From: c34657b@saha.hut.fi (Tuomas Viljanen)
Subject: Re: Interpretation of Coat of Arms
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 20:38:36 GMT

In article <1992Jul22.151418.4187@klaava.Helsinki.FI> leino@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Antti Leino) writes:
>In article <1992Jul22.080018.7431@maths.tcd.ie> jaymin@maths.tcd.ie (Jo Jaquinta) writes:

>An actual case in point is Scandinavian nobility.  At least in the
>Finnish and Swedish nobility arms belong to families.  I don't know
>precisely how old this tradition is, but I'm pretty sure it has been
>around at least since the mid-17th century, perhaps as much as a century
>earlier.

True. Some of those, like that of Tott (quarterly, or & gules), descend from
even earlier era. However, most of the surviving Finnish and Swedish noble
families have been ennobled during the 19th century, their arms showing
the heraldic degeneration of the era. The heredarity of the arms is from the
17th century, indeed, when a great deal of new nobility was created during
the great wars in which Sweden participated: most of the oldest surviving
Swedish noble families descend from that era, there are only about 10-20
surviving Swedish noble families, who have been ennobled during the Middle
Ages. In Finland, there are even less.

In Germany, the arms of a family are also hereditary: the members of the
family are differenced by the crest, the escutcheon is normally left intact.

>(In Finland the Heraldry Society of Finland has been
>registering non-noble arms for a couple of decades, and they are trying
>to revert to the original practice of arms belonging to individuals.  I
>don't know whether Skandinaviska Vapenrullan, a similar register for the
>whole Scandinavia, does this also.)

The legality of non-noble arms varies from country to country; in Finland
they do not have any official status, whereas noble arms have been retained
in the civil law. The nobility of Finland is a very small fraction of the
people, though, about .5%. of the Finns (mostly Swedish-speaking) belong
to the nobility. In other countries, however, non-noble arms have the same
status than noble arms; in some countries, like Russia, there is no heraldic
legistlature at all.

>I seem to remember that in Poland arms are shared by several families. 
>I'm not sure about this, however, and I don't have my references here at
>work. 

True. In Poland, same arms can be shared by several families, who bear no
relationship towards each other:they may even not have the same name. I. Heath,
in his "Armies of the Middle Ages, vol. 2" (WRG, 1984), states, that there were
very few individual coats-of-arms (about 500) and they were borne undifferenced
by all of the members of those families. Furthermore, the Polish arms are often
of poor heraldic standard, possessing the additional tinctures of gray and
brown (which are considered as stains in the Western European usage) and
tendency to ignore the rule which states, which tinctures can be placed next
to each other; also the ordinaries are very uncommon. On the other hand, many 
of the Polish arms are very simple and easily distinguishable, unlike those of
the Iberian peninsula countries.

Back to the original question: which are the devices and tinctures of the arms
the original question was about ?

>-- 
>Antti Leino                                     "The notion of code-switching 


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