigerator test—or at least that name for it—now I’m just the "we’ve seen worse" guy ... sic transit gloria mundi & all that…
Joseph McMillan;96560 wrote:
And isn’t this a simplification/improvement of the previous arms of the diocese? In my records I have "Argent a cross Sable offset to dexter chief between a star Gules, a hurt, three pine trees couped Vert, and a Paschal lamb maintaining his banner proper couchant upon a cushion Gules." No idea of my source for that, though.
The diocesan arms are those the diocese has used for some time now to the best of my knowledge. I have seen an image of the arms you describe, Joe, and perhaps that was an earlier version. In addition, for a while the third bishop, Bp. Corrada del Rio, SJ used a version of the arms that seemed to be a combination of his personal arms and the arms of the diocese (not impaled, just combined in a single design).
http://www.dioceseoftyler.org/art/corrada_art2.jpg
Anyway, the off-center cross is retained as it is from the arms of John Paul II who established the diocese. The rest is what they are currently using. The bishop and I were careful to design his arms with tinctures in mind that would harmonize well with the diocesan arms and, for obvious reasons, avoid anything Vert!
Good job!
