I also like the dance analog, but to my mind you’ve got it backwards. Heraldry is Dance, and Coats of Arms, crests, Mon, and Tribal totems are waltz, two-step, buyo and rain dance.  Mon and totems are forms of hrraldry but are not coats of arms, though in most cases can be used as charges in a coat of arms and possibly crests if desired.

Wagner’s definition, tied to the shield, is IMO a pretty good working definition for "coat of arms" - though not perfect because there have been and still are other ways to display arms, such as banners (which likely preceded armorial designs on shields) and tabards (the real origin of the term "coats" of arms).

I looked up some of these terms in the Miriam-Webster online Dictionary, which seems to me more relative to the broader American context - and therefore to the heraldic subset of this country - than an English herald’s definition, however accurate it may be in the English context.

"Heraldry -

1.the practice of devising, emblazoning, and granting armorial insignia and of tracing and recording genealogies.

2. An armorial ensign; broadly, insignia" [,note "broadly, insignia"]

"Insignia - a badge or sign which shows that a person is a member of a particular group or has a particular rank.

Full - 1. A badge of authority or honor

2. A distinguishing mark or sign

Other heraldic terms:

Blazon, ... escutcheon, ... standard, totem" [omiting several specific terms of blazon not relevant here - but notice especially "totem"]

"Coat of arms -

1. A tabard or surcoat embroidered with armorial bearings

2. a. heraldic bearings (as of a person) usually depicted on an escutcheon [note " usually"] often with accompanying adjuncts(as a crest, motto, and supporters)

b. a similar symbol or emblazon"

Insignia meeting Wagner’s English definition fits within these American definitions, but so do other insignia such as totems.

Maybe a less controversial approach might be to look north to Canada - not identical to America but certainly closer than England, both geographically and culturally.  Their Heraldic Authority maintains their register of "Arms, Flags and Badges" - all three of which they clearly include under the broader term Heraldry.  They treat (record and blazon) First Nation tribal insignia as heraldic "badges" even though there are no related coats of arms (see e.g. the Nisga’a Nation).  We could easily (if for some reluctantly )  do the same.  We already do it in our Members Roll for badges of members with both arms and badges - e.g. Harris, with a fine Mon badge entirely dissimilar from his equally fine arms. To me his badge was just as heraldic before he designed arms - the new shield didn’t magically confer heraldic status to his badge.

Michael F. McCartney;104269 wrote:

Wagner’s definition, tied to the shield, is IMO a pretty good working definition for "coat of arms" - though not perfect because there have been and still are other ways to display arms, such as banners (which likely preceded armorial designs on shields) and tabards (the real origin of the term "coats" of arms).

"Centered on the shield," as I understand it, doesn’t mean a physical shield or the depiction of the shield, but that what is on the shield or banner is the central—i.e. most important, most critical, defining, unique, distinctive part of the symbol.  In other words, it is what is on the shield that constitutes the arms, all the rest of the stuff is just accessories.

Quote:

I looked up some of these terms in the Miriam-Webster online Dictionary, which seems to me more relative to the broader American context - and therefore to the heraldic subset of this country - than an English herald’s definition, however accurate it may be in the English context.

"Heraldry -

1.the practice of devising, emblazoning, and granting armorial insignia and of tracing and recording genealogies.

2. An armorial ensign; broadly, insignia" [,note "broadly, insignia"]

Well, we’re a heraldry society and presumably using our terms more precisely than the general public.  But note the repeated appearance of the word "armorial" here.  Arms=shield, in this context.

Quote:

"Insignia - a badge or sign which shows that a person is a member of a particular group or has a particular rank.

Full - 1. A badge of authority or honor

2. A distinguishing mark or sign

Other heraldic terms:

Blazon, ... escutcheon, ... standard, totem" [omiting several specific terms of blazon not relevant here - but notice especially "totem"]

I have no problem applying the term "insignia" to all these symbols we’re talking about.  Because, unlike "heraldry," it doesn’t imply "armorial" (see Merriam-Webster, both definitions.)

Quote:

"Coat of arms -

1. A tabard or surcoat embroidered with armorial bearings

2. a. heraldic bearings (as of a person) usually depicted on an escutcheon [note " usually"] often with accompanying adjuncts(as a crest, motto, and supporters)

b. a similar symbol or emblazon"

You’re going to take seriously a dictionary that uses the verb "emblazon" to refer to a thing?  Anyway, yes, usually on an escutcheon.  Sometimes on a tabard, horse trappings, or banner.

Kathy McClurg;104268 wrote:

Almost ditto…

I’m not convinced that heraldry MUST include the heraldic system define inheritance.

 

Examples have been given as to civic and ecclesiastic heraldry in the European traditions. But - I’m convinced SCA is probably the single organization most actively practicing heraldry - thousands of members worldwide have heraldic shields which are unique to individuals and they have a systematic way of designing these.

Well, with all due respect, the SCA is a role-playing group. If an SCA member is playing a particular character, and that character has an SCA-world son, then I would expect that fictitious son to bear the same or very, very similar arms as the fictitious father. And if he doesn’t, it reflects a lack of authenticity. Any organization that insists on oak gall ink for its scribes and strains over the details of clothing doesn’t get a pass from me on not knowing that personal arms are hereditary. Unless the setting is pre-1150 give or take a couple of decades.

Quote:

Bringing it into the real world. If a person who never married and never had children and never had siblings becomes interested in heraldry and assumes arms within one of the various guidelines for assumption, knowing their arms will never be inherited, are their arms any less heraldry than someone passing arms to further generations? Should they just not bother because that aspect of many frameworks is closed to them? Would any of us be so crass as to tell them not to bother?

No, of course not. But how does one know, really know, that there will never be anyone to inherit the arms? Anyway, the hereditary point of the definition is that personal arms do not just denote the person, they denote the lineage. This is what differentiates heraldry from just any old painting on a shield. If there aren’t, in the event, any heirs, then the arms stop there. But if there are children, the expectation is that the arms pass on to them.

In other words, if we expect every member of every successive generation to start over again from scratch, armorially speaking, then what we have isn’t heraldry. It may be armory, it may be systematic. But a system of symbols can’t do what Mike is correctly insisting on—be a focal point of group identity—if it doesn’t pass on to all the members of the group. And in heraldry, the principal group that arms identify is the lineage.

If we don’t accept this, then what is so special about June 10, 1128?

Joseph McMillan;104271 wrote:

If we don’t accept this, then what is so special about June 10, 1128?

Joe, that date had nothing to do with inheritance of arms, but the first (and even that is in question) knighting with the recording of that knights arms.

Heraldry without inheritance at all. 

Kathy McClurg;104273 wrote:

Joe, that date had nothing to do with inheritance of arms, but the first (and even that is in question) knighting with the recording of that knights arms.

Heraldry without inheritance at all.

Inheritance is actually an inaccurate term in any case, although we use it all the time. Because strictly speaking something can only be inherited when the current owner dies, while arms are owned by multiple generations simultaneously.

As I understand it, 10 June 1128 is supposed to be significant as the date of creation of the first arms known to have subsequently been passed on to the next generation. If not, then why observe it at all? It’s not as if there weren’t armorial devices on shields before that.

I think we’ve reached (or passed) the "agree to disagree" stage at least as to my plea for a broader reading of "heraldry" so I’ll settle for Joe’s "USUALLY on an escutcheon" as about as much as I’m likely to get at present.

So while it’s been fun I’ll spare the deceased equine any further thrashings.  Not anxious to be the Ed Millibrand of this constituency!

(But like the SNP after the referrendum it’s not necessasrily dead for all time

A possible middle ground between Kathy and Joe would be to agree that civic, corporate, and military arms are heraldry - despite not being "hereditary" and that only the arms of individuals must be heretible (mindful of the fact - as Joe pointed out - that it is not necessary for a death for relatives to be able to use the same arms).

I reconcile non-inheritable corporate heraldry on the basis that it is a historical evolution from the personal heraldry which is the core of what we study.

To me, badges and imprese are a little harder to justify, although long usage has made the argument on that point moot.  I guess they sneak in by virtue of the fact that heralds paid (and now again pay) attention to them, at least to badges, and that they are sometimes displayed as accessories to arms themselves.  I’m thinking of the yoke and arrows of Isabel and Ferdinand and the pillars of Hercules in the Spanish royal arms, for example.

Joseph McMillan;104274 wrote:

Inheritance is actually an inaccurate term in any case, although we use it all the time. Because strictly speaking something can only be inherited when the current owner dies, while arms are owned by multiple generations simultaneously.

As I understand it, 10 June 1128 is supposed to be significant as the date of creation of the first arms known to have subsequently been passed on to the next generation. If not, then why observe it at all? It’s not as if there weren’t armorial devices on shields before that.

The date is the record of a knighting and included the recorded use of arms.  More than likely it’s a bad date, and mythology, but it’s a line in the sand proposed by Tomasz Steifer and in lieu of a better, alternative single date, it stuck.  It could be 2 February or April 1st or any of the 365 days of the year for all I care, Joe.  The concept, as you are well aware, is that one day out of the year we just enjoy heraldry - period.  As I’m aware this organization does not support International Heraldry Day as an organization - We do appreciate the support of the concept by many members here.  As soon as we get through this third annual International Heraldry Day, we will be moving towards planning for the next 2 years - particularly the 5th anniversary in 2017.  Those plans will be announced in a few months and we hope the AHS will join us as individuals whether or not they choose to do so as an organization.

Anyway, the date was proposed and is taking hold whether or not it’s accurate, who cares as long as we set aside our differences for one day out of the year?

Here’s what wikki says.. this article has decent references…

It has long been thought that the earliest documented instance of heraldry was that in a report by Jean de Marmentier, a late-12th-century chronicler, that in 1128 Henry I of England knighted his son-in-law Geoffrey and granted him a badge of gold lions.[5] A gold lion may already have been Henry’s own badge, and different lion motifs would later be used by many of his descendants. An enamel effigy (funerary plaque) created at the direction of his widow shows Geoffrey with a shield with gold lions on a blue background.[6] Thus, this may be evidence of one of the first authentic representations of a coat of arms[7] and, according to British historian Jim Bradbury, "suggests possible evidence for the early use of what became the English royal arms".[8] Bradbury also concedes, however, that "this is often discredited as written later" (i.e., two or three generations later by de Marmentier). According to French medievalist Michel Pastoureau, "for a long time heraldists believed that the earliest documented arms were those of Geoffrey Plantagenet…unfortunately [the] text was written after the death of Geoffrey…and the funerary plaque was created around 1155–60, at the request of his widow…. So Geoffrey Plantagenet probably never bore arms." Pastoureau adds that "Moreover, it has yet to be established which are the oldest extant arms, although that is a rather futile exercise".[9]

Using this date as some sort of "proof" that heraldry must be hereditary or whatever you wish to call it is.. <meh>

Michael F. McCartney;104276 wrote:

I think we’ve reached (or passed) the "agree to disagree" stage at least as to my plea for a broader reading of "heraldry" so I’ll settle for Joe’s "USUALLY on an escutcheon" as about as much as I’m likely to get at present.

So while it’s been fun I’ll spare the deceased equine any further thrashings.  Not anxious to be the Ed Millibrand of this constituency!

 

(But like the SNP after the referrendum it’s not necessasrily dead for all time

These debates are part of what makes this a great organization!

Gosh, it sounds like Kathy and I may be closer than I thought! - but I’ll let her walk point, or my poor stag will sport broken tynes on a field semee of hurts… (but hopefully at least still centered on a shield )

Kathy McClurg;104281 wrote:

Using this date as some sort of "proof" that heraldry must be hereditary or whatever you wish to call it is.. <meh>

No one, not even Fox-Davies and Boutell and his later editors, think that a particular event on a particular date proves that heraldry must be hereditary.

And you ought to know that that’s not my position. I’m one of those who pointed out all the scholarly skepticism about this date when you and Tomasz first raised the notion of IHD.

The notion that IHD could have been any day of the year is really pretty flimsy. Sure it could have been, but it isn’t. Are you telling us that a random date generator just coincidentally came up with June 10, the marriage anniversary of Geoffrey Plantagenet and Henry I’s daughter Matilda? The date that English heraldists traditionally cite as the earliest known appearance of an "authentic" coat of arms?

What made English heraldists in the past believe that the shield presented by Henry to his son-in-law was the first authentic coat of arms is not the gift of the shield itself but the fact that Geoffrey’s grandson, William Longespée, subsequently bore the same arms reported to have been on the 1127 gift. The logic is set out in Brooke-Little’s 1973 edition of Boutell. Brooke-Little starts by quoting Wagner’s definition of heraldry and then says:

Quote:

The earliest known decorated shield which satisfies this definition is that which Henry I of England gave to his son-in-law Geoffrey of Anjou, when he knighted him in 1127… clipeus leunculos aureos ymaginarios habens… a blue shield bearing gold lions… Six gold lions on blue became the arms of Geoffrey’s grandson…and his descendants.

Without going back and looking at every forum, I think Tomasz framed the date as essentially the birthday of heraldry, for the same reason that Boutell, Brooke-Little, et al, thought it was so significant—that this was supposed to be the first dateable coat of arms that was known to have become hereditary.

Pastoureau’s objection is not to the logic (although he places more weight on the utility of arms as identification than on hereditary element as the key distinction between proto-heraldry and true heraldry) but to the reliability of the dating. We cannot say this or anything else was the first "authentic" coat of arms because the process by which designs on the shield (or banner) became a means of identifying, first, different individuals and then, subsequently, different lineages took place in several phases over a period of decades, roughly during the middle half of the 12th century.

I’ve heard that there is at least one (non-European) culture that measures a child’s age beginning nine months before birth - i.e. an approximation of conception, well before a bit of fun became a baby.  Choosing June 10, 1127 sounds like a bit of the same idea

But then there is one religious tradition that, in the words of one teacher with a sense of humor, considers life to begin when the kids move out and the dog dies…  Maybe we could add "...and the college loans are all paid off."

Lord only knows what date that approach would celebrate in the life of heraldry.

Joseph McMillan;104287 wrote:

No one, not even Fox-Davies and Boutell and his later editors, think that a particular event on a particular date proves that heraldry must be hereditary.

And you ought to know that that’s not my position. I’m one of those who pointed out all the scholarly skepticism about this date when you and Tomasz first raised the notion of IHD.

 

The notion that IHD could have been any day of the year is really pretty flimsy. Sure it could have been, but it isn’t. Are you telling us that a random date generator just coincidentally came up with June 10, the marriage anniversary of Geoffrey Plantagenet and Henry I’s daughter Matilda? The date that English heraldists traditionally cite as the earliest known appearance of an "authentic" coat of arms?

 

What made English heraldists in the past believe that the shield presented by Henry to his son-in-law was the first authentic coat of arms is not the gift of the shield itself but the fact that Geoffrey’s grandson, William Longespée, subsequently bore the same arms reported to have been on the 1127 gift. The logic is set out in Brooke-Little’s 1973 edition of Boutell. Brooke-Little starts by quoting Wagner’s definition of heraldry and then says:

 

 

 

Without going back and looking at every forum, I think Tomasz framed the date as essentially the birthday of heraldry, for the same reason that Boutell, Brooke-Little, et al, thought it was so significant—that this was supposed to be the first dateable coat of arms that was known to have become hereditary.

 

Pastoureau’s objection is not to the logic (although he places more weight on the utility of arms as identification than on hereditary element as the key distinction between proto-heraldry and true heraldry) but to the reliability of the dating. We cannot say this or anything else was the first "authentic" coat of arms because the process by which designs on the shield (or banner) became a means of identifying, first, different individuals and then, subsequently, different lineages took place in several phases over a period of decades, roughly during the middle half of the 12th century.

You know Joe, at some point it’s just not worth the discussion anymore.  What I was responding to was your question that if heraldry doesn’t have to be hereditary, then why celebrate June 10th.  My response is that June 10th isn’t the date heraldry became hereditary, but the one which was believed to be the first recorded grant and that was sketchy at best. (all this my generalization and paraphrasing)

I celebrate June 10th because I think one day of the year we should be able to enjoy heraldry without virtually constant battles of details which might make the overall community more precise but also makes it consistently divided against itself.  And I couldn’t care less what the date is or why it was nominated or whether or not the reason is correct.. that’s me - I don’t have the steel trapped mind of yours nor the years focused on heraldry you do…  I’m a generalist who works best in overall conceptual framework…  You appear to be a specialist who works in detailed proof… it’s all good…

With all due respect, I think I’ll bow out of this here, as Michael has done…  Even I can only take so much…  :banghead:

You win, I lose. I bow to the superior intellect. (and still don’t believe heraldry must be hereditary - yet   BUT I do believe it requires a shield and system)

Now, it’s about time for the ride of the Rohirrim:  "Riders of Théoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword-day! A red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now, ride! Ride for ruin and the world’s ending!"

Love a good battle against "impossible" odds…