Heraldic Tokens Described According to the Laws of the Fetials

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Original title: Tesserae gentilitiae a Silvestro Petra Sancta Romano Societatis Iesu ex legibus Fecialium descriptae A learned Neo-Latin folio treatise on heraldry of some 678 pages, printed at Rome by the heirs of Francesco Corbelletti and dedicated to Taddeo Barberini, Prefect of the City. Rather than a practical manual for heralds, it seeks to furnish armorial practice with a technical Latin vocabulary (tessera gentilitia for the coat of arms, clypeus tesserarius for the shield), a historical account of the origin of armorial signs — derived, against the rival theories of the Roman imagines maiorum and legionary shields, from the ornament of garments — and a body of stateable rules drawn under the authority of Roman ius and the fetial college. It fixes an invariant set of seven tinctures (two metals, five colours) against blazoning by gems and planets, maps the points of the field onto the parts of the human body, sets out a monochrome code whereby gold is shown by dots, silver by untouched paper, and red by vertical lines, and tests its laws against hard cases such as sovereigns above the rules, metal on metal, the two-headed imperial eagle, and marks of illegitimate descent. A long armorial roll catalogues families by natural kinds of charge (birds, celestial bodies, flowers, implements, human parts), with French marginal blazons; the volume includes an index, errata, and a glossary of difficult Latin heraldic terms rendered into Italian, and closes with a self-censure of the author's errors, a blank escutcheon furnished with helm and mantling for any reader whose family was omitted, and a Marian dedication. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
• View the original source file

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TESSERAE GENTILITIAE A SILUESTRO PETRA SANCTA ROMANO SOCIETATIS IESU... Silvestro Pietrasanta, Johann Friedrich Greuter, ...