The Herald's Book Al

The Herald's Book al. Livro de Arautos al. De ministerio armorum An armorial of the Council of Constance 1414-1418 by an anonymous Portuguese herald Introduction and edition by Steen Clemmensen from Manchester, John Rylands University Library Ms. Latin 28 Livro de Arautos (Herald's book) al. De ministerio armorum An armorial from the Concilium held in Konstanz 1414-1418 collated by a Portuguese herald CONTENTS 1. Introduction 3 2. Manuscript 4 3. Nobles of the Holy Roman Empire 5 4. Foreigners 7 5. Knightly orders and emblems of affinity 10 Notes 11 The armorial in J Rylands ms. Latin 28 (ARK) 12 Appendices A segmentation 53 B concordance of quire, folio and page numbers 54 C quire structure 55 D contents of J Rylands ms. Latin 28 56 E concordance with www.silverdragon.org 57 F persons mentioned by Gebhard Dacher 58 Bibliography 59 Index Armorum 67 Index Nominorum 71 © Steen Clemmensen, www.armorial.dk, Farum, Denmark, 2011 2 1. Introduction The long Concilium or General Council of the Church that took place in Constance or Konstanz on the Bodensee in southern Germany from October 1414 to April 1418 was one of the major events in the later Middle Ages. The biggest accomplishment was the healing of the western Church, ending the Great Western Schism of 1378 by deposing the three competing popes and electing a new pope recognized by all major princes secular as well as spiritual. On the negative side was the aggravation of another split between reformist (labelled heretic) and conservative parties, giving rise to years of bloody civil war. The matters spiritual have been reported and analyzed exhaustively by both contemporaries and modern writers (see Hardt, Finke, Lenfant, Brandmülller and Mathiesen). On the secular side few matters were settled. The Germans held a number of semi- parliamentary meetings (Reichstage) and a number of cases between e.g. Poland-Lithuania and the Teutonic Order, towns and princes, and between princes were heard (mostly by the spiritual authorities). But nothing was done on the English invasion of France or the war with the Ottoman Turks. For a time life changed in the prosperous merchant town of Konstanz. The influx of a score of cardinals, hundreds of bishops and abbots and dozens of embassies from major and minor princes, each with their retinues – and from time to time of most of the local nobility – demanded a high level of organisation for housing, collection and distribution of provisions. For this the conveners (Pope Johannes XXIII and the newly elected king of the Romans, Sigismund) set up a tri-partite administration between papal, imperial and town authorities to police the town, control prices, gather provisions and note the arrivals and departures. One of these officials was Ulrich Richental, a local citizen, who later worked his notes into a much read chronicle. Both the conveners, guests and the semi-independent German towns (including the Swiss) noted the presence of notables (see Riegel), and these were recorded on official and private lists, in ambassadorial reports (e.g. Dacher L) and in town chronicles (e.g. Justinger). A large part of the arrivals were quartered in private homes, inns or in the town abbeys, while others must have camped outside or been housed in nearby abbeys and houses. At the time there were no hotel registers (and no hotels), so the guests simply put up their arms on the front of the house where they dwelt. In this way messengers could find their recipients. Some might have brought shields themselves, but many must have had them made in Konstanz, who was noted at the time for having several workshops for painters and illustrators. So it should not come as a surprise that the coats-of- arms would be recorded as well as the names. Richental (d.1437) included an armorial (KCR) in his chronicle as an appendix and had it illustrated with miniatures featuring coats-of-arms of the notables who took part in the festivities. His chronicle cum armorial has survived in five manuscript copies and a printed edition, mostly manufactured during 1460-1483 (reprinted 1536 and 1575, facsimile in 1923 and on www). The text part has been published by Buck and analyzed by Mathiessen, the illustrations by Wacker and the armorial was edited by Clemmensen. Richental knew Latin and had commercial dealings with and a network to several of the more important local nobles, but he probably knew little of heraldry and armory. So he wisely acquired the help of one or more of the 60-odd heralds present. Though the KCR with nearly 1700 coats-of- arms (incl. doubles and blanks) is by far the largest, another smaller armorial with arms of people present has survived – disguised as an unfinished textbook on heraldry – written and painted by an anonymous Portuguese herald: the De ministrerio armorum. 3 2. The manuscript The book titled De ministerio armorum was acquired in 1901 from the Earl of Crawfurd & Balcarres and is now held by the University of Manchester as John Rylands Library, ms. Latin 28. It has 98 leaves, mainly of vellum, but with a dozen of paper (8 written, some fly-leaves), in the format 264 x 166 mm. The leaves are bound in 39 irregular quires of bifolios and single folios (App. B & C & D). The present binding is 19th century. The codicology has been described by James and by Nascimento. In Clemmensen OM it has the abbreviation ARK. The main text is written in Latin with a 15th century hand in double columns. Later addtions in different hands are in Portuguese and Spanish. A dozen arms, mostly as banners, are placed on written pages. Other banners occupy a whole unwritten page. The majority of arms are placed in a single row (of 4 or 5) on the long side with the crest nearest to the binding, so that the reader must turn the book to see the arms. In addition to the 258 numbered coats-of-arms, there are several blank shields (probably prestamped with shield, helmet and mantling) and one grounded in red paint. Most of the arms are in the form of achievements (shield and crested helmet), those of princes are on banners, usually with crowns or coronets placed above. The arms are drawn competently and finely coloured, though the white and yellow paint (overlayed) is flaking, which in a few cases makes identification difficult. In addition there are a number of emblems of knightly orders and of maintenance (i.e. the Lancastrian 'S-S'-collar) and chains holding some arms together. From a textual point of view the book is an unfinished treatise of heraldry mostly written in Latin and with the arms as only loosely connected illustrations. As such the armorial could be classified as illustrative. However, given the clear segmentation (App. A) and the absence of internal references, it should be classified as composite. The text has been transcribed and translated into Portuguese by Aires Nascimento on facing pages from his page 136 on. His interest was mainly the linguistic analysis of the text, and that left an initial description of the arms to Werner Paravicini, who added colour photographs of ff.62r, 63r, 68r (miniature), 69rv, 80v, 90r and 97r. Another 51 arms (no crests) and two emblems are published on www.silverdragon.org (app. E). The date of collation of the arms are given as 1416 in the manuscript and corroborated by a notice that it was in the year following the conquest of Ceuta (in Morocco, 60v) and by several references to the Concilium in Konstanz. The Portuguese embassy arrived in Konstanz on 1 July 1416. However, a minor adjustment in the dating is necessary. The presence of the Lancastrian collar of 'S-S' given to several nobles in the retinue of Sigismund indicates that the collation must have continued after Sigismund's return to Konstanz on the 21 January 1417 from his prolonged absence in Spain, France and England. The collation also includes the bishop of Winchester [69], who arrived in late 1417. The author was a Portuguese herald, giving his birthplace as Lamego near Oporto (Nascimento ARK 252), and adding that he was an old man at the time of writing. He is not named, but speculation would have him as the herald or king-of-arms Portugal. The text begins with the origin of arms instituted by Julius Caesar and continues with a description of the office of heralds and of the countries he had visited (ordered per quire, App. D) – reminiscent of the traveller's book tradition, e.g Book of Knowledge (Markham LIC, Lacarra LIC) – and with lists of dioceses similar to Richental. Further discussion of the text is outside the scope of this paper. 4 3. Nobles of the Holy Roman Empire Though it is somewhat irrelevant to name the French and English as foreigners and Germans and Hungarians as non-foreigners in a work by a Portuguese, it would have made sense for his informants in Konstanz. Being in the retinue of the Rex Romanorum, many of the Hungarians present would have been able to speak German. Whatever intentions the author might have had for his work, it was left unfinished and not consistent, and neither did the (Spanish) continuator finish his part in it (see App. D). What remains is an introduction on heralds, several chapters on countries, each headed by the arms of the sovereign and confined to its own quire, and not least several quires of exquisitely painted coats-of-arms each in sensible order. Why the book has so many single folio and single bifolio quires must be left unanswered (App.

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