Steen Clemmensen The Gorrevod armorial Bruxelles, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms. II. 6563 ms. IV. 1301 Transcription with analysis and partial identification, including material provided by Emmanuel de Boos and Christiane van den Bergen-Pantens. CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2 2. The manuscripts 3 3. Owners 6 4. Nobles: lords and gentry 8 5. Commoners 11 6. Abbeys and towns 11 7. Foreigners 12 8. Kings and imaginary arms 14 9. Summary 15 The armorial dit de Gorrevod ms. II.6563 16 The ‘Limburg-Stirum’ ms. IV.1301 208 Appendix A overview of pages 220 Appendix B GOR structure 221 Appendix C concordance of 2003 / 2019 numbers 227 Appendix D watermarks 232 Bibliography 233 Index armorum 241 Index nominorum 270 Additions & corrections to towns 282 © 2019 by Steen Clemmensen, Farum, Denmark, www.armorial.dk . Open access publication under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ISBN 978-87-970977-1-7 1. Introduction The armorial commonly known as Gorrevod from the name of one of its owners appears to be relatively unique among the large composite armorials of the late Middle Ages.1 Superficially, it looks like contemporary painted armorials and like them is made up of distinct segments each containing either a number of coats of arms of similar type, e.g. from a specific territory, selected from holders of a particular noble rank, or imaginary persons or countries; and/or text discussing history, geography or theory related to the office of arms, tournaments and other ceremonials. Many, if not most, of the manuscripts of composite armorials can be assigned to distinct, but often overlapping groups as copies, clones or satellites according to the extent and form of common content. Six groups have recently been analyzed and defined.2 Like four of these groups, the Gorrevod has a majority of items from present France, Belgium and the Netherlands and their neighbouring parts of Germany, but it does not belong to either of these groups. Though the Gorrevod has been retained among the composite armorials, it has many of the characteristics of a general or universal armorial and could even be classified as a local armorial. It is obvious from just a flipping through the manuscript that it has a close connection to the medieval duchy of Brabant-Limbourg. A territory which is now divided between the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant (with Breda and s’Hertogenbosch / Bois-le-Duc) and the Belgian provinces of (southern) Brabant (with Antwerp and Bruxelles) and Limbourg as well as the Dutch enclave of Limburg around Maasstricht. The Gorrevod does have segments with titled nobles listed by rank and imaginary arms, but the two unusual elements are the long list of arms attributed to towns and the many commoners, which fill several segments. Many of these armigeral families have not been identified or verified, but those that have been identified often held scabinal positions in Brabantian towns. The present publication presents a transcription of arms and crests with preliminary identification of the families and a few notes.3 The analysis is focused on dividing and defining the 1 The Gorrevod was baptised by Paul Adam-Even in his (unpublished) catalogue of medieval armorials from the painted ex-libris on fo.2r - and mentioned as no.2914 in the Saffroy catalogue. The manuscript II.6365 is described in two papers (Bergen-Pantens AG, 1998; Bergen-Pantens GD, 2005). Emmanuel de Boos († 2017) did most of the transcription in French and kindly placed it at my disposal in 2003 for identification and incorporation into a database of medieval armorials. The extensive research by Christiane van den Bergen-Pantens is now unlikely to be published, so the various notes were reviewed and supplemented in order to provide researchers with a foundation on which to explore this interesting armorial. 2 Clemmensen EA, 2017: TOISON D’OR, URFÉ, GELRE-BELLENVILLE, RINECK (France-Burgundian), BODENSEE (Germany), and ASHMOLE (England). 3 Further details on the families can be found in Clemmensen OM and often in the cited editions of armorials. 2 various parts according to layout and content. Periods of collation and execution are also noted. The comments and references included with the individual items are those readily available in the author’s database and included almost unedited as a guide for the reader. 2. The manuscripts There are three manuscripts to be considered, the principal 15th century named Gorrevod; one contemporary manuscript, which may have been a part of the former; and one later work based on the principal one. 2.1 The principal manuscript The principal manuscript is the one presently held in Bruxelles in the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique (KBR) as II.6563 (GOR) was in bad condition before the restoration in 2004. Ink and water-colours are very pale and hard to read. Some arms were found under strips of paper. Other items were glued on to the primary pages. There are a number of odd sized leaves in the manuscript. The manuscript is on paper, 225 x 155 mm (A5+, some pages cut, quires slightly variable in dimensions) on 121 leaves.4 There are several, mostly partial, paginations; the (modern) one used here has the sequence 18 unnumbered and 220 pages with arabic numbers in black ink on the outside top of the pages. Bergen-Pantens used a foliation made during restoration, but not visible in the facsimile. The leaves are folded sheets gathered into 21 quires of irregular size.5 It is considered to consist of two co-bound parts: the first part has the 18 unnumbered pages, the second the 220 numbered pages. The paper used was obtained in small batches over the years, possibly indication that the work was carried out periodically. The 17 watermarks found centre on two periods 1420-43 (median 1434) and 1443-57 (median 1452). The leaves making up fo.110-119 were probably slightly older, 1430/35.6 4 A facsimile in pdf-format is available from the KBR, made during the restoration of the manuscript. Elements glued on to pages are split on the scans. The frames in the pdf-file is noted in Appendix A, page overview. The foliations and paginations given in Bergen-Pantens GD are not always concordant, e.g. on p.809 they give different residuals. The review of the codicology is based on the papers by Christiane van den Bergen-Pantens. The watermarks were evaluated by Martin Wittek (Bergen-Pantens AG 238-239, GD 810n13). Any different interpretation is marked as such and based on examination of the manuscript and facsimiles. 5 Bergen-Pantens GD 810 mentions 1 unpaginated and 21 paginated quires, each of nominally 10 leaves or 5 folded sheets. Most quires were judged incomplete, and some have single leaves glued on to folded sheets. The quires are not specified in the papers, but constructed here from the information on watermarks. Examination of the photographs in the facsimile reveals further gaps (subdivisions), which are here integrated into 21 quires. The foliation and quire structure has been reconstructed from the papers, see Appendix B, structure. 6 Watermarks, quires, pagination, foliation, layout, artwork quality, blank, missing, supernumerary pages and segmentation are detailled in Appendix B, GOR structure. The pages with major layouts are colour-coded in Appendix A, page overview. Watermarks are listed in Appendix D. 3 The manuscript has two diverse parts: the first, GOR part 1, consist of the 10 leaves (fo.1-10) in quire I, which appears to have two subparts: fo.1-2 with ex-libris and a glued-on fragment from another armorial; and fo.3-10 with various written texts (treatise, names, blazons). The last page (fo.10v alias page 1) with painted arms has been assigned to the main division, GOR part 2.7 The painted arms in this part have been divided into 47 segments according to content, style and layout. Some segments cover more than one quire. Part 2 includes a short text element, a chronicle of the dukes of Brabant. There are 1627 numbered arms and a number of unnumbered items, mainly painted ex-libris and glued-on items.8 Except for items #7-143, which are in French blazon, all coats of arms are painted free-hand in water colour.9 A few appear to be later alterations (or additions). The arms are entered in various layouts. The majority has inclined shields and crested helmets and are placed in 2x2 (J) or 3x2 (K) layouts. Those items without crests are mostly placed upright in a 3x4 layout (C). There is also a short written treatise and a substantial number of names only and blazoned arms. Two scribes did most of the writing: hand A, which is similar to the scripts used in the priories of Rouge-Cloître and Groenendael near Bruxelles, Bethléem (Louvain) and in the ducal chancellery, is used for the legends, and hand B for the treatise in French (3r-4v). Several of the faded legends were later retouched in black ink. The principal artisan, painter A, did exquisite artwork, especially on the crests, with e.g. very realistic human faces. The style of helmets and the elaboration of mantling vary greatly within one segment and/or quire. The most common type of helmet is the tilting with a slightly pointed lower lip. There are variants with very pointed lips, and a few grilled helmets, both ‘normal’, protruding and squashed grilles on a tilting base. A few helmets are ‘golden’ and/or have collared kleinods (Schaumünze). The mantling varies from short plain cloths to elaborate leafy decorations.