Polish heraldry

This article is part of the Polish Heraldry series History of Poland

1 History
2 Peculiarities
- 2.1 Shield
- 2.2 Tinctures
3 Bibliography and Listings of Coats of Arms
4 See also:
5 Further reading
6 External links:

[edit]

History

The history of Polish heraldry is an integral part of the history of the szlachta, the Polish nobility. Unlike in western Europe, the Polish szlachta did not emerge from the class of knights under chivalry, but rather from a Slavic class of free warriors. These were often hired by princes to form guard units (Polish drużyna) and were eventually paid in land.

Only a small number of szlachta families or clans (Polish rody) can be traced all the way back to the traditional clan system. Most szlachta since at least the 12th century were not related and their unions were mostly voluntary and based on parentage rather than kinship. Since Poland emerged almost at once as a relatively unified duchy in the 10th century, it was the Prince or, later, the King who was considered the patron of all the clans. He granted privileges and land to clan members rather than to clans as such and was allowed to assign new knights to the clans of his choice. As a result a stable system of strong and wealthy groups of relatives never developed in Poland. The Polish clans were much more unstable than their western counterparts.

Heraldic symbols began to be used in Poland in the 13th century. The generic Polish term for a coat of arms, herb, dates from the early 15th century, originating as a translation of the Czech erb, which in turn came from German Erbe - heritage.

Under the Union of Horodlo (1413) the noble families of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, such as the Mielzynskis, were adopted en masse into the Polish noble clans and began to use Polish coats of arms.

[edit]

Peculiarities

Although the Polish heraldic system evolved under the influence of French and German heraldry, there are many notable differences.

The most striking peculiarity of the system is that a coat of arms does not belong to a single family. A number of unrelated families (sometimes hundreds of them), usually with a number of different family names, may use a coat of arms, and each coat of arms has its own name. The total number of coats of arms in this system was relatively low - less than 200 in the late Middle Ages. One side-effect of this unique arrangement was that it became customary to refer to noblemen by both their family name and their coat of arms. For example: Jan Zamoyski herbu Jelita means Jan Zamoyski of the Jelita coat of arms (though it is often translated as ...of the clan Jelita ).

A single coat of arms could appear in slightly different versions, typically in different colours, depending on the custom of the family using it. Such versions ( odmiany ) are still considered to represent the same coat of arms.

One of the most visually striking characteristics of Polish heraldry is the abundance of gules fields. Among the oldest coats of arms in Poland, nearly half use a red background, with blue (azure) coming in a distant second. Nowhere else in Europe shows such a strong bias towards a particular color scheme.

Other typical features used in Polish heraldry include horseshoes, arrows, Maltese crosses, scythes, stars and crescents. There are also many purely geometrical shapes for which a separate set of heraldic terms was invented. It has been suggested that originally all Polish coats of arms were based on such abstract geometrical shapes, but most were gradually "rationalised" into horseshoes, arrows and so on. If this hypothesis is correct, it suggests in turn that Polish heraldry, again unlike western European heraldry, may be at least partly derived from the tamgas symbols used by nomadic peoples of the Steppe, such as the Sarmatians or the Avars, to mark property. However, the evidence about the origins of the system is scanty, and this hypothesis has been criticised as being part of the Polish noble tradition of romanticising their supposed Sarmatian ancestry. On this matter, research and controversy continue.

A Polish coat of arms consists of shield, crest, helm and mantling. Supporters, mottos and compartments normally do not appear, although certain individuals used them, especially in the final stages of the system's development, in the 18th and 19th centuries, partly in response to German influence.

[edit]

Shield

Polish coats of arms are divided in the same way as their western counterparts. However, since coats of arms were originally granted to clans rather than to separate families, there was no need to join coats of arms into one when a new branch of a family was formed. Thus Polish escutcheons are rarely parted.

Example
English name	Parted per fess	Parted per pale	Parted per bend sinister	Parted quarterly	Parted quarterly with a heart
Polish name	w pas	w słup	w skos	czterodzielny	sercowy

The tradition of differentiating between the coat of arms proper and a lozenge granted to women did not develop in Poland. Usually men inherited a coat of arms from their fathers (or a member of a clan who had adopted them), while women either inherited a coat from their mothers or adopted the arms of their husbands. The brisure was rarely used.

Heart-shaped shields were mostly used in representations of the coats of arms of royalty. Following the union between Poland and Lithuania, and the creation of the elective monarchy, it became customary to place the coats of Poland and Lithuania diagonally, with the coat of arms of the specific monarch placed centrally on top.

[edit]

Tinctures

Tincture	Heraldic name	Polish name
Metals
Gold/Yellow	Or	Złoto
Silver/White	Argent	Srebro
Colours
Blue	Azure	Niebieski
Red	Gules	Czerwony
Purple	Purpure	Purpura
Black	Sable	Czarny
Green	Vert	Zielony

In addition to these seven basic tinctures, which were standard in English heraldry and elsewhere in western Europe, many more tinctures were used in Poland and (after the union with Poland) Lithuania, including grey, steel, brunatre, weasel and carnation.

[edit]

Bibliography and Listings of Coats of Arms

Traditionally coats of arms were published in various listings of szlachta and in armorials, known in Polish as herbarz. Some of the most notable among such publications are:

Bartosz Paprocki, Gniazdo cnoty. Kraków, 1578.
Bartosz Paprocki, Herby rycerstwa polskiego; Kraków, 1584 (II ed. Kraków, 1858).
Szymon Okolski, Orbis Polonus; V. 1-3. Kraków, 1641-1643.
Wacław Potocki, Poczet herbów szlachty Korony Polskiey i Wielkiego Xsięstwa Litewskiego; Krakow, 1696.
rev. Kacper Niesiecki, Herby i familie rycerskie tak w Koronie jako y w W.X.L.; Lwów, 1728.
rev. Kacper Niesiecki, Korona polska; Lwów, 1728–1743.
rev. Benedykt Chmielowski, Zbiór krótki herbów polskich, oraz wsławionych cnotą i naukami Polaków; Warsaw, 1763.
rev Kasper Niesiecki, Herbarz Polski; Leipzig, 1839-1846.
Teodor Żychliński, Złota księga szlachty polskiej; Poznań, 1879-1908
Adam Boniecki, Herbarz polski; Warsaw, 1899-1913.
hr. Jerzy Dunin-Borkowski, Almanach błękitny. Genealogia żyjących rodów polskich; Lwów, 1908.
Edward Borowski, Genealogie niektórych polskich rodzin utytułowanych; Buenos Aires-Paris, 1964.
Sławomir Górzyński, Jerzy Kochanowski Herby szlachty polskiej; Warsaw, 1990
Alfred Znamierowski Insygnia, symbole i herby polskie; Warsaw, 2003