Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 180

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 180

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/180

This is one of the Academy's earliest reports. We are not confident that these early reports are accurate. Please use it with caution.

Greetings (or, hey Matt!)

Here is the information we found on your name "Matthias Baer" and your coat of arms "Azure, a bear rampant and on a chief argent three seeblatter azure."

Your name is definitely documentatable. "Matthias" and "Baer" can both be documented as elements in German names from your period to the present in "German Names" by Hans Bahlow.

There is a registered name, "Matthew Beare," which is similar to yours. There is a chance that your name could conflict with it, although our opinion is that it will not.

During the period of your persona, heraldry did not exist. Although people did paint designs on their shields, the system of heraldry (which included inherited arms, specific language, and standardized heraldic achivements) didn't start developing until the mid-1100's, and didn't become common until the 1200's.

We're not sure if seeblatter were used before the development of heraldry. As you know, "Azure, a bear rampant argent" conflicts with existing arms, but you could use "Azure, three bears rampant argent."

If you're interested in recreating later-period German heraldry, you may still want to make some alterations in your arms. Your design is more characteristic of English heraldry (which used charged chiefs with some regularity) than German heraldry. We discussed several options, and the one we found that is most likely to produce German-style arms is to use the arms "Azure, three seeblatter argent" and use the bear as a crest.

All this is somewhat complicated by the fact that your arms are in process--I sent them in shortly after Pennsic War. If you wished to change them, it would not be extremely difficult to do so--and given this new information, you may well want to consider it.

Zenobia Naphtali, Arval D'Espas Nord, Margaret Makafee, and Rouland Carre contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel