Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/284

 HERALDRY

244

HERALDRY

Fig. 1. Oval Car- touche

The shield is the ordinary vehicle of a coat of arms. It is obviously and essentially a military instrument, and the supposedly peace-loving ecclesiastic has often preferred to substitute for the shield the oval car- touche (Fig. 1). In some coun- tries, notably Italy, Spain, and France, the use of the cartouche for ecclesiastical purposes has been very general, but with the recognition of this ecclesiastical [ireference for the cartouche, it should not be overlooked that the laity have also made occa- sional use of it for purely personal armory, and that the usage of the shield for ecclesiastics is too universally general at all periods for any suggestion of impropriety to follow its use in preference to the cartouche.

Although England is a Protestant country, and her post-Reformation ecclesiastical heraldry is devoid of any subsequent Roman developments, nevertheless the official control of armory m that country h.ns been and has remained more efficient and effective than the control in any other coimtry, and when in England the temporal power assumed the headship of the Anglican Church, and in consequence the con- trol of her heraldry, the armorial practice existing at that date was stereotyped and has since remained unaltered. For that reason the English law concerning epis- copal arms may well be considered as in- dicative of the reality at a period when her- aldry was of greater importance than at present. The official arms of a bishop ap- pertain neither to him personally nor to his rank. They attach to his jurisdiction as a part of the State and the State-established religion. For that reason a suffragan bi.shop (corresponding to what is known among Catholics as a bishop auxiliary), though possessing a local titular description, has no official coat of arms. For the same reason, on the disestablishment of the Scottish and Irish Episco- palian Churches the arms of the sees in law became extinct and are officially no longer recognized, al- though a number of prelates of tho.se Churches con- tinue to use thom. Wootlward, by the way, states that all the Irish Episcopalian arms are post-Refor- mation. For this same technical reason the English Crown declines to grant arms of office for any of the sees es- tablished in the United Kingdom by the Holy See, although request therefor with a fender of the proper fees has been matlc on several occa- sions. The residt is that Catholic bishops in Eng- land, as in some other countries, use only per- sonal arms with their ex- terior insignia of rank. In the case of the archiepiscopal See of Westminster arms were granted by papal Brief, liut this is a solitary instance, and no official recognition of them has been

Fig. 2. See op Hereford

Fig. 4. Bishop .vnd His See, Impaled

Fig. 3. Abbky of Mki.k

made by the temporal authorities. In the registra- tion of the personal arms of His Eminence the late Cardinal Vaughan, ui the College of Arms in London, and in the matriculation of the personal arms of the Rt. Rev. yEneas Chisholm, Bishop of Aberdeen, no ob- jection was made to the regis- tration of the red hat of the cardinal and the green hat of the bishop.

As examples of official ec- clesiastical arms, Fig. 2 repre- sents the arms of the Anglican See of Hereford; Fig. b, Plate I, the arms of the Archbishopric of Cologne, and Fig. '.] the arms of the Abbey of Melk. These official arms, in the earliest cases borne upon a separate shield from the personal arms, are now at the pleasure of the individual borne alone or marshalled with his personal arms upon a single shield. In England it has always been customary when marshalling official with personal arms to do so by impalement and in no other manner, the official arms taking the precedence on the dexter side (Fig. 4). A curious consequence of the English Reformation with its abolition of the necessity of celibacy is to be found in the marshalling of the arms of a married (Anglican) bishop. This is never done upon a single shield. Two are used placed accoU^. On the dexter shield the official arms of the see are impaled with the personal arms of the bishop and on the sinister shield these personal arms are impaled with those of the wife (Fig. 5). In Italy most of the sees have official arms, but these are not often made use of, but when they are used they frequently occupy the upper, or "chief", portion of a shield divided per fes.se. In Germany the official and personal arms, though some- times marshalled by impalement, are usually quar- tered, the official coat being placed in the first and fourth Cjuarters. Where .several sees are united in one person the various official arms are quartered, and the personal arms are placed en surtout: but on the con- trary, where the personal arms consist of a quartered coat the official arms will sometimes be found en .s-ur- tout, which illustrates a diversity of practice to which the English rigid exactitude of rule would seem prefer- able.

In France the ecclesiastical peers (the Archbishop- Duke of Reims, the Bishop-Dukes of Laon and Lan- gres, and the Bi.shop-Counts of Beauvais, Chalons, and Noyons) all had official arms which they sometimes quartered and sometimes impaled with their personal arms. Strictly speaking there are no official arms for the papal sovereigntjv Although the crossed keys of St. Peter displayed upon an azure field, have occasionally been used for that purpo.se, and with such intention, they are more properly a device in the nature of external ornaments to the shield, and as such will be again referred to later. In relation to th<' use of personal arms, al- though in England the ordinary rule and prac- tice were usually ol> served, elsewhere an ec- clesiastic seldom made use of any marks of cadency. Even marks of bastardy are foimd to have been discarded. The reason is simply that, ecclesiastics being celibate, there would

Fig. .5. .Anglican Bishop, See, and Bishop's Wifk