inaccurate graphics

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Originally posted by Korath
One of the defining characteristics of Russian heraldry, to my understanding, is charges shown proper. Though the white-on-red certainly does look better to my eye.

definitely a feature of later russian heraldry, as shown in the blazon for georgia in the grand arms i posted above, but "proper" isn't mentioned for the seal. i think it may be too early in russia's tradition for that kind of thing, since her early blazons seem to be heavily influenced by the palette of lithuania's...

i think the real question is what is meant by the term "wild"; i don't think we should be worrying about the color of a wild horse because

The horse on this image has neither horseman, nor bridle. That's why the geraldists are called this image: "wild horse".

(taken from birger's post where he displayed the image)

beyond that, i suppose any guess is a good one

steph

 

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Well, in my (admittedly narrow) experience, brown is a very common color for wild horses, though I've also seen black and white ones.

The grey horses, however, seem very rare in wild herds; I've only seen them in tame-bred horses. (BTW wild horses are called "mustangs" in Western US, thus the car)

 

[Birger]

It seems that this arms dates back to 1659 according to this site:

http://www.geocities.com/romaniancoins/coattra.html

Quote from that site:
The heraldic shield was divided horizontally through the middle. Inside the upper half there was an emerging wing spread black aquila and inside the lower one seven donjons disposed four and three.

Latter, just like on the other two Romanian principality coats of arms, the main element became flanked by the astral bodies: a sun at right and a (waning) moon at left.

 

[Birger]

According to that site, this is how the Moldavia and Siebenbürgen arms should look like:

 

[Birger]

And the Wallachia arms something like this, haven't found a good enough pic to work on...
However it should only the "eagle" and the cross, not the helmet it is standing on.
I've e-mailed the webmaster about these arms and what flags Transylvania and Wallachia used.

 

[Birger]

About Wallachia's flag.
FOTW states the following

http://www.fotw.ca/flags/ro-wall.html#pri

Princely standards, XIV-XVIII c.

There are few documents which describe the ancient standards of Wallachia. It is known that Michael the Good(?) (~1593) used a yellow flag with a black raven standing on a green juniper branch, with a silver and gold cross in its beak.


Maybe like this(?):

(Except the golden cross...)

Anyway, I'll wait and see what the webmaster will say.

 

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the romanian websites i've been to have given the traditional arms of moldavia as a black auroch (ox or bull's head), golden star between the horns (seemingly six-pointed), silver cinquefoil (sp?) to the viewer's left, and a silver moon to the viewer's right (if you look at the coin posted, you'll see the moon pointed tips-out on the right, and the rose or cinquefoil (sp?) on the left - by "left" and "right" the text means the coin's, not ours )

from what i understand, the auroch was only golden maybe on the first romanian coat of arms, on the modern they have returned to the "traditional" colors...

steph

 

[Birger]

Originally posted by Iostephanos
the romanian websites i've been to have given the traditional arms of moldavia as a black auroch (ox or bull's head), golden star between the horns (seemingly six-pointed), silver cinquefoil (sp?) to the viewer's left, and a silver moon to the viewer's right (if you look at the coin posted, you'll see the moon pointed tips-out on the right, and the rose or cinquefoil (sp?) on the left - by "left" and "right" the text means the coin's, not ours )

from what i understand, the auroch was only golden maybe on the first romanian coat of arms, on the modern they have returned to the "traditional" colors...

steph

Ok, like this then.

 

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Originally posted by Birger Jarl

Ok, like this then

yep, i'm 95% percent sure (i figure out 5% because i'm due to make a mistake )

i'm secretly wondering if the original arms weren't just the auroch and star, but that has more bearing on later ck than early eu, since i haven't seen anything in print or on the web that implies that all three symbols weren't present in the middle and late periods as you have them there. (i see you had the same problem i did, when making the cinquefoil (sp? ) silver it doesn't look as much like one as when gold... stupid graphics! ah!)

great with the transylvania bit; that helps explain something i noticed when flipping through the romanian websites: they said that the quarter of the modern arms looking like regular old siebenburgen represented two other (districts? provinces? peoples?) as well as transylvania - since there was no additional symbols in the quarter, i think we can assume the sun and moon were really what they were talking about

steph

 

[Birger]

Originally posted by Iostephanos


yep, i'm 95% percent sure (i figure out 5% because i'm due to make a mistake )

i'm secretly wondering if the original arms weren't just the auroch and star, but that has more bearing on later ck than early eu, since i haven't seen anything in print or on the web that implies that all three symbols weren't present in the middle and late periods as you have them there. (i see you had the same problem i did, when making the cinquefoil (sp? ) silver it doesn't look as much like one as when gold... stupid graphics! ah!)

great with the transylvania bit; that helps explain something i noticed when flipping through the romanian websites: they said that the quarter of the modern arms looking like regular old siebenburgen represented two other (districts? provinces? peoples?) as well as transylvania - since there was no additional symbols in the quarter, i think we can assume the sun and moon were really what they were talking about

steph

I was also thinking about that since both Walachia and Transylvania added their sun and moon later on.

Btw, what about the red border in the Transylvania arms? My guess is that also was added later, there are other Austrian-Hungerian arms that have the same red border.

 

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Originally posted by Birger Jarl

Btw, what about the red border in the Transylvania arms? My guess is that also was added later, there are other Austrian-Hungerian arms that have the same red border.

do you mean a border as in a border around the shield, or do you mean the bar in the middle of siebenburgen's arms?

if you mean the first, i've only seen it in a pic once, and don't recall seeing it's blazon; my only guess so far is that it would be a non-essesential element (?)

 

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Originally posted by Languish

Do you have an example of a byzantine seal?

when i originally replied to languish, i posted the following:

nothing other than the text at heraldica.org stating that the seals were usually personal and iconographic in nature, depicting the cross, the virgin mary, etc. many familial arms of course portray the cross, but none so far depict mary, and only one depicts angels (the arms of the angeloi, go figure) most call for a variation on the eagle theme.

to this i wanted to add that the text in woodward's a treatise on heraldry, british and foreign asserts that there was a seal of a two-headed eagle, impressed in blue wax as per the imperial custom, and thus it appears on a letter from the emperor to the court of france

this seems to be corroborated by the text of a book of russian history i've quite forgotten the name of, stating that the seal was given as the dowry in the marriage of sophia palaiologou to ivan iii (as opposed to the countless other books that cited the marriage itself as the reason for ivan's adoption of the symbol)

stephanos

 

[Birger]

Transylvania

What I meant was the red bar in the middle of the shield, pardon my english.
In the Galicia arms, a red bar was added after it became a part of Austria-Hungary.

The info that I found here says nothing about a red bar.

The heraldic shield was divided horizontally through the middle. Inside the upper half there was an emerging wing spread black aquila and inside the lower one seven donjons disposed four and three.

So it might have looked like this.

Wallachia

I couldn't find a better pic, had to make one myself, again... Should we use something like this one or use a another "pose" of the vulture? Like is says here

After the second half of the XVIth century the vulture became to be represented more and more often in an ambiguous manner that left the possibility of two interpretations, raven or vulture either. The heraldic bird began to spread its wings also until reaching the completely stretched wings state known today.

 

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that's a great site, birger

okay, so the bar may have been added later - but the arms at the latest date from the 16th century according to the text; i think for the grand campaign we should consider using a somewhat fictional coat of arms of just the black eagle on blue, given this statement from the bottom of the same page:

The eagle had been present in the Transylvanian heraldry prior to establishing a coat of arms for the principality. Given that most of the Roman legions in Dacia had been stationed in the latter Transylvania, it's fairly reasonable to assume that actually the aquila was a living symbol and not a symbol arbitrarily just made up.

... but since most of the timeframe calls for the other, it could go either way

steph

p.s. the wallachia kicks

 

[Birger]

Glad you liked the Wallachian arms, it turned out ok I think. I'll just make some small adjustments.

I agree with you that a black eagle on blue would be the most appropriate arms for Transylvania, I guess we can make a flag like that as well.

What about Moldavia then? I think that we should use this shield:

And which one of these flags?

It says the following in FOTW:
For Moldavia the most important symbol has always been the wild ox head, which is still to be found on the flag of the new Moldavian republic (Moldova). In early times the red prevailed on other colours: on standards, the wild ox head appeared on the recto, while the verso represented St George killing the dragon. It seems that this standard was adopted by Bogdan I and mantained by Stephan the Great and sucessors.

 

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i'm hesitant to pick one form of moldavia over the other since we don't have an exact date as to when the later symbols were added, if that's how it happened...

as for the flag... flags of the world calls the two listed princely standards; does that mean they would have differed much from a state flag, if one even existed?

i suppose we could either make a banner of arms (meaning to use a black ox head) or, since there is a precedent of using a golden ox head, maybe a golden ox head with a star between the horns until we can become better informed

steph

 

[Birger]

Here's what Transylvania will look like.

I've also made a banner of arms for both Wallachia and Transylvania.

Btw, what about Tuscany, are we using the present shield or are
we going to use this?

 

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Originally posted by Birger Jarl
Here's what Transylvania will look like.

I've also made a banner of arms for both Wallachia and Transylvania.

Btw, what about Tuscany, are we using the present shield or are
we going to use this?

transylvania looks great

the medici augmentation was used from 1465 onward, so it's a matter of preference as to whether one wants the arms used closest to the year 1419, or those used for the greater period of time. also, the arms as you have them there are more than likely incorrect - you can follow the conversation korath and i had in the shields by stephanos thread starting from here

steph

p.s. "more than likely" incorrect, not absolutely; i'm leaving the choice of preference to you and korath, so i'd give him a pm since i don't know if he reads this thread very often

 

[Birger]

I made the Tuscany arms based on the info I found on Heraldique Europenne, haven't really done any research about the arms prior 1465.
A good start might be reading the thread you refered to.

EDIT: I see the arms should look like this instead.

 

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Tuscany was independent until the mid-18th century; the post-1465 arms are probably more appropriate.