Part 2 (1/2)
To quote another very learned author: ”The system of hieroglyphics, or symbols, was adopted into every mysterious inst.i.tution, for the purpose of concealing the most sublime secrets of religion from the prying curiosity of the vulgar; to whom nothing was exposed but the beauties of their morality.” (See Ramsay's ”Travels of Cyrus,” lib. 3.) ”The old Asiatic style, so highly figurative, seems, by what we find of {11} its remains in the prophetic language of the sacred writers, to have been evidently fas.h.i.+oned to the mode of the ancient hieroglyphics; for as in hieroglyphic writing the sun, moon, and stars were used to represent states and empires, kings, queens, and n.o.bility--their eclipse and extinction, temporary disasters, or entire overthrow--fire and flood, desolation by war and famine; plants or animals, the qualities of particular persons, &c.; so, in like manner, the Holy Prophets call kings and empires by the names of the heavenly luminaries; their misfortunes and overthrow are represented by eclipses and extinction; stars falling from the firmament are employed to denote the destruction of the n.o.bility; thunder and tempestuous winds, hostile invasions; lions, bears, leopards, goats, or high trees, leaders of armies, conquerors, and founders of empires; royal dignity is described by purple, or a crown; iniquity by spotted garments; a warrior by a sword or bow; a powerful man, by a gigantic stature; a judge by balance, weights, and measures--in a word, the prophetic style seems to be a speaking hieroglyphic.”
It seems to me, however, that the whole of these are no more than symbolism, though they are undoubtedly symbolism of a high and methodical order, little removed from our own armory. Personally I do not consider them to be armory, but if the word is to be stretched to the utmost lat.i.tude to permit of their inclusion, one certain conclusion follows. That if the heraldry of that day had an orderly existence, it most certainly came absolutely to an end and disappeared. Armory as we know it, the armory of to-day, which as a system is traced back to the period of the Crusades, is no mere continuation by adoption. It is a distinct development and a re-development _ab initio_. Undoubtedly there is a period in the early development of European civilisation which is dest.i.tute alike of armory, or of anything of that nature. The civilisation of Europe is not the civilisation of Egypt, of Greece, or of Rome, nor a continuation thereof, but a new development, and though each of these in its turn attained a high degree of civilisation and may have separately developed a heraldic symbolism much akin to armory, as a natural consequence of its own development, as the armory we know is a development of its own consequent upon the rise of our own civilisation, nevertheless it is unjustifiable to attempt to establish continuity between the ordered symbolism of earlier but distinct civilisations, and our own present system of armory. The one and only civilisation which has preserved its continuity is that of the Jewish race. In spite of persecution the Jews have preserved unchanged the minutest details of ritual law and ceremony, the causes of their suffering.
Had heraldry, which is and has always been a matter of pride, formed a part of their distinctive life we should find it still existing. Yet the fact remains {12} that no trace of Jewish heraldry can be found until modern times. Consequently I accept unquestioningly the conclusions of the late J.
R. Planche, Somerset Herald, who unhesitatingly a.s.serted that armory did not exist at the time of the Conquest, basing his conclusions princ.i.p.ally upon the entire absence of armory from the seals of that period, and the Bayeux tapestry.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.--Kiku-non-hana-mon. State _Mon_ of j.a.pan.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.--Kiri-mon. _Mon_ of the Mikado.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.--Awo-mon. _Mon_ of the House of Minamoto Tokugawa.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4.--_Mon_ of the House of Minamoto As.h.i.+kaya.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 5.--Tomoye. _Mon_ of the House of Arina.]
The family tokens (_mon_) of the j.a.panese, however, fulfil very nearly all of the essentials of armory, although considered heraldically they may appear somewhat peculiar to European eyes. Though perhaps never forming the entire decoration of a s.h.i.+eld, they do appear upon weapons and armour, and are used most lavishly in the decoration of clothing, rooms, furniture, and in fact almost every conceivable object, being employed for _decorative_ purposes in precisely the same manners and methods that armorial devices are decoratively made use of in this country. A j.a.panese of the upper cla.s.ses always has his _mon_ in three places upon his _kimono_, usually at the back just below the collar and on either sleeve. The j.a.panese servants also wear their service badge in much the same manner that in olden days the badge was worn by the servants of a n.o.bleman. The design of the service badge occupies the whole available surface of the back, and is reproduced in a miniature form on each lappel of the _kimono_. Unfortunately, like armorial bearings in Europe, but to a far greater extent, the j.a.panese _mon_ has been greatly pirated and abused. {13}
Fig. 1, ”Kiku-non-hana-mon,” formed from the conventionalised bloom (_hana_) of the chrysanthemum, is the _mon_ of the State. It is formed of sixteen petals arranged in a circle, and connected on the outer edge by small curves.
Fig. 2, ”Kiri-mon,” is the personal _mon_ of the Mikado, formed of the leaves and flower of the _Paulowna imperialis_, conventionally treated.
Fig. 3, ”Awo-mon,” is the _mon_ of the House of Minamoto Tokugawa, and is composed of three sea leaves (_Asarum_). The Tokugawa reigned over the country as _Shogune_ from 1603 until the last revolution in 1867, before which time the Emperor (the Mikado) was only nominally the ruler.
Fig. 4 shows the _mon_ of the House of Minamoto As.h.i.+kaya, which from 1336 until 1573 enjoyed the Shogunat.
Fig. 5 shows the second _mon_ of the House of Arina, Toymote, which is used, however, throughout j.a.pan as a sign of luck.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 6.--Double eagle on a coin (_drachma_) under the Orthogide of Kaifa Nacr Edin Mahmud, 1217.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 7.--Device of the Mameluke Emir Toka Timur, Governor of Rahaba, 1350.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 8.--Lily on the Bab-al-Hadid gate at Damascus.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 9.--Device of the Emir Arkatay (a band between two keys).]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 10.--Device of the Mameluke Emir Schaikhu.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 11.--Device of Abu Abdallah, Mohammed ibn Nacr, King of Granada, said to be the builder of the Alhambra (1231-1272).]
The Saracens and the Moors, to whom we owe the origin of so many of our recognised heraldic charges and the derivation of some of our terms (_e.g._ ”gules,” from the Persian _gul_, and ”azure” from the Persian _lazurd_) had evidently on their part something more than the rudiments of armory, as Figs. 6 to 11 will indicate. {14}
One of the best definitions of a coat of arms that I know, though this is not perfect, requires the twofold qualification that the design must be hereditary and must be connected with armour. And there can be no doubt that the theory of armory as we now know it is governed by those two ideas.
The s.h.i.+elds and the crests, if any decoration of a helmet is to be called a crest, of the Greeks and the Romans undoubtedly come within the one requirement. Also were they indicative of and perhaps intended to be symbolical of the owner. They lacked, however, heredity, and we have no proof that the badges we read of, or the decorations of s.h.i.+eld and helmet, were continuous even during a single lifetime. Certainly as we now understand the term there must be both continuity of use, if the arms be impersonal, or heredity if the arms be personal. Likewise must there be their use as decorations of the implements of warfare.
If we exact these qualifications as essential, armory as a fact and as a science is a product of later days, and is the evolution from the idea of tribal badges and tribal means and methods of honour applied to the decoration of implements of warfare. It is the conjunction and a.s.sociation of these two distinct ideas to which is added the no less important idea of heredity. The civilisation of England before the Conquest has left us no trace of any sort or kind that the Saxons, the Danes, or the Celts either knew or practised armory. So that if armory as we know it is to be traced to the period of the Norman Conquest, we must look for it as an adjunct of the altered civilisation and the altered law which Duke William brought into this country. Such evidence as exists is to the contrary, and there is nothing that can be truly termed armorial in that marvellous piece of cotemporaneous workmans.h.i.+p known as the Bayeux tapestry.
Concerning the Bayeux tapestry and the evidence it affords, Woodward and Burnett's ”Treatise on Heraldry,” apparently following Planche's conclusions, remarks: ”The evidence afforded by the famous tapestry preserved in the public library of Bayeux, a series of views in sewed work representing the invasion and conquest of England by WILLIAM the Norman, has been appealed to on both sides of this controversy, and has certainly an important bearing on the question of the antiquity of coat-armour. This panorama of seventy-two scenes is on probable grounds believed to have been the work of the Conqueror's Queen MATILDA and her maidens; though the French historian THIERRY and others ascribe it to the Empress MAUD, daughter of HENRY III. The latest authorities suggest the likelihood of its having been wrought as a decoration for the Cathedral of Bayeux, when rebuilt by WILLIAM'S uterine brother ODO, Bishop of that See, in 1077. The exact correspondence which has been discovered between the length of the tapestry {15} and the inner circ.u.mference of the nave of the cathedral greatly favours this supposition. This remarkable work of art, as carefully drawn in colour in 1818 by Mr. C. STOTHARD, is reproduced in the sixth volume of the _Vetusta Monumenta_; and more recently an excellent copy of it from autotype plates has been published by the Arundel Society. Each of its scenes is accompanied by a Latin description, the whole uniting into a graphic history of the event commemorated. We see HAROLD taking leave of EDWARD THE CONFESSOR; riding to Bosham with his hawk and hounds; embarking for France; landing there and being captured by the Count of Ponthieu; redeemed by WILLIAM of Normandy, and in the midst of his Court aiding him against CONAN, Count of BRETAGNE; swearing on the sacred relics to recognise WILLIAM'S claim of succession to the English throne, and then re-embarking for England. On his return, we have him recounting the incidents of his journey to EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, to whose funeral obsequies we are next introduced. Then we have HAROLD receiving the crown from the English people, and ascending the throne; and WILLIAM, apprised of what had taken place, consulting with his half-brother ODO about invading England. The war preparations of the Normans, their embarkation, their landing, their march to Hastings, and formation of a camp there, form the subjects of successive scenes; and finally we have the battle of Hastings, with the death of Harold and the flight of the English. In this remarkable piece of work we have figures of more than six hundred persons, and seven hundred animals, besides thirty-seven buildings, and forty-one s.h.i.+ps or boats. There are of course also numerous s.h.i.+elds of warriors, of which some are round, others kite-shaped, and on some of the latter are rude figures, of dragons or other imaginary animals, as well as crosses of different forms, and spots. On one hand it requires little imagination to find the cross _patee_ and the cross _botonnee_ of heraldry prefigured on two of these s.h.i.+elds. But there are several fatal objections to regarding these figures as incipient _armory_, namely that while the most prominent persons of the time are depicted, most of them repeatedly, none of these is ever represented twice as bearing the same device, nor is there one instance of any resemblance in the rude designs described to the bearings actually used by the descendants of the persons in question. If a personage so important and so often depicted as the Conqueror had borne arms, they could not fail to have had a place in a nearly contemporary work, and more especially if it proceeded from the needle of his wife.”
Lower, in his ”Curiosities of Heraldry,” clinches the argument when he writes: ”Nothing but disappointment awaits the curious armorist who seeks in this venerable memorial the pale, the bend, and {16} other early elements of arms. As these would have been much more easily imitated with the needle than the grotesque figures before alluded to, we may safely conclude that personal arms had not yet been introduced.” The ”Treatise on Heraldry” proceeds: ”The Second Crusade took place in 1147; and in MONTFAUCON'S plates of the no longer extant windows of the Abbey of St.
Denis, representing that historical episode, there is not a trace of an armorial ensign on any of the s.h.i.+elds. That window was probably executed at a date when the memory of that event was fresh; but in MONTFAUCON'S time, the beginning of the eighteenth century, the _Science heroque_ was matter of such moment in France that it is not to be believed that the armorial figures on the s.h.i.+elds, had there been any, would have been left out.”