Reel Heraldry: Anne of the Thousand Days, Part 2

Today, we're going to look at some of the Royal badges that can be seen in the movie Anne of the Thousand Days.

And unlike the line from a different movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which goes:

"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

In Anne of the Thousand Days, we not only get shown badges, but they are (unlike the Royal arms on the tapestry from last time and in the first picture below) done correctly!

First off, if you look closely to the side of the right-hand page erecting the large tapestry we complained about last time, you will see the crowned portcullis badge, which King Henry VIII inherited from his grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Other Royal badges appear in the movie as well. For example, the crowned Tudor rose of the Tudors and the crowned pomegranate, a Spanish badge introduced into England as a Royal badge when Katherine of Aragon married Prince Arthur, "much displayed under Henry VIII until the dissolution of his marriage with Catherine." (Heraldic Badges in England and Wales, II.1. Royal Badges, by Michael Powell Siddons, page 197.)

Here's a closer look at these two badges behind Richard Burton portraying King Henry VIII.

The badge of a crowned Tudor rose could take any one of several different forms. The most common is a red rose charged with a white rose, but as you can see on the breast of this guardsman, it could also take the form of A rose quarterly gules and argent seeded and crowned or.

Next time, more heraldry from this classic movie!

Reel Heraldry: Anne of the Thousand Days, Part 1

As I have said before many times, and as recently as my last post before this one, "You can find heraldry everywhere!" And "everywhere" would include right in your own living room, sitting on your recliner, watching TV.

I recently had the opportunity to rewatch the old movie Anne of the Thousand Days, starring Richard Burton as King Henry VIII, Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn, Irene Papas as Queen Katherine of Aragon, and Anthony Quayle as Cardinal Wolsey.

Unsurprisingly, at least to me, there was a lot of heraldry in the movie: some excellent, some okay, and some that made me go, "That's not right."

So today and through the next several posts here, we're going to look at a bunch of that heraldry and talk about, as they say, "the good, the bad, and the ugly."

To begin:

King Henry VIII's heraldry shows up a lot in the movie. As only a sampling:

But then we have this, well, I hesitate to call it an abomination, but it certainly isn't the arms of Henry VIII or any other English king. And this despite the fact that they give it pride of place early in the movie!

Admittedly, it's a very nice tapestry being hung by two pages, and they did get parts of the central coat of arms correct: those are the lion rampant guardant and dragon supporters (thought the dragon should be gules, or red, as you can see in the first and third photographs above); that is Dieu et mon droit [God and my will] on the motto scroll; and that is a Tudor crown above the achievement.

But whose arms are those? Quarterly: 1 and 4, Gules three fleurs-de-lys or; 2 and 3, Azure three lions passant guardant in pale or. They've reversed the tinctures of the quarters! The first and fourth quarters should be France, with a blue field; and the second and third quarters should be England, with a red field! It looks like a real tapestry, with even some Royal badges on it, so I'm guessing someone spent a lot of money to have it made. It's just a shame that they couldn't get the proper colors in the quarters of the shield.

Next time, some more Royal badges to be seen in the movie!

Once Again, Proof That You Can Find Heraldry Everywhere!

So there I was, just sitting in my living room, watching one of my favorite reality TV shows, House Hunters International.* I like watching the show because I often get to see places I've not seen before, at least not in person, and occasionally I get to see someplace that I have visited before, and it's fun to for any buildings or streets that I have seen (or walked on) myself.

Anyway, I was sittiing there, just minding my own business, while a couple was looking for a place to live in Poggio Bustone in central Italy.

And as they were walking the streets of the town, a carved shield on a wall caught my eye. It only showed for a second or two, so of course I had to rewind to get a better look.

And here's an enlarged picture of the arms.

A quick search (I mean, there are a lot of clues on the shield, so it didn't take much research) determined that these are, as I - and no doubt you - suspected, the arms of the town of Poggio Bustone, Italia.

And here, from the Heraldry of the World website, is a color version of those arms:

Anyway, I thought that this was something kind of cool to run across while just sitting in my living room not looking for heraldry at all. And there it was! Proof positive once again demonstrating my old saying that, "You can find heraldry everywhere!"

* Yes, I am fully aware that the show is scripted. The people featured on it have already selected the place they want to live sometime before and are just going through the motions of having to choose between three different places. That's okay; as I said above, that's not why I watch the show. 

It's June 10, International Heraldry Day!

Today is June 10, and once again, it is International Heraldry Day!

Once again, it is International Heraldry Day, and this drawing remains one of my favorite depictions of my arms (along with that of my late wife Jo's), done by the late UN diplomat and heraldic artist Sunil Saigal.

Jo's arms are blazoned "Argent semy of sexfoils purpure." Why, you ask? Because, she said, she always wanted to have sex on her shield. Bah-dum-dum, cymbal crash. She had a weird sense of humor. It was just one of the things that helped us to get along so very well.

The Arms of a Bishop and Coadjutor Bishop

For our next, and final, stop in Passau, Germany, we find this armorial display of four shields dated 1525. (As always, you can click on the image below to see the full-size photograph in greater detail.)

At the top we have what I bellieve to be the crest of Wiguleus Fröschl von Marzoll, Bishop of Passau 1500-1517, placed on a shield. Issuant from a coronet, a dexter cubit arm gules the hand closed around stone proper. However, other depictions of the crest I have seen do not have the coronet, so my identification here could be incorrect.

The shield on the left in the center is badly worn on the outside, but it looks like the arms of Ernst von Bayern, Coadjutor Bishop* of Passau, 1517, Administrator of Passau, 1517-1540, Administrator of Salzburg, 1540-1554. His arms are: Quarterly: 1 and 4, Argent a lion rampant gules; 2, Sable a lion rampant or crowned gules; and 4, Lozengy bendwise azure and argent. (At least one old armorial substitutes wolf from the arms of the City of Passau for the lions in the first and fouth quarters.)

The shield on the right in the center is very badly worn, to the point of unidentifiability, but might be the arms of the City of Passau, Argent a wolf rampant gules.

And finally, the shield at the bottom is the arms of Wiguleus Fröschl von Marzoll, Bishop of Passau. One old armorial colors these arms as: Quarterly: 1 and 4, Gules a lion with the face of a tusked man rampant argent (Pachhamer); 2 and 3, Or a frog tergiant vert (Fröschl von Marzoll).

The colors of the second and third quarters from that old armorial are incorrect. Rietstap's Armorial Général blazons the Fröschl von Marzoll arms (translated into English) as Sable a frog tergiant or.

The arms are canting. The family name is derived from "fröschl," which means "little frog" in Bavarian dialect.

Albeit somewhat worn, and even a little confusing in places, it is still an interesting display of heraldry!



* A coadjutor is a person appointed to assist another in their duties. The term is most commonly used in religious and historical contexts to refer to a bishop or archbishop appointed to assist a diocesan bishop with the right to automatically succeed them upon their retirement or death.

The Complex Armorial Displays of a Prince-Bishop

At our next stop in Passau, Germany, we find two displays of a very complex armory: the arms of Johann Philipp von Lamberg (1651-1712), Prince-Bishop of Passau. (Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_von_Lamberg). He was also a cardinal of the church, but the red galero of a cardinal does not appear in either of these displays.

First, we have this stone-carved rendition of his arms on a railing (as always, you should click on the image to go to the full-size photograph to see these arms in greater detail):

These arms appear in Rietstap's Armorial Général, blazoned:

Rietstap: Lamberg d’Amerang – Aut. (Comtes, 1636; princes, 1707). Ec: aux 1 et 4 parti: a. fascé d’ar. et d’azur de quatre pièces; b. de gu. plein (Lamberg); aux 2 et 3 d’or à un chien braque ramp. de sa., langue de gu., coll. et bouclé d’or (Pottwein ou Podwein). Sur le tout de gu. à deux lévriers affr. d’arg., coll. d’or, ramp. contre une echelle de quatre échelons d’or (de la Scala ou Scaliger).

They appear in Rolland and Rolland's Illustrations to the Armorial Général:

Here is my English translation of Rietstap of these arms, including the addition of another inescutcheon with the arms of the City of Passau: Lamberg of Amerang – Austria (Counts, 1636; princes, 1707) Quarterly: 1 and 4; Per pale, a, Barry of four pieces argent and azure; b, Gules plain (Lamberg); 2 and 3, Or a pointer dog rampant sable langued gules collared and buckled or (Pottwein or Podwein); overall two inescutcheons, (dexter) Argent a wolf rampant gules (the city of Passau); (sinister) Gules a ladder of four rungs or supported by two greyhounds rampant respectant argent collared or (de la Scala or Scaliger), the two inescutcheons surmounted by a bishop’s mitre proper.

These arms also appear in color over an altar:

You can decide for yourself how accurate my blazon is by comparing it with the detail of the arms over the altar immediately below:

In both displays, behind the shield is a bishop's crozier and the sword of a prince flanking a processional cross, surmounted by the crown of a prince.

All in all, I find these to be fascinating displays of what is really some very complex heraldry, identifying both the man and his offices.

It is, as Mel Brooks said in A History of the World, Part I, "good to be the king," but clearly, as demonstrated here, it is also good to be the Prince-Bishop!

The Arms of a Kingdom

Following along on Katie's trip up the Danube, we come to the city of Passau, Germany, where she found the arms of the Kingdom of Bavaria.

The arms of the Kingdom of Bavaria are: Quarterly Pfalz (Sable a lion rampant crowned gules), Franken (Per fess indented gules and argent), Margraviate of Burgau (for Schwaben, the area of the Staufen family) (Bendy sinister argent and gules a pale or), and Veldenz (Argent a lion rampant [here, queue forchy] azure crowned or), an inescutcheon of the arms of Wittelsbach (the longtime ruling family in Bavaria) (Paly bendy [or Lozengy bendwise] argent and azure).

These were the Bavarian Kingdom coat of arms from 1835 until the end of the monarchy on November 12, 1918.

We have seen these arms before, on a sign in London, England, no less!

The sign is for "King Ludwig Wheat Beer. Beer of Royal Highness".

It was King Ludwig I (reigned 1825-1848) who adopted these arms in 1835. King Ludwig I is not nearly so well known as his grandson, King Ludwig II, "the Mad", also called "the Fairy Tale King", best known for building Neuschwanstein Castle.