Heraldic System

Timeline

1. c. 1100–1150French tournament grounds · FranceIn 12th-century tournaments and on the battlefield, nobles began painting fixed devices on shields, surcoats, and banners for identification, forming the prototype of hereditary arms and replacing earlier ad hoc marks.
2. c. 1200–1260England · England13th-century works such as the Bestiary of Heraldry (Matthew Paris et al.) and heralds in various regions began systematically recording arms; rules governing combinations of tinctures and devices (e.g., metals not adjacent to colors) were gradually established, and heraldry became an independent field of knowledge.
3. c. 1261–1270States of the Holy Roman Empire · Holy Roman EmpireIn the mid-to-late 13th century, arms were no longer confined to the highest nobility; knights, city communes, and ecclesiastical institutions adopted shields, and heralds' courts in Germany and elsewhere began adjudicating disputes over ownership and similar arms.
4. c. 1500Heraldic institutions of European states · EuropeModern nation-states transformed the heraldic tradition into national coats of arms, royal arms, and systems for registering civic heraldry; institutions such as England's College of Arms continued medieval functions, making heraldry an important component of Europe's political symbolic system.