ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1324
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1324
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8 Oct 1998
From:  (Josh Mittleman)


Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!

You asked for information about Polish coats of arms.  This letter is a
brief answer to your question.

For a good introduction to Polish heraldry, we recommend the article
"Ksiazat Polskiego Heraldika (The Chronicle of Polish Heraldry)", by Stefan
Laskowski, which appeared in the proceedings of the 1989 Caidan Heraldic
Symposium and Scribe's Conclave.  Many senior heralds own copies, and you
can order it from Free Trumpet Press West, the publications office of the
SCA College of Arms.  You can find ordering information on the web:

    http://www.sca.org/heraldry/ftpw/

The following paragraphs are a brief summary of the major points in
Stefan's article. 

Heraldry in Poland is unlike heraldry anywhere else in Europe, both in
appearance and in usage.  Arms were not held by individuals, but by a ro/d,
or "clan".  (The slash represents an accent on the <o>).  Hundreds of
families could use the same arms; but a ro/d was not familial.  They were
more like political parties or military alliances.  The most authentic way
for a Society participant with a Polish persona to use arms would probably
be to choose a historical ro/d to which to belong and to use their arms.

The majority of Polish arms are "cypher arms", consisting of a plain field
bearing a single charge consisting of lines and arcs.  Many of these
cyphers are reminescent of runes, cattle brands, or alchemical symbols; but
many are much more complex.  The skeleton was often a cross (perhaps
missing a limb), a circle, two or three parallel lines, or an N-shape.  To
this basic frame, various ornaments might be added: cruciforms, arrowheads,
extra cross-bars, half circles, triangles, and so on.

Many cypher arms were re-interpreted in western European heraldic terms
(i.e. arcs described as crescent or horseshoes; lines with arrowheads as
arrows or spears), and some Polish clans adopted the westernized versions
of their arms, perhaps to make it easier to fit into greater European noble
culture.  Stefan does not indicate when this happened, but the 15th century
armorial of the Golden Fleece includes examples of this kind of arms [1].

Many ro/d used totemic animals as their arms: fox, wolf, wildcat, lynx,
boar, brown bear, badger, chamois, European bison, beaver, horse, bull,
lion, eagle.  Fantastic monsters were virtually unknown.  Some families
used an object as a charge: a ship, an axe, a house.  In almost all
cases, these arms consisted of a single charge on a plain field.

Only a few tinctures and tincture combinations were used.  65% of Stefan's
sample have a red field with a silver charge; 10% have a blue field with a
silver or gold charge.  Green and black were extremely rare. Metal fields
and divided fields were unusual, and were probably arms imported to Poland
by marriage or immigration.


For further information on Polish heraldry, we recommend the following
sources.  Not all of them are easily accessible, but you can probably get
hold of the more obscure ones through inter-library loan.

  Jo/zef Szyman/ski, _Herbarz: S/redniowiecznego Rycerstwa Polskiego_
  (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1993)

This book is in Polish (unfortunately), but has an introduction in which
the Polish names of charges are clearly given in illustrated tables.  The
majority of the book is a documentation of the arms of families/groups back
to their earliest occurrences with dates, color illustrations, and blazons
in both Polish and English.  Most of the armory dates to the 15th or 16th
century.

  Rosemary Pinches and Anthony Wood, _A European Armorial: An Armorial
  of Knights of the Golden Fleece and 15th Century Europe_ (London: 
  Heraldry Today, 1971)

This book reproduces a collection of 15th century arms from all over
Europe, including a reasonable list of Polish arms.  Many of the Polish
arms have been re-interpreted in western heraldic terms and then drawn
accordingly.

 S.J. Starykon-Kasprzycki, _Polska Encyklopedja Szlachecka_
 (Warszawa : Wydawnictwo Instytutu Kultury Historycznej, 1935-1938)

This source is not as useful as Szymanski, but it does contain a fair
number of illustrations.

  Siebmacher, Johann, _Johann Siebmachers Wappenbuch von 1605_, 2 vols.,
  ed. Horst Appuhn (Dortmund: Harenberg, 1988, 1989). 

This source reproduces several thousand late-period German arms, including
a fair number from the eastern reaches of Germany that seem to be
Polish-style cypher arms.


For general information about period Polish culture, you may want to
contact the Slavic Interest Group, a website for people interested in
historical re-creation of Slavic cultures.

    http://vms.www.uwplatt.edu/~goldschp/slavic.html


I hope this brief letter has been useful.  Please write us again if you
have any questions.  I was assisted in researching and writing this letter
by Walraven van Nijmegen, Rouland Carre, and Zenobia Naphtali.

For the Academy,


  Arval Benicoeur
  8 Oct 1998


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References

[1] Rosemary Pinches and Anthony Wood, _A European Armorial: An Armorial of
Knights of the Golden Fleece and 15th Century Europe_ (London: Heraldry
Today, 1971)