Water, earth and air

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Strangely, perhaps, I would think that most any European person, who was able to read and write at that time, would have some familiarity with heraldry.

Is that so?  

I suppose that even illiterate people would recognize the coats of arms of their lord and other important people.  After all, isn't that why the things were invented: as personal or family logos on shields, that even illiterate villains and knights could "read"?  As opposed to just writing their names, like we do today on the shirts of soccer players?

But how many people, even educated ones, would be able to describe a coat of arms verbally, by separating it into its devices and identifying the discrete type of each?  Specifically, distinguishing whether a sinuous line was wavy, nebuly, engrailed, or invacted?  

I can believe that many knights or other military officers would be able to do that, and that every idle nobleman would study that "science".  But would a monk be versed in it, or an accountant, or even a notary public?  Or even a medical doctor with a university diploma?  I doubt it...  

I have recently stumbled online on a  15th century manuscript in Latin, neatly penned in a scribal shop by a professional scribe who obviously did not know a word of Latin.  I bet he could not tell a nebuly line from a sixfold rounded urdy or from a per fess bezant griffin fructed seagrant reversed, either... 

All the best, --stolfi