R. Sale > 30-06-2016, 01:06 AM
The recent observation that the dots were misaligned got me thinking about how one should evaluate visual details. When are such details decisive, when are they confirming, when can they be ignored. One option that opens the possibility of interpretation is the comparison with a known system. Heraldry is a known system, well established and far less changeable than the more glamorous fields of alchemy and astrology have been shown to be.
In order to use the system, the proper images must be included in the illustrations. But the VMs is not an instructional text. It is a text for those who already know and therefore can recognize what the illustrations present. But what happens when the dots are not aligned? What happens when the standard example doesn't have as many blue lines as the VMs illustration? Does that invalidate the comparison? What happens if there are problems with the presumed standard. There were a number of years, way back when, when the Wiki representation of the Fieschi armorial insignia had the colors reversed.
Here is the current Wiki version:
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And here is the representation found on the tomb of Pope Adrian V.
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And they are not the same. The difference is whether the top line is divided into thirds or into quarters. Quarters is a better arrangement because it conforms with the standard heraldic rule for primary tincture placement. But the real matter of significance is to determine the correct version of the standard example before it can be compared with the VMs illustration. Otherwise, those, who have already made this superficial comparison, will find it wanting. That determination is made with the blazon. And in this case, the blazon of the Genoese popes, is, 'bendy, argent et azur'. That is diagonally striped, and striped in pairs, with silver and blue. But it does not say how many pairs, it could be three pairs, which is shown in both examples above. This is called a bendy in six parts, but it could be a bendy in eight parts, or ten parts or twelve parts. The counting of parts was instituted in the 1800s to clarify matters, but obviously cannot be applied retroactively. So the VMs does not exceed the blazon definition, though one might expect with a tub, that the decoration goes all the way around.
The thing about the illustrations is not that they are exact copies of armorial insignia. They are evocative representations of a particular, heraldic, armorial insignia and a particular ecclesiastical heraldic hat. A simple combination of two heraldic markers in a unique historical event. It is of course necessary to get the VMs patterns to a proper orientation. And this is done by removal of the radial distractions and viewing the orientation of the two blue-striped patterns as they exist on the page!
Once the innate pairing of the striped patterns and the red galero come together, the historic identification should come into play. Numerous members of the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy would certainly have the potential to posit this identification and immediately see that the characters are in their proper hierarchical places in the celestial spheres shown in the illustration. Placement is objective, not subjective. The problem is that in modern investigation, these images are only seen as generic. Their evocative identities have been lost and a list of objective positional confirmations, including the papelonny pun somehow still fails the test of historically grounded identification even though its been intentionally placed in the illustrations. But what happens when we don't know papelonny?
May the prequel expand your identifications.