Torsten Hiltmann & Miguel Metelo de Seixas, eds., Heraldry in Medieval and Early Modern State Rooms, pp.277-300, 2020
It is commonplace that princely armorial ensigns embodied dynastic continuity and rightful territ... more It is commonplace that princely armorial ensigns embodied dynastic continuity and rightful territorial possession. Either impressing elites in an exclusive palace setting or showered upon the masses by the ephemeral machinery of a festive spectacle, they are usually considered straightforward instruments of worldly domination. However, their iconography was often more complicated. The Spanish monarchy’s heraldic patrimony in particular consisted of various symbolic conventions, evoking a strenuous history of state formation and intertwined interests. Such a fluid and potentially conflicting merger of different constituents found even more intricate expression in the urban churches of Brabant and Flanders. Within these sacred confines, profane signs of century-old dynastic bonds interacted with a variety of communal markers, as well as with the attributes of supreme majesty. As the venue of significant dynastic rites, the church interior was temporarily transformed into a sanctum of Burgundian-Habsburg power, while retaining its multi-semantic guise. Yet, in times of royal contestation and civil war – upsetting the Low Countries between 1566 and 1598 − waves of iconoclasm, dissident regimes and a strong reassertion of Habsburg rule engulfed this rich legacy. The present contribution explores how both local (dissenting) stakeholders and the government actively exploited this armorial presence in sacred space to stress communal cohesion and to reset the limits of royal authority. They did so not by directly targeting the isolated sign, but by manipulating its connection to the sacred.
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Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION
Appropriating the Armorial Matter of State
Power between Visual Representation and Construction
Royal Heraldry and the Study of Political Symbolism
The Limits of Propagandist Idiom
Towards a Creative Paradigm
CHAPTER 1 - THE PROFANE SACRAMENT
The Heraldic Representation of Monarchy
Appropriating Heraldic Imagery in the Puebla Case (1649-51)
A Message or a Means to Avert Crisis?
Royal Heraldry as Dynastic Ascendancy
Upholding the Body Politic
Conclusion
CHAPTER 2 - THE ARMORIAL SHAPE OF THE EARLY MODERN STATE
A Design of Dynasty: The French Ideal of Integration (1349-1536)
A Crown for a Dauphin: Bourbon Heraldry and the Succession (1601-61)
A Burgundian Prelude (1361-1477)
(Re)assembling Rule: Habsburg Flexibility (1475-1556)
The Doctrine of Diversity (1556-1650)
Conclusion
CHAPTER 3 - OF MIRACLES AND MEN
Part I – A Sacred Antidote to Discord
The Gift of God: Interpreting the Fleurs de Lis
The Conqueror’s Blood: Heraldic Lore in Iberia
Negotiating the Realm: Philip II’s Journey (1592) and the Local Foundation of Rule
The Mystique of Eagles and Lions (15th-16th Centuries)
Part II - The Living Image of Greatness
Under the Sign of the Cross 238
A Phoenix Arises: Caramuel’s Declaracion Mystica de las Armas (1636) and Spanish Precedence
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4 - CREATING KINSHIP, SHARING KINGSHIP
Part I – The Cycle of Concession
The Ebb and Flow of Heraldic Liberality in France
‘Dividing the Empire’? Tudor and Habsburg Honorary Augmentations
Part II – Granting Empowerment
Aristocratic Strategies versus Royal Coercion
The Absence of Prohibition in France
Part III – The Game of Thrones
Mary Stuart and the Usurpation of the English Royal Arms (1559-61)
Quartering Kingdoms
Touched in Her Honour
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5 - HERALDOCLASM BETWEEN ABROGATION AND ASSASSINATION
Part I – Civil War in France
The Religious Origins of Profane Desecration?
A Symbolic Regicide (1588-9)
Heraldic Confusion and Recovery in France (1589-1600)
Part II – Symbolic Redefinition in the Dutch Revolt
Armorial Know-How and the Political Process (1566-79)
The ‘Act of Abjuration’: Iconoclasm or Correction? (1581-2)
Styling a Duke, Summoning a King (1581-3)
A Lasting Legacy
Conclusion
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION
Appropriating the Armorial Matter of State
Power between Visual Representation and Construction
Royal Heraldry and the Study of Political Symbolism
The Limits of Propagandist Idiom
Towards a Creative Paradigm
CHAPTER 1 - THE PROFANE SACRAMENT
The Heraldic Representation of Monarchy
Appropriating Heraldic Imagery in the Puebla Case (1649-51)
A Message or a Means to Avert Crisis?
Royal Heraldry as Dynastic Ascendancy
Upholding the Body Politic
Conclusion
CHAPTER 2 - THE ARMORIAL SHAPE OF THE EARLY MODERN STATE
A Design of Dynasty: The French Ideal of Integration (1349-1536)
A Crown for a Dauphin: Bourbon Heraldry and the Succession (1601-61)
A Burgundian Prelude (1361-1477)
(Re)assembling Rule: Habsburg Flexibility (1475-1556)
The Doctrine of Diversity (1556-1650)
Conclusion
CHAPTER 3 - OF MIRACLES AND MEN
Part I – A Sacred Antidote to Discord
The Gift of God: Interpreting the Fleurs de Lis
The Conqueror’s Blood: Heraldic Lore in Iberia
Negotiating the Realm: Philip II’s Journey (1592) and the Local Foundation of Rule
The Mystique of Eagles and Lions (15th-16th Centuries)
Part II - The Living Image of Greatness
Under the Sign of the Cross 238
A Phoenix Arises: Caramuel’s Declaracion Mystica de las Armas (1636) and Spanish Precedence
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4 - CREATING KINSHIP, SHARING KINGSHIP
Part I – The Cycle of Concession
The Ebb and Flow of Heraldic Liberality in France
‘Dividing the Empire’? Tudor and Habsburg Honorary Augmentations
Part II – Granting Empowerment
Aristocratic Strategies versus Royal Coercion
The Absence of Prohibition in France
Part III – The Game of Thrones
Mary Stuart and the Usurpation of the English Royal Arms (1559-61)
Quartering Kingdoms
Touched in Her Honour
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5 - HERALDOCLASM BETWEEN ABROGATION AND ASSASSINATION
Part I – Civil War in France
The Religious Origins of Profane Desecration?
A Symbolic Regicide (1588-9)
Heraldic Confusion and Recovery in France (1589-1600)
Part II – Symbolic Redefinition in the Dutch Revolt
Armorial Know-How and the Political Process (1566-79)
The ‘Act of Abjuration’: Iconoclasm or Correction? (1581-2)
Styling a Duke, Summoning a King (1581-3)
A Lasting Legacy
Conclusion
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Yet, the theme far from petrified in the early modern period. A prolific interaction between various traditions enabled the image to adapt to specific political ambitions. Especially the rulers of a unified Iberian Peninsula reworked its iconographic attributes to endorse their claims on global power. The Catholic Kings experimented with their own Christianized version, the single headed eagle of St John the Evangelist. In the reign of their grandson, Emperor Charles V, more naturalistic renditions of the eagle reappeared to express the spectacular expansion of the Spanish Monarchy. As such it sought to construe an imagery that kept pace with the burgeoning overseas empire. Drawing once again on the military and religious significance attached to the eagle in Roman times, it stood for the growing belief that the House of Habsburg was destined to universal monarchy. At the same time the eagle was also to be found in Aztec lore, inspiring a curious syncretism that played on the construct of the so-called imperial donation of Montezuma. Through such intercultural associations, the motive retained its credibility in the context of new ideologies of imperialism formulated from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards. The abdication and partition of 1555 deprived the Spanish Monarchy of the use of the heraldic double headed eagle. Rather than renouncing the symbol altogether, a number of apologetic tracts maintained the Monarchy’s claim to the imperial eagle. Defining it as the “living image of the Spanish Monarchy” and the personification of royal authority, it continued to express the conquest of the Indies and the propagation of Christianity. In doing so, the eagle made a lasting impact on the symbolism of the continent.
In this paper, I would like to draw attention to the political strategies of affinity embedded in the baptism festivities of the Valois dukes of Burgundy and their early Habsburg successors. Who were chosen to act as the main participants? And how does one have to evaluate the ritual enactment of such closeness? I shall argue that the Habsburgs applied the ritual, with its various levels of intimacy, to stage a connection with their Burgundian forebears. Active participation didn’t mark physical proximity to a temporary ruler, but enforced a privileged bond of (spiritual) kinship with the dynasty as a whole. In this way, old ‘Burgundian’ aristocrats, as well as ‘new men’ became successfully entrenched in the idea of an uninterrupted, natural dynasty, transcending the controversial transition towards another ruling family. Therefore, the transfer of the ceremony to Spain in 1527 deprived the Netherlands of a crucial instrument to create (noble) affinity towards the dynasty. An ‘end of access’ which ultimately proved detrimental for the fragile unity of the carefully constructed state.
Their polysemic nature turned devices into dynamic signs who were subjected to a continuous process of appropriation and reinterpretation. The publication of a ruler’s image, be it a portrait or more abstract sign of authority, made it perceptible to an active audience ready to interpret, remodel and resignify. While the traditional historiography commented on regal representations as one-way political propaganda, recent research has started to consider acts of symbolic communication as processes wherein particular signs were merged with other (textual) signifiers and iconographic elements. This process of appropriation turned Charles’ device into a dynamic symbol serving the agenda of various groups in society, rather than the static representation of rulership. In this manner, innovative concepts were created, though some basic associations – as ‘expansion’ and ‘emulation’ in the case of the columnar device for instance – remained more or less stable. The possibility to detach from the individual connotation ensured that it remained a potent iconographic theme throughout the early modern period. This contribution, focusing on the well-known device of Charles V, proposes an approach to such processes that transcends the confines of the visual, material, literary and performative. It centers around two sets of questions that can provide a methodological precept for further research: 1) How was the imagery appropriated? That is, the exposure of the mechanisms behind acts of resignification (varying artistic depictions and bricolage, visual transformations and combinations, relationship between word and image etc.). 2) What were the contextual circumstances for appropriation? When and why did shifting emphasises and transformations take place?
In particular, this paper explores three interpretative traditions. The first being the usage of the symbol in the political field, after Charles V’s death. Though a strict personal sign not intended to pass from one family member to the other, associations with the columns and the Plus Ultra-motto frequently turned up in Habsburg imagery. More striking is the very subtle use of the columns by other European monarchs, especially to endorse their own imperial ambitions. Secondly, I take a look at how the dynamic of the symbol made it possible to appropriate outside the realm of dynastic policy. This was the case for one of the emblems in the Imago Primi Saeculi, a volume published in 1640 by the Provincia Flandria-Belgica of the Jesuits to celebrate the centenary of the society. Another different context, which shall serve as my third and final example, is the notion of (scientific) progress which became gradually associated with the device in the second half of the sixteenth century. It was this trajectory that ultimately was appropriated by the world of early modern science to express its aspirations and achievements. These three discourses were not completely separated developments. On the contrary, the iconographic display shared a common assumption that was deeply rooted in early modern thinking. Transgressing traditional boundaries, whether it be political, religious or scientific, ultimately aimed at a deeper understanding of the divine truth and order. All discussed instances, however, show us how little control rulers actually had over the application and destiny of their own representations. New emblematic imagery that thrived from the late fifteenth-century onwards, injected the traditional representational forms with a new dynamic and opened up new interpretative possibilities.
Review of: Nils Bock, Die Herolde im römisch-deutschen Reich. Studie zur adligen Kommunikation im späten Mittelalter (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2015).
Early modern heraldry was far from a nostalgic remnant from a feudal past. From the Reformation to the French Revolution, aspiring men seized on these signs to position themselves in a changing society, imbuing heraldic tradition with fresh meaning. Whereas post-medieval developments are all too often described in terms of decadence and stifling formality, recent studies rightly stress the dynamic capacity of bearing arms.
Heraldic Hierarchies aims to correct former misconceptions. Contributing authors rethink the influence of shifting notions of nobility on armorial display and expand this topic to heraldry’s share in shaping and contesting status. Moreover, addressing a common thread, the volume explores how emerging states turned the heraldic experience into an instrument of power and policy. Contributing to debates on social and noble identity, Heraldic Hierarchies uncovers a vital and surprising aspect of the pre-modern hierarchical world.
Contributors: Richard Cust (University of Birmingham), Dominique Delgrange (Lille), Luc Duerloo (University of Antwerp), Joseph McMillan (Alexandria VA), Camille Pollet (Université de Nantes), Antoine Robin (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Simon Rousselot (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Clément Savary (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Hamish Scott (Jesus College, Oxford), Steven Thiry (University of Antwerp), José Manuel Valle Porras (Universidad de Córdoba), Nicolas Vernot (Université de Cergy-Pontoise)
advanced dynastic claims. They became the stuff of legends, as well as the cause of fierce disputes. But
when did heraldic adaptation occur? Why was a disrespectful treatment damaging to the political fabric?
By comparing armorial appropriation in the French and Spanish monarchies, Steven Thiry challenges the
dominant view of princely image control. Eagles, lilies and lions not only visualized political virtues and vices.
Their visual and material dimension imbued them with an agency of their own. Matter(s) of State offers a new
insight into the symbolic mindset of the political process. Mystical exaltation, subversive adaptation, and even violent »heraldic« iconoclasm appear as significant means of debating and even questioning rule.