by Laura Giallombardo
Definition of coat of arms. Goffredo di Crollalanza in his Heraldic-Knightly Encyclopedia defines the weapon or coat of arms as «the complex of all the figures, emblems, patches, enamels, ornaments, marks of honor that serve to make known the nobility of a family or to distinguish a nation , a province, a city, a corporation, etc.”; but the coat of arms is also a “figurative language”, each figure on the shield has a precise symbolic meaning, it alludes to moral qualities, businesses and events, it symbolizes conquests and possessions, marital alliances and acquired dignity. It is a sort of identity card of the owner, it represents the legal, historical, political, religious status and as such becomes a sign of recognition, honor and prestige, a real trademark of ownership. Over the centuries, miniaturists and typographers, painters, sculptors and architects depicted coats of arms or heraldic symbols on codices, printed books, paintings, tapestries, sculpted them on fountains, on the facades of buildings, on churches, convents and monasteries, painted them on walls and ceilings, on furniture, ceramics and porcelain or engraved them on silver. In ancient codes and printed works they were illuminated on papers and printed on bindings but also depicted in typographical brands and ex libris. The Casanatense Library preserves a rich heraldic collection made up of numerous works of different and interesting typologies both for the importance of the scientific contents and for the variety of the iconographic material: over 160 codes, some particularly valuable, 200 documents of notable historical and diplomatic interest, approximately 2500 printed works. They include treatises on heraldry, coats of arms, repertoires of Italian and foreign noble families, monographs, family histories and genealogies, collections on ruling families, collections of emblems, statutes of chivalric orders, biographies, essays, but also, as in the case of documents, correspondence , public and private notarial instruments (wills, dowries, donations, marriage certificates
THE CATALOG OF COATS OF ARMS
The first paper-based catalogues. The first catalog of the coats of arms of the Casanatense Library dates back to the years 1885-1890: approximately 10,000 cards with the names of families and noble figures preserved in twenty wooden boxes still located in the Catalog Room. The cards, which are based on extremely essential criteria, indicate the name of the family, the bibliographic reference of the work in which the coat of arms can be found and the location, sometimes missing or no longer identifiable because it has changed over time. As the years pass and the growth of users is increasingly attentive and interested in coats of arms and above all in their identification, the urgency is felt to create a more modern and comprehensive catalogue.
In 1984, a second experiment in cataloging coats of arms began, a decidedly more detailed card catalogue. The system includes a catalog composed of two distinct but complementary parts: a name catalogue, in alphabetical order by family, and another systematic by figures, pieces and partitions, the latter accompanied by an index of figures and a heraldic vocabulary. The search system conceived by this catalogue, which allows us to trace the owner of the coat of arms from the figure, has proven to be very useful for the identification of anonymous coats of arms.
Requests from our users
Over the years, the users of our Library, scholars of the ancient manuscript and printed collection but also experts in the subject, have often asked us questions of a heraldic nature, asking us if it was possible:
– identify the anonymous coats of arms, belonging to owners, clients, dedicatees and printers, which were printed on the plates of the bindings or were illuminated, watercoloured, drawn, engraved on the first leaves of the codices and printed works or depicted on the typographical brands and on the former libris
– describe the coats of arms, i.e. “blazon” them according to the rules and terminology of heraldic science. The scholar who catalogs the manuscript, in fact, is aware that identifying an anonymous coat of arms, especially if it is found in an undated codex of unknown origin, means having the possibility of reconstructing a large part of the history of that codex both chronologically and topographically. But the coat of arms is also one of the decorative elements of a codex, it is part of its original structure or of the possible subsequent stratifications, the cataloging rules of the manuscript provide for both the indication of the owner (in the external description under the heading owners and provenance) and that of the coat of arms (under decoration, where its presence and position is indicated) accompanied, possibly for greater completeness, by the description.
The project and its objective
The project of an IT-based coat of arms catalog was born in 1999 from the desire to provide rapid and adequate responses to the requests of our users through the use of new IT and digital technologies that have developed over the years. From the study of the coats of arms of the manuscript collection, it was subsequently extended to the incunabula collection. The initial phase consisted of surveying all the coats of arms present on the bindings, on the papers of the 6302 manuscripts and 2069 Casanatensi incunabula and the coats of arms depicted on the typographical brands and on the ex libris contained in the latter. A very detailed structured database was then created using, in the web search, the same approach as the 1987 paper catalogue, which had proven to be very valid for the search for anonymous coats of arms. The catalogue, in progress because it is open to new implementations, was then integrated with digitized images of the coats of arms linked to the relevant records. Today the catalog of coats of arms has become a collection of the digital shelves of the Casanatense Library.
The objective to be achieved was:
– identify anonymous coats of arms based on the bibliographical sources available to us
– study the technical composition of the coats of arms (both anonymous ones and those already known), the typology of the shields and the external ornaments
– blazon the coats of arms, that is, describe them according to the appropriate use of the rules of heraldic science and heraldic language
– transfer the information acquired into a structured database with a web interface equipped with multiple search keys.
Database and digitization of coats of arms
The database, initially created on db/access, was subsequently transferred to OPAC through migration first to Alexandrie, then to Kentika, both management software provided by the Ifnet company of Florence and finally to ContentDM managed by OCLC. The records have been structured into eleven fields useful for transferring the acquired descriptive metadata, relating to the location of the volume, the name of the owner of the coat of arms, the position of the coat of arms within the volume, its technical composition and blazoning; a field has been reserved for the cataloguer’s notes.
This is the list of fields provided:
Placement (of the volume)
Identification (the name of the owner of the coat of arms: family or person)/p>
Position (the position of the coat of arms in the volume: on the front plate of the binding, on the title page or on f. 1r etc.)
Execution technique (the technique used to depict the coat of arms: imprinted in gold, illuminated, engraved, drawn in pencil or pen, etc.)
Shield (the shape of the shield: Gothic, Samnite, irregular etc.)
Figures (the figures found on the surface or field of the shield: lion, eagle, rook etc.)
Partitions (the divisions of the surface or field of the shield: party, quartered, etc.)
Enamels (the colors, metals and furs that cover the figures and the field of the shield: red, blue, silver, gold, ermine
External ornaments (the figures or objects placed outside the coat of arms, i.e. above, below or on the sides: pontifical tiara, cardinal’s hat, crest, etc.)/p>
Blazoning (the description of the coat of arms according to the heraldic vocabulary and the rules of heraldic science)
Notes (space reserved for the cataloguer’s notes)
The digitization of coats of arms. To complete the database, the coat of arms digitization campaign was started: the shots were taken in the JPG and TIFF graphic format and each image was linked to the relevant descriptive metadata. From the census of the manuscript and incunabula collections, approximately 900 coats of arms were found which produced a database with 865 cataloging records.
Consult the coat of arms catalog on our digital shelves.