[ANSTHRLD] Blazon and conflict help (Wolf head and mitre)

Tim McDaniel tmcd at panix.com
Wed Jun 1 11:57:39 PDT 2011


On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Donnchadh Beag mac Griogair
<donnchadh at cornelius.norman.ok.us> wrote:
> I have a sketch of a device at the following website that I could
> use assistance with.
>
> http://picasaweb.google.com/112940490043492965948/Heraldry#5613304391303301874

My first reaction was that it was a cartoon from the 1500s or 1600s, a
Calvinist or Presbyterian lampooning bishops.  While it's offensive, I
don't think it's returnably so, though.

On Wed, 1 Jun 2011, Kazimierz Z³owieszczy <kazoflr at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/lessons/lesson16.html,
> the Mitre is a "presumptuous" charge.

That's not rules or precedent, and neither is the Pic Dic, cited by
another.  A search via http://www.morsulus.org/ shows no precedent on
mitres per se.  Mind you, I would bet against it passing, unless
someone shows use of mitres by non-bishops in period.

I disagree with Adelaide: with a hat of the same visual weight as the
head it's on, I consider it co-primary.

> So, unless something has changed, if the submitter is not a Bishop,
> Cardinal, Pope, or holds another station permitted to display a
> Mitre in their heraldic display,

The pope is a bishop.  To be precise,
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10404a.htm>, from 1910ish, says "The
right to wear the mitre belongs by law only to the pope, the
cardinals, and the bishops. Others require for its use a special papal
privilege. This privilege is possessed, for example, by numerous
abbots, the dignitaries of many cathedral chapters, and by certain
prelates of the papal Curia, but, as a rule, the right is more or less
limited: for instance, such prelates can only use a simple mitre of
white linen, unless the contrary is expressly granted them. " It is
SCA practice, but perhaps not real-world practice, that some charges
depicting a real-world item are restricted to people who are entitled
to bear the corresponding real-world item itself.

But I notice below in the article, "At times also secular princes were
granted permission to wear the mitre as a mark of distinction; for
example, Duke Wratislaw of Bohemia received this privilege from Pope
Alexander II, and Peter of Aragon from Innocent III. The right also
belonged to the German emperor."

Also, "As regards shape, there is such difference between the mitre of
the eleventh century and that of the twentieth that it is difficult to
recognize the same ornamental head-covering in the two." followed by a
discussion of its evolution.  I think the form depicted is from the
16th C or later.

Danyll de Lincoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com


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