ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3135 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3135 ************************************ 9 Aug 2006 From: Aryanhwy merch Catmael Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if pansies or violas (the flower, not the musical instrument) were used as heraldic charges in French armory between 1100 and 1450, and in particular if "Or chape purpure, three pansies (or violas) purpure" would be a reasonable design. Here is the information we have found. We were unable to find any examples of violas or pansies in French armory of any period. Naturalistic plants are fairly rare in period heraldry. Although naturalistic flowers appear in a few late-period arms, because they were quite rare we cannot recommend using any particular flower without evidence that it was actually used in period heraldry. Instead of naturalistic depictions of flowers, medieval heraldry used a stylised type of flower called a foil. In particular cinquefoils (foils with five petals/lobes) were quite common in both English and French armory throughout our period. As two specific examples of foils, we found the arms "Barry argent and sable semy of cinquefoils or, in canton a cock statant gules" and "Gules, three trefoils pierced or" in a French roll of arms from 1254. [1] We can therefore recommend that you use cinquefoils to represent violas or pansies. Until the beginning of the 15th century the tincture called <porpre> in Old French and <purpura> in Latin seems to have been an indistinct color somewhere between grey and brown. It was only in the 15th century that it began to be painted as what we would call purple, and it remained rare in heraldry right through the 16th century. [2] Purpure was extremely rare in medieval heraldry, especially during your period, so we do not recommend it as good re-creation. If you would like to retain a naturalistic reference to the flower, we recommend the tincture azure. Both chape and chape ploye are fairly rare designs; we've only seen them in late-period French arms. [3] We therefore cannot recommend this as the best choice for your period either. We can, however, recommend the following designs as good choices for your period: [4,5] Or semy of cinquefoils azure Per fess Or and azure, in chief two cinquefoils azure Barry azure and Or, six cinquefoils three, two, and one azure Barry azure and Or, an orle of cinquefoils azure Or, two bendlets between six cinquefoils azure Or, two bars between six cinquefoils azure We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Juliana de Luna, Kolosvari Arpadne Julia, Talan Gwynek, Walraven van Nijmegen, Arval Benicoeur, and Eleyne de Comnocke. For the Academy -Aryanhwy merch Catmael, 09 August 2006 -- References: [1] Pereyra, Kristina, "Bigot Roll of Arms, 1254" (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel) http://www.s-gabriel.org/docs/bigot.html [2] Pastoureau, Michel, _Heraldry: An Introduction to a Noble Tradition_ (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997), pp. 101-2. [3] Academy of S. Gabriel Report #2984 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2984 [4] Iago ab Adam, "A Caerlaverock Roll of Arms" (WWW: Self-published, 2001, 2006) http://members.shaw.ca/yagowe/caerlaverock/ [5] So far as we can tell, you can register any of these with the SCA College of Arms.