From announcers to experts
Heraldry needed people who could read it. These were the heralds, officials who knew the arms of knights and lords, and who used that knowledge in tournaments, war and diplomacy. Their name is now attached to the whole subject. This article looks at what they did in practice.
The early history is not fully clear. In the twelfth century, heralds seem to have been men attached to tournaments who announced competitors, perhaps minstrels or messengers by origin. Over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they gained status and skill as arms became more common. By the later Middle Ages they were organized officials in the service of kings and great nobles, though the details differ between countries.
Ranks and titles
A common structure had several levels, and the names varied by region.
- Pursuivants: junior officers, often apprentices who trained to become heralds.
- Heralds: full officers who carried out the main tasks.
- Kings of arms: senior heralds with authority over a region or kingdom.
Heralds often took names from their master’s titles, lands or badges, which gave rise to titles familiar from later periods. The exact names and ranks should be checked for each court, because there was no single international pattern.
Tournaments
At a tournament, heralds were at the center of the organization. They:
- Announced competitors. Before a contest, a herald proclaimed the participants and their lineage or deeds, so spectators knew who was entering the lists.
- Checked arms and eligibility. Knights displayed their shields or helmets for inspection, and heralds could verify that a person had the right to compete. In some tournaments, a knight’s helmet and crest were displayed publicly before the event.
- Kept order. Heralds helped to enforce the rules of the event, including the conduct of the contest and the safety of participants.
- Recorded results. They noted who performed well, and in some cases judged or advised on prizes.
The practice of the tournament is a wider subject, covered under tournament history and the jousting lists, but heralds were the people who made the ceremony legible. In a crowd of armored riders, the herald was the person who could say who each one was.
Recognizing arms in war
On campaign, heralds served a different but related purpose. They identified banners and surcoats in battle and, after a fight, recognized the dead. Chroniclers of some late medieval battles describe heralds being sent to examine the field and to name the fallen nobles, which also helped establish who had survived and who could be ransomed.
Heralds also acted as intermediaries between armies. Because they were recognized by their tabards, which displayed their lord’s arms, they were generally given a degree of protection when carrying messages, delivering challenges or negotiating truces. This protection was a custom rather than an absolute rule, and breaches did occur. The role was important in the conflicts of the later Middle Ages, such as the Hundred Years War.
Rolls of arms and records
Another core task was record keeping. Heralds compiled rolls of arms, lists of shields with the names of their bearers. The earliest surviving examples date from around the middle of the thirteenth century, and they became more elaborate as time went on. Some were arranged by region, others by social rank or by an army or event, and later ones were arranged by design to make searches easier.
These records served several purposes:
- They helped heralds recall who bore which arms.
- They acted as evidence in disputes over who had the right to a design.
- They preserved memory of armies and tournaments.
Many rolls survive and are a major source for modern historians, though their accuracy varies. Copyists sometimes made errors, and later rolls could include invented or idealized arms for legendary figures.
Genealogy and ceremony
As the role matured, heralds became experts in genealogy, since a family’s arms were bound up with its descent. They advised on how arms should be combined after marriages and how younger sons should mark their versions. At great funerals, heralds organized the display of arms, bearing the shield, helmet and banners in the procession. They also took part in coronations, knighting ceremonies and royal entries, where precedence and correct form mattered.
Regulation and the College of Arms
Gradually, heralds also took on a regulatory function, supervising who could bear arms and what designs were acceptable. In England, they were formally incorporated as the College of Arms in 1484, a date well established in the record, under King Richard III. Over the following decades, heralds toured counties to record gentry arms and examine claims. The extent to which regulation worked in practice varied, and enforcement was sometimes weak.
Fact and romance
Heralds appear in chivalric literature as wise, formal figures, and some later writers gave them a highly dignified, almost mythical image. Historical heralds were professionals who could be well paid, well traveled and valued for their memory. They could also be under pressure from patrons. Their value lay in knowledge: they remembered, recorded and explained a visual language that many others only half understood.
Why heralds mattered
Without heralds, the heraldic system would have been far harder to keep working. A shield design is only useful if someone can say whose it is, and tournaments and wars involved hundreds of competing designs. Heralds provided the human memory behind the paint, which is why they remained part of royal and noble courts long after arms had left the battlefield.