IDTG

It was announced on Wednesday that the St. Peter Codex, perhaps the most important heraldic endeavor in centuries, has been terminated.

The project’s objective was to create an illuminated manuscript with the armorial of all the Popes. The entire project was to be hand painted and illuminated by the master of the art Andy Jamieson with the consulting supervision of the expert on the heraldry of the Catholic Church, Fr. Guy Selvester.

It was a very ambitious project that, if completed, would have been a masterpiece! The plan also called for a formal presentation to His Holiness the Pope in a ceremony in the Vatican.

The reasons for termination were primarily, as expected, financial. There just weren’t enough patrons/donors that had the will and funds to contribute to this endeavor.

However, another big reason for the failure of the project was the unchivalrous behavior of so many members of orders of “chivalry”. In other words, there were members of certain orders that flat out refused to participate if members of another order were.

It appears that high-school clique antics are alive and well, way beyond reaching adulthood.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, heraldry isn’t one of the things that pops in one’s head when thinking about Greece. However, Greece a long a rich heraldic history.

Unfortunately, many people in Greece, even academics and members of the government are completely ignorant of heraldry. So, you might imagine how surprised I was to discover a database of images of herldry in the real world in Greece owned and maintained by the Greek Government!

The site is for a project called “Pandektis” and is “a digital thesaurus of primary sources for Greek History and Culture”, developed by the National Hellenic Research Foundation under the framework of a project mostly financed by the European Union called “Digital Greece“. The digitalization was carried out by the Hellenic National Documentation Center. It has a huge database of over 400 images of families and organizations that existed over the centuries in the lands that are now Greece.

It’s a wonderful site that can either be browsed or searched in both English and Greek. It even has a very informative map that shows where each image was taken from and also, a handy timeline of the age of each heraldic artefact.

The database covers everything heraldic in Greece from the 13th century all the way to 20th; the entire period of heraldry, from its inception to modern times!

Taken from the “general information” of the site:

While the first signs of the heraldic phenomenon are found in Western and Central Europe during the second quarter of the 12th century, in the region of Greece it makes it’s appearance rather late and on a lesser scale. In Greece the first heraldic remains, as detected through historical research, date from the 14th century, reach their peak in the next two centuries (15th and 16th) and continue up to the end of the 19th century, at a lower, but still significant level.

The Institute of Neohellenic Research, recognizing the importance of study of this phenomenon in Greek history, as well as the need to go beyond dilettantish approaches, has included in its research activities the systematic locating, inventorying, photographing and classifying of items, with the aim of creating a database of heraldic monuments of Greece. Our research has located more than 1,200 coats-of-arms and heraldic emblems so far. There are three main contributors to this total:

• The Latin-occupied Kyklades islands,

• the Dodecanese islands under the Knights Hospitallers and

• the Venetian-ruled areas (mainly Crete, the Ionian islands and the Peloponnese)

Lesser contributions derive from the Genovese presence (mainly in the NE Aegean Sea), the Catholic Church (which cuts across all the above) and, finally, the small group of Fanariotes.

At this stage, the database includes 443 records, 147 of which date from the 13th-15th centuries, 170 from the 16th-17th centuries, 105 from the 18th-19th centuries, and 21 from the 20th century. Geographically, the bulk of the records comes from the Aegean islands (258 records), but also represented are Crete (85 records), the Ionian Islands (44 records), Sterea Hellas (38 records) and the Peloponnese (18 records).

For each database record, the location of the monument, its identity, its date, a brief historical note, bibliographic references and a recent image are provided in separate fields.

Leonidas Kallivretakis has the scientific oversight of the project. In addition to him, Nikos Benos-Palmer, Evi Olympitou and, primarily, Kostis Kallivretakis did the field photography.

The URL to this most fascinating site is: http://pandektis.ekt.gr/dspace/handle/123456789/1

Wikipedia is a great online resource when looking for a quick answer. However, it shouldn’t be used as a definitive source. Though most criticisms are around the “everyone can edit” part, and I agree completely, I also have issue with the argument Wiki-editors make that Wikipedia is about “verifiability” and not truth. ^(citation)

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been a Wikipedia editor since September of 2005 and have about 13,000 edits.

As I said, Wikipedia is great for a quick answer or to get a general idea about something. It’s also great to use as a starting point for more in depth research, as the sources referenced can be very reliable (not always though).

However, Wikipedia is just about what can be verified by citing “objective” sources. This means that if anything that has ever been published about something is a complete fabrication, then that is what’s going to end up on Wikipedia.

An example would be for me to write about you on this blog saying that you are a polygamist and eat babies. Since this is a published source, then it will be used in an article on Wikipedia about you. Nice huh?

To make this post related to the subject of the blog, i.e. heraldry, I must bring up the excellent work done by the WikiProject Heraldry and Vexillology. Though the members of this group have contributed greatly to the heraldic wealth of Wikipedia, their greatest contribution (in my humble opinion) is the artwork. The very talented computer graphics designers have created the emblazons for many of the blazons in the online encyclopedia for the world to see. The best part is that these images are freely distributed without any copyright limitations (beyond the normal abuse of another’s arms).

As you may have noticed from past blog posts, I have reused these images many a time and you can do the same. Just make sure to give credit where credit is due.

This repository of heraldic images may be of interest to some of you. I know it has been immensely useful to me as a source of clipart:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Coat_of_arms_elements

It was just in November of 2009 that His Holiness Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, the 44th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church passed away. He was very much loved in his country and widely respected.

Last week, on January 23^rd, the 45th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox, His Holiness Patriarch Irinej, was enthroned. He is a humble man and, from what I can tell, very much deserving of the honor and will definitely do an excellent job during his tenure.

What of the heraldry though?

As opposed to the Churches of the West, the bishops of the Eastern Churches don’t normally adopt a Coat of Arms unless they come from armigerous families.

This is the case with Patriarch Irinej. As the son of peasant farmers, his family was not armigerous and never adopted personal arms while rising through the ranks of the Church. Therefore, he uses the arms of the Office of the Patriarch displayed above.

What immediately stands out is the cross in base that appears to be the same as that found on Byzantine arms, also known as the tetragrammatic cross.

As was described in a previous post, the objects in each quarter are called “firesteels” or fire starters. The reason these were used in Byzantine arms (and later influenced all the Easter Churches) was because of Greek Fire. In any case, these firesteels are artistically depicted as letters. In the case of the Byzantine Empire and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, they were interpreted as “B”s and having the text “Βασιλεύς Βασιλέων Βασιλεύων Βασιλευόντων” or “King of Kings Ruler of Rulers”.

However, in the Serbian case, these symbols are called očila and in the Serbian tradition have also come to be interpreted as letter with a specific meaning. The letter it is interpreted as is the letter “C” which is the equivalent to the “S” in English. The text is “Само слога Србина спасава” or “Only Unity Saves the Serbs”. This is a text attributed to St. Sava from the 12th Century, a Serbian prince and ascetic who also was the first archbishop of the Church. This saying has united the Serbs for centuries and, it is said, that it was a rallying cry for the faithful Orthodox Serbs in their efforts to remain Orthodox in the face of the increasing pressure from Rome to convert to Catholicism.

(Note: images above are courtesy of Wikipedia)

As I was visiting the various blogs I regularly visit, I came across this post from the blog Georgian Heraldry by Alexander Mikaberidze.

The image above is of the coat of arms of Istvan Varallyay of Hungary. According to Mikaberidze, the armiger was a master farrier and gelder.

A farrier is a person who specializes in the care of a horse’s feet. However, the inspiration for the arms most probably came from Mr. Mikaberidze other specialty, gelding or castrating equines.

Heraldry originated in the European battlefields of the Middle Ages as decorated shields as a means of identification and is derived from the earlier practice in such places as Greece and elsewhere to instill fear in the enemy. The shield above identifies the family and most definitely instills fear in any male that gazes upon them!