Two Different Ways of Combining Arms of Office with Personal Arms Seen in Salzburg, Austria

Over the years we have seen again and again how a person may combine the arms of an office they hold with their personal arms on a shield. This is usually done by impaling the arms of the office on the dexter side of the shield with the personal arms on the sinister side of the shield.

In Salzburg, however, we see two other methods of combining arms of office with personal arms.

The first (and we will see more examples of this in upcoming posts from Salzburg) is to add to the shield of the personal arms a chief of the arms of the office. In these instances, the chief is the arms of the Archdiocese of Salzburg (which are identical to the older arms of the municipality of Salzburg and also the arms of the District of Salzburg: Per pale: dexter, Or a lion rampant sable; sinister, Gules a fess argent (Austria).

These are the arms of Markus Sittikus von Hohenems, 1574-1619 (Archbishop of Salzburg 1612-1619) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Sittich_von_Hohenems): Azure a ram rampant or, with the chief of the Archdiocese.

The entire shield is surmounted with an archbishop’s galero, a wide-brimmed, flat, tasseled ecclesiastical hat. For archbishops, the galero is always green and features 20 tassels (10 on each side), visually distinguishing them from standard bishops (who have 12 tassels, six on each side).

Next, we have the personal arms of the von Kuenburg family, three of whose members were Archbishops of Salzburg: Michael von Kuenburg (Archbishop of Salzburg 1554–1560); Georg von Kuenburg (Archbishop of Salzburg 1580-1586); and Maximilian Gandolf von Kuenburg (Archbishop of Salzburg 1668-1687).

Please click on the image above to go to the full-sized photograph where you can zoom in to see the details of this shield.

The von Kuenburg arms are blazoned: Quarterly: 1 and 4, Per pale gules and argent a roundel counterchanged; 2 and 3, Per fess sable and argent a flat hinge counterchanged. The shield is surmounted by a noble’s coronet.

I would have thought the item in the second and third quarters was a millrind, a fairly common heraldic charge, but for the pretty clear knuckle, the raised, cylindrical portion in the center through which the pin passes to hold the two leaves together.

These arms could memorialize any of the three von Kuenburg archbishops, or to be honest, nearly any other member of this family.

However, this next memorial is definitely that of Michael von Kuenburg, mentioned by name and “von Gotes Genaden” (by the grace of God) Archbishop of Salzburg, dated 1559).

Here, the quarters of the arms of the von Kuenburgs are further quartered with the arms of the Archbishopric, instead of the more common usage of a chief of the Archbishopric. Quarterly: 1 and 4, the Archbishopric of Salzburg; 2, Per pale gules and argent a roundel counterchanged; and 3, Per fess sable and argent a flat hinge counterchanged.

I note that while the script gives his title as Archbishop, the galero surmounting the shield has only the twelve (six on each side) tassels of a Bishop.

I found it interesting to see these somewhat rarer forms of marshalling the arms of office with personal arms. But, as J.P. Brooke-Little put it so well in the introduction to his book An Heraldic Alphabet: "You can study heraldry until you are azure ... in the face but inevitably discover, from time to time, that you really are quite vert.... I have found this over and over again but, never forget, herein lies the fun and if heraldry ever ceases to be fun - chuck it."