Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings, as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch of heraldry, concerns the design and transmission of the heraldic achievement. The achievement, or armorial bearings usually includes a coat of arms on a shield, helmet and crest, together with any accompanying devices, such as supporters, badges, heraldic banners and mottoes.
In heraldry, supporters, sometimes referred to as attendants, are figures or objects usually placed on either side of the shield and depicted holding it up.
The coat of arms of Nunavut was granted by a warrant of Roméo LeBlanc, Governor General of Canada, dated 31 March 1999, one day before the territory of Nunavut, Canada, was created. The same document specified the flag of Nunavut.
The flag of Portugal is the national flag of the Portuguese Republic. It is a rectangular bicolour with a field divided into green on the hoist, and red on the fly. The lesser version of the national coat of arms of Portugal is centered over the colour boundary at equal distance from the upper and lower edges. Its presentation was done on 1 December 1910, after the downfall of the constitutional monarchy on 5 October 1910. However, it was only on 30 June 1911, that the official decree approving this flag as the official flag was published. This new national flag for the First Portuguese Republic, was selected by a special commission whose members included Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, João Chagas and Abel Botelho. The conjugation of the new field color, especially the use of green, was not traditional in the Portuguese national flag's composition and represented a radical republican-inspired change that broke the bond with the former monarchical flag. Since a failed republican insurrection on 31 January 1891, red and green had been established as the colours of the Portuguese Republican Party and its associated movements, whose political prominence kept growing until it reached a culmination period following the Republican revolution of 5 October 1910. In the ensuing decades, these colours were popularly propagandised as representing the hope of the nation (green) and the blood of those who died defending it (red), to endow them with a more patriotic and dignified, therefore less political, sentiment.
The coat of arms of Brazil was created on 19 November 1889, four days after Brazil became a republic. It consists of the central emblem surrounded by coffee and tobacco branches, which were important crops in Brazil at that time. In the round shield in the center, the Southern Cross can be seen. The ring of 27 stars around it represents Brazil's 26 states and the Federal District.
The House of Aviz, also known as the Joanine Dynasty, was a dynasty of Portuguese origin which flourished during the Renaissance and the period of the Portuguese discoveries, when Portugal expanded its power globally.
In heraldry, cadency is any systematic way to distinguish arms displayed by descendants of the holder of a coat of arms when those family members have not been granted arms in their own right. Cadency is necessary in heraldic systems in which a given design may be owned by only one person at any time, generally the head of the senior line of a particular family.
In heraldry, an ordinary is one of the two main types of charges, beside the mobile charges. An ordinary is a simple geometrical figure, bounded by straight lines and running from side to side or top to bottom of the shield. There are also some geometric charges known as subordinaries, which have been given lesser status by some heraldic writers, though most have been in use as long as the traditional ordinaries. Diminutives of ordinaries and some subordinaries are charges of the same shape, though thinner. Most of the ordinaries are theoretically said to occupy one-third of the shield; but this is rarely observed in practice, except when the ordinary is the only charge.
In heraldry, a charge is any emblem or device occupying the field of an escutcheon (shield). That may be a geometric design or a symbolic representation of a person, animal, plant, object, building, or other device. In French blazon, the ordinaries are called pièces, and other charges are called meubles.
The lozenge in heraldry is a diamond-shaped rhombus charge, usually somewhat narrower than it is tall. It is to be distinguished in modern heraldry from the fusil, which is like the lozenge but narrower, though the distinction has not always been as fine and is not always observed even today. A mascle is a voided lozenge—that is, a lozenge with a lozenge-shaped hole in the middle—and the rarer rustre is a lozenge containing a circular hole in the centre. A lozenge throughout has "four corners touching the border of the escutcheon". A field covered in a pattern of lozenges is described as lozengy; similar fields of mascles are masculy, and fusils, fusily. In civic heraldry, a lozenge sable is often used in coal-mining communities to represent a lump of coal.
The coat of arms of Spain represents Spain and the Spanish nation, including its national sovereignty and the country's form of government, a constitutional monarchy. It appears on the flag of Spain and it is used by the Government of Spain, the Cortes Generales, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and other state institutions. Its design consists of the arms of the medieval kingdoms that would unite to form Spain in the 15th century, the Royal Crown, the arms of the House of Bourbon, the Pillars of Hercules and the Spanish national motto: Plus Ultra. The monarch, the heir to the throne and some institutions like the Senate, the Council of State and the General Council of the Judiciary have their own variants of the coat of arms.
The coat of arms of Scotland, colloquially called the Lion Rampant, is the coat of arms historically used as arms of dominion by the monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland, and later by monarchs of Great Britain and the United Kingdom. The coat of arms, or elements from it, are also used in heraldry to symbolise Scotland in general. The arms consist of a red lion surrounded by a red double border decorated with fleurs-de-lis, all on a gold background. The blazon, or heraldic description, is: Or a lion rampant Gules armed and langued Azure within a double tressure flory-counter-flory of the second.
The coat of arms of Denmark has a lesser and a greater version.
Portuguese heraldry encompasses the modern and historic traditions of heraldry in Portugal and the Portuguese Empire. Portuguese heraldry is part of the larger Iberian tradition of heraldry, one of the major schools of heraldic tradition, and grants coats of arms to individuals, cities, Portuguese colonies, and other institutions. Heraldry has been practiced in Portugal at least since the 12th century, however it only became standardized and popularized in the 16th century, during the reign of King Manuel I of Portugal, who created the first heraldic ordinances in the country. Like in other Iberian heraldic traditions, the use of quartering and augmentations of honor is highly representative of Portuguese heraldry, but unlike in any other Iberian traditions, the use of heraldic crests is highly popular.
The Kingdom of Brazil was a constituent kingdom of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves.
The Sceptre of the Armillary, also known as the Sceptre of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves, is a piece of the Portuguese Crown Jewels, originally created for the acclamation of King João VI, alongside the Crown of João VI and the Mantle of João VI.
The Mantle of João VI, also known as the Mantle of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves, is the royal robe, a part of the Portuguese Crown Jewels, that was fashioned for the acclamation of King João VI, alongside the Crown of João VI and the Sceptre of the Armillary.
A national coat of arms is a symbol which denotes an independent state in the form of a heraldic achievement. While a national flag is usually used by the population at large and is flown outside and on ships, a national coat of arms is normally considered a symbol of the government or the head of state personally and tends to be used in print, on armorial ware, and as a wall decoration in official buildings. The royal arms of a monarchy, which may be identical to the national arms, are sometimes described as arms of dominion or arms of sovereignty.
Brazilian heraldry as a distinct form of heraldry dates to 1822, when Brazil became independent as an Empire, under the reign of the House of Braganza. Being formerly a part of the Portuguese Empire and being ruled by the same Royal House that reigned in Portugal, Brazilian heraldry followed the tradition of Portuguese heraldry.
The coat of arms of Castile was the heraldic emblem of its monarchs. Historian Michel Pastoureau says that the original purpose of heraldic emblems and seals was to facilitate the exercise of power and the identification of the ruler, due to what they offered for achieving these aims. These symbols were associated with the kingdom, and eventually also represented the intangible nature of the national sentiment or sense of belonging to a territory.
1095? – 1139? (putative)
1139? – 1247 (first historical confirmed shield)
1248–1385
1385–1481
1481–present
