The origin and development of the arms

Living heraldry

Heraldry is a science and art. This was not always the case. The science occupies itself with the origin and usage of arms using data present to identify and clarify. The difference between the science and art wasn’t always present. Heraldry developed in the late 12th century. At that time there was no case of heraldic science but more art. From practical reasons living heraldry evolved into the science we know today. It developed in reversed order. The work of the heralds made heraldry an science due to their work and gathered knowledge. It is clear that one needs to go back to the roots of heraldry to understand the development from art to science.

What are arms?

What are arms? That question is asked often. Maybe the best way to describe this would be as Ulmenstein stated in his comments to Galbreath that:

arms are coloured, hereditary or remaining signs of a family or of a community, of similitude meaning, depicted on a such a way as on the defence weapon of a medieval warrior namely the shield, helmet and crests. (free translated)

This definition includes the arms of families be it noble or gentile, chivalry etc.

The development of arms

As stated before the arms came into existence around 1150 A.D. In those day’s the armament or knights became more uniform. The human character, the face started to be covered with a helmet thus they started to look for alternate way’s to identify themselves on the battle field. Thus an older tradition was used and people started to use identifying symbols on their shields such as animals to identify each other on the battle field. At first the shield was used, later on the crests and anything else that one could find to display the identifying marks on. The shield however remained the most primary item for displaying the arms on mainly because that was the item the knight was inseparable from his shield.
The arms were soon to be colourful and graceful but the helmet wasn’t. Thus they started to beautify the helmet as well by tying items on the helmet such as figures; heads of animals, halve lions, wings etc. Soon the knight was one with his arms, and these arms that originally were a personal item started to go from father to son. The same with the crest, they became inseparable. Arms, crest etc. became also inseparable and thus the coat of arms became as they are today.

This development continued. The practical heraldry was mainly used on the battle field and tournaments with the more frequent use on tournaments. These were of course organized when the weather was nice. As soon as the battle started the helmet, which was very heavy and which was transported on a special horse, the helmet was put on the head of the knight. This was already heavy because of its weight. When the day was hot and the sun started shining on the metal helmet one can imagine that it was very hot inside. The counterweight this people started to put a piece of cloth on the helmet much as the Bedouins do in the desert to protect their head and neck against the heat. This cloth started to become larger by time. It is fair to assume that during these tournament battles swords were used that hit the helmet and also the piece of cloth. The helmet would bounce the attack; the piece of cloth however would not survive such a blow. Because a damaged cloth didn’t really look nice knights would before the match started already cut their cloths to prevent similar damage. Thus these cuts in the cloth started to become beautified and soon the cloths looked like the crests we know today.

With the invention of gunpowder heraldry started to fade away because it wasn’t functional anymore. Living heraldry faded away, paper heraldry survived on henceforth.