Heraldry and Territory: Coats of Arms and the Representation and Construction of Authority in Space (original) (raw)

The emergence of the word 'Heraldry' in the seeventeenth century and the roots of a misconception

Heralds and heraldry are generally thought to have a close, even essential relationship, dating back to their origins. However, recent research on the office of heralds has demonstrated that this close connection between ‘heralds’ and ‘heraldry’ did not exist in the Middle Ages, and that for the most part the two institutions developed independently of each other. Only over the course of the history of the herald’s office—and only at the end of the Middle Ages—did heraldry become one of their more important duties. Our understanding of ‘the herald’ as a historical phenomenon, therefore, has to be reconsidered in the same way as the proliferation and impact of heraldry as a means of communication in the Middle Ages needs to be reevaluated. Such insights allow the herald’s office to be reconsidered in its own right, separately from heraldry, and heraldry to be assessed as a means of mass communication that was available to the whole of medieval society, far from being the ‘secret science’ of heralds. But how did the misconception that equated and confused ‘heralds’ and ‘heraldry’ originate? In this paper, I suggest three reasons for the tendency of modern historiography to run together heralds and heraldry. The first reasons lies in the shared historical roots of heralds and heraldry: They both came to life in the context of the twelfth century tournaments, which lured historians into equating them from their very beginning. Although their common origins are evident, I argue that at the time heraldry was not at all the heralds’ primary occupation. The second reason that seems to be responsible for the misconception is the etymological origin of both terms. Here, I demonstrate that the definition of ‘heraldry’ as the study or science of coats of arms is in fact a modern interpretation that did not(!) exist in the Middle Ages, where ‘heraldry’ (if used at all) had a much broader sense. The third reason, finally, lies in the fact that for a long time heralds were almost exclusively studied by heraldists who, following their research interests, were primarily concerned with coats of arms. This misconception of the relationship between ‘heralds’ and ‘heraldry’ points to the importance of close sensitivity to the evolving terminological and historiographical background, and invites us to reconsider our perspectives on heralds and heraldry.