ANST - Re: Abreviations: was protocol

Timothy A. McDaniel tmcd at crl.com
Thu May 28 21:54:05 PDT 1998


On Thu, 28 May 1998, Michael Richardson <mike0001 at gte.net>
wrote:
> This brings to mind a question, what's the difference
> between an Award of Arms and a Patent of Arms?

Summary: In the SCA, Award / Grant / Patent of arms are ways
to tag awards in rough relation to precedence and respect.
Each award conveys one of those, or none if it's
non-armigerous.

In reality -- that is, outside the SCA -- there is no
difference, or rather they're as unrelated as apples and
blue.  Letters patent are open letters "to whom it may
concern"; letters close are addressed to a person.
Therefore, any formal public letter (as I understand it) is
a letter patent.  You're granted and awarded arms in letters
patent.

In the SCA, an award may carry an Award of Arms, a Grant of
Arms, a Patent of Arms, or none of the above.  Bare AoAs and
GoAs may also be granted.  Tho Ansteorra rarely gives the
latter, bare AoAs are very common.  The precedence ranking
is usually

   none < AoA < GoA < PoA

... except that that's not strict at the top.  For example,
in Ansteorra, ex-royals (viscounties / counties / duchies)
are non-armigerous, yet they outrank landed barons, (grant
level).  Landed barons are just above peerages (Laurels /
Pelicans / Chivalry), which are patent-bearing.  Peers are
just above court barons (that is, the non-landed nobles),
which are back to grant-level.

In general, the above relations are true.

There can be subdivisions within each level.  For example,
in Ansteorra, there are several levels within the
non-armigerous awards, within the AoA-level awards, and
within the grant-level awards.  Ansteorra currently has 24
levels of precedence.

(Mind you, the prestige accorded an award does not
necessarily equal precedence.  For example, "Lion of
Ansteorra, Defender of the Dream" is non-armigerous.  It is
given at most once per reign to true exemplars, so in terms
of respect it pretty much outranks a peerage.)

Precedence rankings differ between kingdoms.  My liege
lady's husband and I outrank each other.  In the Middle,
where he lives, I outrank him (grants there are for
ex-kingdom officers and rank high).  In Ansteorra, where I
live, he outranks me (he has a court barony, which is just
below a peerage here).

Heralic complication:

The crown does not actually award you a coat of arms --
"henceforth, you shall bear 'Lozengy gules and vair, semy of
griffins counterchanged'".  You get the nominal right to
have arms.  In actuality, anyone can carry around a shield,
banner, or whatever with something that looks like a coat of
arms on it.  If you don't have at least an AoA, it gets
called a "device".  When you get an AoA or above, it's
instantly transsubstantiated into being called "arms"
without changing its appearance in the slightest.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com; 
if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com is my work address.

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