INTRODUCTION

last update 31.01.2012 (see below)

Welcome to Armorial.dk, regrettably there is almost no artwork on this website. Instead it is the intention to provide a survey of medieval armorials, the surviving manuscripts and to present selected unpublished or hard-to-get armorials.

The material presented is a part of my ongoing study of medieval armorials a.k.a. rolls of arms.  It may be divided into five parts:

• an inventory of armorials and manuscripts, where the content is mainly medieval;
• a standard system of sigla or abbreviations of the armorials;
• an ordinary of the coats of arms in medieval armorials;
• identification of the individual items (arms) with appropriate documentation;
• comparison of armorials in order to establish their relations and the editorial approach and knowledge;

Much of the material was published on CD-ROM in:

Steen Clemmensen, Ordinary of Medieval Armorials, Heraldiske Studier 5, Societas Heraldica Scandinavica, 2006.

The Ordinary is reviewed in the similarly named section, and the inventories and the table of siglas may be freely downloaded as pdf-files in the section Survey.  For this Adobe Acrobat vs. 6.0 or later is needed.

Individual armorials will (in time) be made available in either individual sections or grouped according to the region of their manufacture.  This region might correspond to the region, where the people, whose arms are painted or blazoned, lived in former times, but many armorials, especially those made in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are composite works, incorporating arms from several countries.

The 'french' armorials include manuscripts from both France and modern Belgium and the Netherlands.

Lastly, there are links to websites with armorials, several in full facsimile or redrawn.

Comments and questions are most welcome. Please remove the blank in the mail address.

In preparation:

• The Donaueschingen, Jörg Rugen and other german armorials.
• The french Urfé, and its clones: LeBlancq, Prinseault, Charolais and Sicile.
• Corrections and amendments to the armorials below.

Added january 2012:

• Sankt Gallen-Haggenberg.
• The Four of each Estate . Quaternionen der Reichsverfassung.

Added november 2011:

• Grünenberg - update, 1) corrections and amendments, 2) concordance with the Stillfried facsimile of 1875, edition Popoff.

Added june 2011:

• The Livro de arautos, a portuguese herald's collection of arms from Constance 1416.

Added march 2011:

• The arms of Montfort-l'Amaury.
• Ulrich Richental's Chronicle of the Council of Constance 1414-1418.

Added december 2010:

• Armorial casket from Quedlinburg, 1209.
• Crowning of Otto IV as king of the Romans, in Aachen 1189.
• Tournament in Bruges, 1393 flemish nobles.

Added june 2010:

• Stuttgarter Wappenbuch, 2 parts: c.1440, 1448.

Added december 2009:

• Conrad Grünenberg's Wappenbuch, finished 1483.
• The Nine Worthies and other Ternionen - a survey.

Added september 2009:

• Wappenrolle von Zürich, southern germans c.1345.
• Wappenfries im Haus zum Loch, southern germans 1306.

Added august 2009:

• The coats-of arms and crests in the Grosse Heidelberger (Manesse) and Weingartner Liederhandschriften.
• Willement Roll of Arms, of english nobles and gentry in the reign of Richard II, r.1377-99.
• William Jenyns' Ordinary, of english nobles and gentry in the reign of Edward II, r.1327-1377.

Added february 2008:

• An armorial of the Army of invasion of Flanders 1297: Chifflet-Prinet alias Ost-de-Flandre
• Tournament at Chauvency 1285, a poem by Jacques Bretel with coats-of-arms
• Tournament at Saint Omer 1377 in segment 46 of the Armorial d'Urfé
• The heraldry of the Trie family of France
  
  

• English section of Armorial d'Urfé, c.1380
• Rouen roll of arms, c.1410
• Armorials as evidence of medieval coats of arms
  
  

• Armorial de la Paix d'Arras or Peace at Arras, c.1380
• Ordinary of Medieval Armorials (Database revised 2010)
• Survey and Sigla of Medieval Armorials