Das Uffenbachsche Wappenbuch Edited and introduced by Steen Clemmensen from Hamburg, Staatsbibliothek Ms. in scrinio 90 b The Uffenbach armorial U F F Contents: 1. Introduction and summary 2 2. Manuscript 4 3. Imaginary arms & miniatures 6 4. Foreigners 9 5. German nobles 12 6. Date, relations and reconstruction 15 App. 1 segments 19 App. 2 concordance with armorial Miltenberg (UFF – MIL) 20 App. 3 concordance with armorial Miltenberg (MIL – UFF) 25 App. 4 members of the Bodensee group 28 App. 5 a view of the facsimile 30 Das Uffenbachsche Wappenbuch 33 Bibliography 96 Ordinary of arms 106 Name index 114 © 2012, Steen Clemmensen, Farum, Denmark, www.armorial.dk 2 1. Introduction and summary The armorial named as the Uffenbach after one of its owners is in several ways the odd man out among the late medieval armorials in the Bodensee group – all painted in southern Germany during the last half of the 15th century. The sheets were painted on one side only; it is devoid of achievements, i.e. there are no crests in it. The armorial was probably painted in Strasbourg west of the Rhine rather than on the Bodensee shore to the east. It might be generations older than the others. It was probably kept as a bundle of loose leaves until quite late, and the individual sheets were moved around during at least two restorations, so that today we can expect nothing even approaching the original order. Most of the items were easily identified and they show a considerable overlap with the other members of the group for both imaginary arms and the noble families. In fact, large parts of the Uffenbach show a marked concordance with one late member of the group, the Miltenberg (MIL), as first noted by Jean-Claude Loutsch, the editor of MIL. Scholars have not agreed on the dating. The earliest dates proposed were at the end of the 14th century as given by the Uffenbach catalogue of 1730 and noted on the back of the 19th century binding. Most of the modern authorities have agreed on this, with one changing his mind to c.1440. Few have supported their proposed dating with serious arguments. The best argued proposal was that of Werner Paravicini for it to have been painted between 1390 and 1410. Unfortunately, the present evaluation can add little to the question of dating. Most of the dateable items can best be related to people active between 1350 and 1395, but as the armorial is obviously not a primary collation and made in a workshop for a non-professional customer, little can be inferred from this. The elements of style might as well have been used at the beginning as during the first half of the 15th century. The evidence from the Strasbourg watermarks is too unspecific and confusing to be used for any precise dating. The remaining enigma must be left to the reader. Was the Uffenbach a very early example of the incorporation of imaginary arms and a primary source and inspiration for the members of the Bodensee group of armorials, or simply an early and differently styled member? 3 2. The manuscript The armorial Uffenbach (UFF) or Das Uffenbachsche Wappenbuch, acquired 1747 by the Hamburger Stadbibliotek, now Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, as Cod. 90b in scrinio, has been described several times, e.g. by Paul H. Trummer in 1914, by Berchem, Galbreath & Hupp (BGH #14), by Tilo Brandis in the 1972 catalogue of the Codices in scrinio (Brandis CH 148-151), and in the introduction to the facsimile publication of 1990 (Paravicini UFF 8-27). Elements not deducible from the facsimile (App.5) are based on the descriptions of Brandis and Paravicini. The Paravicini introduction includes the identification or proper naming of most items in the name index (Paravicini UFF 38-59), but without further comments or references. 2.1 Codicology The manuscript is highly restored, incomplete and deorganised. It is presently made up of 88 folio size paper sheets (275 x 205 mm), each made up of two sheets glued together, i.e. 176 surviving individual sheets. Depending on the criteria used, it now has 587 coats-of-arms (no crests) and 5 miniatures (Brandis CH 148) or 593 numbered items and 3 unnumbered miniatures (present total), including later additions. As noted by Paravicini UFF 9, several sheets are now missing. The paper has four different watermarks according to Brandis: A+B) arms of Strasbourg in two variants, neither reference nor description; C) a crescent, somewhat similar to the Briquet nos.5191- 5200 (Strasbourg, c.1390-1440); D) crescent & star, also somewhat similar to Briquet nos.5345- 5350 (France, 1421-1436). Brandis did not mention the distribution of watermarks. Paravicini reexamined the watermarks as well as possible and found the Strasbourger arms (A, B) the most common with 29 identifiable occurrences from 7r to 88v. The major problem with this is that the earliest known paper mill in Strasbourg only began operations in 1445 (Paravicini UFF 22n63), though paper samples with variants of the Strasbourg arms & crosier are known from 1408 (Heitz no.129) and 1421-1425 (Heitz no.130f, Briquet no.1002). Without a closer description it is impossible to determine the date of the paper used. Squarish variants of shield with a bend across are noted from 1313 to 1543 (Briquet 973 and 978). The crescent type-C (also Heitz no.31) is of a type found in France and western Schweiz in a broad interval 1367-1430, and the type was noted on ff.2r and 13v (Paravicini UFF 22), but the type is also noted later, e.g. in Basel 1442 (Briquet 5201), and in other places as late as 1580 (Briquet 5191-5213). The crescent & star type-D (also Heitz no.140, in 1411) was only noted on fo.49r, but might possibly be on ff. 50v and 61v. In addition Paravicini found a crescent & cross (no Briquet reference given) on fo.36v. The high-quality drawings of the coats-of-arms in ink and watercolours (unpainted for argent) were painted on one side only, mostly with four arms per page (2x2) on a field ruled in ink and with legends in alsatian written in a bastarda script as used along the upper Rhine. During the 15th century they were probably unbound, the sheets unnumbered and unrelated to the present 'foliation' in recto and verso 'pages'. Even before the first restoration and binding in the 16th century, some pages were reinforced by strips of paper or parchment, some with illegible writing. During this restoration the sheets were glued together with paper strips keeping the blank (verso) pages inside and paginated 1-181 in arab ciphers on the outside top corner without any consideration for an orderly sequence. 4 As the paper strips deteriorated and some sheets were lost, a second restoration became necessary during the 19th century. The surviving sheets were separated, reglued together, foliated consecutively in pencil, cut with some loss of legends and pagination (inexpertly corrected), and rebound in leather with the back title: Armorum gentilitiorum collectio c. fin. Saec. XIV. The older pagination (as corrected) and later foliation indicate a loss of sheets with 1-41 (present 1v-21v), 50-160 (22r-77r), 163-165/168-169 (77v-80v), 166-181 (81r-88v), the numbers 168, 169 being doubled. As the original order is severely disrupted, and without supplementary evidence, only the ultra short 4-item page sequence can be trusted. 2.2 Content For the purpose of this edition, the armorial was broken up into 19 segments and 2 residuals (App. 1). Most of these correspond to marches d'armes as conventionally used. Pages and items were assigned to the segments on a geographical basis (see chapter 6). Only 5 % of the the coats-of-arms were composite, mostly quartered. The use of headings was irregular and does not correspond to the segments used here. Several groupings lack headings – and this is not likely to be due to any loss of pages. Some 17 % of the items are pure fantasy, the product of a fertile imagination and a culture that inferred that any person of importance would be armigerous – even extending to characters from the Bible and popular literature. The items in this armorial might well be the oldest surviving major selection, though the Zurich armorial of c.1345 contains a few arms of imaginary realms, as do the Wijnbergen of 1285 and a few english armorials from 1275-1300. 21 % are foreigners, the majority of these being italian, french or spanish with 20 english including some names of fame active during the Hundred Years War, and a few scandinavians. Apart from 6 unfinished items with names only and a dozen later additions on formerly blank pages nearly two thirds belong to titled nobles from the Holy Roman Reich, most from the south, but with sizeable groups from the north-west and north-east and some 50 from the eastern borders covering Poland, Silesia, Bohemia and Hungary. 5 3. Imaginary arms and miniatures. The Three Magi [317, 319-320] are the only part present of the two major groupings of imaginary arms, Quaternionen and Ternionen, commonly found in late-medieval german armorials. The first is easily explained away if the UFF was made around 1400, as the fictitious pillars of the Reich were not yet in commmon use (Schubert Q, Clemmensen Q). That neither the Nine Worthies nor other members of the Ternionen (best three, Wyss NH, Clemmensen T) are included in this armorial is more surprising as the Worthies were known in both France and southern Germany by that date.