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Heraldry is as much part of the future as present

by JOHN HALDANE
THE SCOTSMAN | Saturday 9 September 2006

A COUPLE of weeks ago St Andrews was treated to the sight of a colourful parade of heralds, hereditary standard bearers, nobility and clan chiefs, representatives of the University, leaders of the Christian churches, and sundry others, processing through the town to the accompaniment of the pipes. The occasion was the opening by the Princess Royal of the 27th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences, featuring the first meeting of European heralds since the middle ages.

This weekend St Andrews sees another ritual procession: this of Knights and Dames of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre gathering for an investiture in the 15th century chapel of St Salvator’s College. Once again gowns, insignia, and banners of medieval inspiration will be on view as Scottish members are joined by representatives from abroad and from the Sovereign Military Order of St John – with the pipes again adding a distinctively Caledonian note.

Such events, and the groups and individuals they bring together can easily be seen as part of a world of childlike, or even childish, fantasy. Trying to live as if in a realm of castles, chivalarous knights, noble heroes, fair ladies, courtly love and sacred adventures, all rendered for posterity in chronicles and ballads.


Certainly there is scope for fantasy, and for fraud. The market in titles is an old one, and most active with regard to feudal baronies. Several companies offer the title ‘Laird’ with the suggestion that one might then form one’s own clan. Others offer ‘Lordships’ and many emphasise the benefits of a feudal investment. The British Embassy in Washington has a warning on its website, including the stark advice from the author of the Oxford Book of Heraldry that ‘Lordship of this or that manor is no more a title than Landlord of the Dog and Duck.’ For further entertainment and cautionary advice see www.faketitles.com authored by the (real) Earl of Bradford.

As with titles so with ‘Orders’. Burke’s (publishers of Peerage and Baronetage, and of Landed Gentry) has just produced a stunning, two-volume work: World Orders of Knighthood and Merit, edited by the suitably named Guy Stair Sainty. It runs to over 2,000, large-format pages and manages to combine exacting scholarship, wonderful colour illustrations, and sharp commentary directed at pretension and fraud. In 1858 Sir Bernard Burke published Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour. ‘Sainty’s World Orders’ is a similar classic, unlikely to be replaced for at least a century. The scale and quality of the work fully justify the cost of over �200, and there is no doubt that the book will sell (for details see www.burkes-peerage.net).

Sainty has a section on ‘Orders revived by Questionable Authority’ and another on ‘Self-Styled Orders’. Both offend against authentic tradition and proper recognition of merit, but also provide ample opportunities for fantasists and frauds.

‘Orders’ with mention of Constantine, St George, St John, St Lazarus or the Temple, are often fishy and sometimes foul. Like the Earl of Bradford who has battled with title villains, Sainty has crossed swords with order merchants; in some cases the same opponents, and the fighting can be furious.

The ‘Holy Grail’ of international Orders is to trace your foundation to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century. Only one existing order of chivalry can do so: that of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, which dates from 1113 and has observer status at the UN. There are, however, ancient and elderly national orders such as the Order of the Garter (1348) and the Order of the Thistle (1687) as well as more youthful ones including the Order of the British Empire instituted only in 1917, initially to recognise civilian service in the Great War, but which is now the largest of the UK’s honours.

The question of whether honours, particularly titles, should be maintained is one Sainty addresses. What is more interesting, perhaps, is to compare the values of those who associate themselves with the timeless ideals of chivalry and nobility, with others whose attention and aspiration is directed towards celebrity and notoriety.

One of the striking features of heraldry is the way in which it combines social history, art and design, and the science of symbol making and interpretation. Likewise, genealogy involves searchers in making their way from the present into the past, seeking meaning and significance in events and generations long gone. Similarly, the interest in authentic chivalry has about an appreciation of enduring things, and an understanding that the latest need not be best and in reality is probably a passing fancy.

Our culture is deeply conflicted. On the one hand it celebrates autonomy, choice, and self-making, and often craves sensation, and immediate gratification, At the same time, it complains of loss of community, of sense of purpose, and of lack of stability and enduring worth. The return of BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? follows upon the success of an earlier series in which celebrities traced their family histories. In that lies a paradox: celebrities seeking identity in a hitherto little or unknown past.

The human need for narrative is most fully satisfied when the narrative in question is one in which we feature, not in our ordinary selves but as figures ennobled by membership of something larger and greater than ourselves. Family history offers the security of deep foundations and the sense of being part of something that will continue when e too have returned to the soil. Likewise heraldry gives symbolic and pictorial _expression to shared identities of family, school, college, city, sports-team or whatever else.

So too, the idea of an order of chivalry or of merit is a reminder and a promise of the possibility of detaching oneself from momentary concerns, and associating one’s life with noble ideals that have served to give meaning to past generations ,and which promise to inspire future ones. Like the ancient college buildings of St Andrews past which the heralds and knights process, the traditions and orders they represent are of the present and the future as much as of the past.

Professor John Haldane, FRSE, is Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Department of Moral Philosophy, University of St Andrews.

Published at 9:05 am on Monday 2 October 2006. Categories: Heraldry History St Andrews.
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