Detlev Kraack:
Heraldic traces of later medieval noble travellers.
Inscriptions and graffiti of the 14th - 16th century
(English abstract)
In
the later Middle Ages, travelling was one of the means by which the nobility
and the urban upper classes of the entire Occident could win honour and glory.
As honour was one of the fundamental social values, the ‚quest for
honour’ represented a permanent motivation of the social elites of that
time: the longer the journey the better (‚mobiliora nobiliora’).
The main destinations of these travels coincided with famed goals of Christian
pilgrimage: the Holy Land with Jerusalem, the Monastery of Saint Catherine on
the Sinai, Santiago de Compostela, and Rome. But other places such as Mount
Michael in Normandy, the Sanctuary of San Michele on the Gargano, Saint
Nicholas in Bari or less important sanctuaries along the way were visited as
well. However, the journeys of later medieval noblemen were not limited to
these religious sites. The courts of Occidental princes claimed at least as
much importance. The fact that travelling to spas or to the famous universities
in Italy and France that were
developing into places of vivid social interaction was a growing attraction at the same time leads us to
believe that these are several overlapping aspects of one and the same
phenomenon. Crusade, pilgrimage, nobleman’s journey and the grand tour
are merely different variations of medieval travelling.
In
view of the signs of honour that noble travellers left at the stops along their
routes and the considerable and impressive expenditure that accompanied them it
seems justified to argue that the noble travellers on their way into the Holy
Land or to Santiago de Compostela were often concerned with a lot more than the
mere salvation of their souls. It was good practice, for example, to attach
one’s coat of arms or tablets of wood or sheets of cardboard or paper
displaying this coat of arms and its bearer’s name to the walls of inns,
lodging houses for the seekersofhonour, or even the sacral destinations of the
journey. If that was impossible one had one’s coat of arms, name and the
date of sojourn painted on the wall or even picked up a red chalk, charcoal pen
or scratching tool oneself. Technical execution was less important than leaving
one’s mark in as obvious a place as possible so that it was clearly
visible for all later travellers.
While
little remains of these relics, written tradition provides us with a fairly
clear picture of what they looked like and why they were left at places far
away from home. This ‚monumental evidence of late medieval noble
travelling’ was indeed noticed and interpreted as reputable signs by
many, a fact that is, on the one hand, well documented by many passages from
contemporary travel reports as well as by items in travellers’ accounts
where stonemasons and emblazoners are mentioned who were paid for making these
honourable signs and putting them up. On the other hand there are texts that
criticise this desire for representation as displayed by the nobility and that
did not stop the travellers from leaving their marks even in sacred places such
as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Like travelling itself,
heraldic representation en route is an international phenomenon throughout the
period we are examining. It thus needs to be approached on a European scale to
do justice to the various aspects.
Despite
the fact that combining the scattered fragments of monumental tradition with
passages from literary sources leads to a first outline of a useful
classification of this source material that has been lost for the greatest
part, no intensive research has been dedicated to these relics. This study is
therefore first of all concerned with a precise understanding of the actual
phenomenon and with defining the monumental travelling relics with respect to
the terminological range between ‚graffito’ and
‚inscription’. Another aspect was to carefully collect material to
gain an overview of what has come down to us. The results of this research,
which was based neither on existing literature nor systematic bibliographies,
are documented by two catalogues, one geographical the other chronological.
The
geographical catalogue contains views of the actual inscriptions. The
presentation starts in Central Europe and first describes the relics found on
the way into the Holy Land and on the Sinai. While the route across the Alps
and from Venice through the Adriatic and Aegean Seas as well as the stations
Rhodes and Cyprus can only be documented by material found in literary sources,
we had the opportunity to take photographs of inscriptions found in the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre and the old Cenacle on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, in the
Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, in the Monastery of Saint Catherine on the
Sinai and in the Monastery of Saint Anthony in the Egyptian desert thus keeping
a record of relics that must be regarded as lost elsewhere.In other sections,
we use literary sources in our attempt to reconstruct what similar relics must
have existed along the way to Santiago de Compostela and in other locations in
Western Europe. Occasionally we include material from later centuries in the
documentation to be able both to put the evidence of later medieval travellers
in their larger anthropological context and point out their individual
characteristics at the same time.
As
most of the actual monuments are lost, we added a second catalogue listing
select passages from the written tradition between the 14th and the 19th century
that refer to the coats of arms or other types of heraldic and nonheraldic
representation that we found. We also took sources into account in which
travellers reported, sometimes critically and sometimes with considerable
expertise, traces of earlier journeying noblemen that they had come across.
This catalogue lists extracts of travelling accounts, travel literature and
other contemporary literature in chronological order.Starting from the
monuments as documented, the forms and contents of the inscriptions are
examined. Apart from names, coats of arms and dates of sojourn that give
individual features to the persons who produced the sources, some cases allow
us to identify elaborate crests, devices which are sometimes encoded, and
emblems of chivalric orders. These symbols, as well as the way coats of arms
and names are arranged in relation to each other, allow us to draw conclusions
concerning the conception late medieval noblemen had of themselves. Thus, we
can deduce an ‚iconographic grammar’ by which personal and social
relations among the travellers were projected on the wall. Coats of arms
depicted in different sizes, arranged above or below each other, in positions
indicating alliances or in chainlike interconnections are as clearly indicative
of these social relations as are framed groups of symbols of chivalric orders
and the elaborate representation of crests. We may assume that at least some of
these symbols were put up or painted by the travellers themselves and that they
at least dictated their iconographical contents and arrangement so that what we
arrive at is relatively ‚unfiltered’ access to contemporary
mentality. We realise how the noble travellers saw themselves or how they
wanted to be seen by others.
Sometimes
the inscriptions are the only evidence that a nobelman started a journey while
in other cases they almost ideally supplement the information derived from the
travel literature. Using the monumental traces it is often possible to
reconstruct itineraries of individual travellers. Thus, the iconography of the
inscriptions tells us in which sequence certain courts or sanctuaries were
visited due to the successive addition of corresponding elements to the
inscriptions.We can also say something about the costs of such monumental display
of the travellers’ wish for immortality in foreign countries, if only in
general terms: The more reputable the location the more expensive the monument.
Some travelling ledgers not only mention stonemasons and emblazoners but also
make clear the role played by herolds as mediators of heraldic knowledge.
The fact that the inscriptions were not only admired by
later travellers and honoured by people from the same country, by friends or
relatives but were also strongly criticised mainly by clerics gives us the
opportunity to study the overall phenomenon under various aspects. On the basis
of the extensive criticism delivered by Felix Fabri in the late 15th century we
can now develop a complete typology of this type of source. The most
interesting traces are all those where misunderstandings ensued. Some details
important in the context of our study were noted by contemporaries because of
obstacles to comprehension which were sometimes due to cultural idiosyncrasies.
Thus, in the late 15th century, the Breslau patrician Nikolaus von Popplau
alerts us to the fact that the Spanish were not familiar with the rituals
involved with the Central European heraldic symbols he knew.
Taking
a systematic approach to the context from which the relics emerged helps us to
understand how they and the oral and written travel reports contributed to
spreading the knowledge of the wideranging and dangerous, hence honourable,
travels of a nobleman. Taking the ‚ideal type’ of traveller as an
example we try to outline the late medieval journey from its start at home to
the return from foreign countries including its subsequent documentation.
Particularly close attention is given to the propagation of information about
the journey which only became an honourable one if it provided as much
publicity as possible for oneself and one’s travels.Asking about the
place in cultural history of the phenomenon of heraldic representation during
journeys, we would have to think of the roots as being connected with the habit
of displaying one’s shield and coat of arms at the inn or tent, a habit
that had been in use since the high Middle Ages. The fact that in later
medieval times the actual defensive weapon was replaced by corresponding shapes
of wood, cardboard or even paper tells us several things: first of all it
stands for a certain degree of abstraction by which the shield is reduced to
its symbolic contents. Also, the representational character of the coat of arms
seems to have grown in importance. Thus, the shield was put up at night only to
take it down again the next morning while the coat of arms reproduced with
simple means on cardboard or paper was left at every waystation which of course
guaranteed much more publicity. Often the coats of arms have come down to us as
groups of emblems. This and the fact that they sometimes took on the character
of veritable‚ books of armoury on the wall’ show how much this
obvious need to represent oneself was closely connected with forms everyone was
familiar with at the time.
Another
aspect of monumental immortality at very exposed and preferably sacred
locations becomes obvious by the use of graffiti which we must almost consider
an anthropological constant. By leaving his coat of arms or his name behind,
the traveller could extend his presence on a symbolic level beyond his real
stay. While relics of the early and high Middle Ages show that the notion of an
extended presence at a sacred place
which must be assumed to be connected with magical ideas was of major importance, the same
phenomenon of the late Middle Ages
by that time increasingly taking the shape of heraldic forms stands for a need for a highexposure
demonstration of immortality. In modern times, destinations changed and with
them the sites of representation still in heraldic form. Now it is not so much
the great places of pilgrimage where people go but universities, courts and
increasingly spas, which develop into places of vivid social interaction
providing the corresponding publicity. The waning of the classic type of noble
travelling marks the point where the phenomenon studied also becomes less and
less detectable in the sources until it finally vanishes altogether. Apart from
certain constant elements of the urge to concretise one’s longing for
immortality in monumental form that must be assigned to an anthropological
level, the observations begin to shift at that time. Contemporaries were
already complaining about the fact that heraldic representation had at first
spread among the nobility. This group was fighting for its social existence at
the time, engendering a great deal of social competition. However, people
thought it very inappropriate to find more and more commoners copying this
originally noble behaviour. Some elements have survived to the present day,
albeit no longer in heraldic form.
Future
studies of the subject should penetrate further into the overall European
perspective of the phenomenon. The Iberian Peninsula probably represents a very
promising object. The application of heraldic rules should also be given more
attention. Documents written by herolds have thus far not been studied
sufficiently and are therefore likely to yield promising results. Apart from
systematically analysing the travel literature, more attention should also be
given to the surviving accounts. Such work would be likely to supplement our
fragmented knowledge of the living context in which heraldic documents
originate and add details to the outline.
Dr. phil. Detlev Kraack, Wissenschaftlicher Assistent für Mittelalterliche
Geschichte am Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft der Technischen
Universität Berlin
... zum Institut
für Graffiti-Forschung