Recently, my paternal grandfather was digging through some old photos and documents, and he happened to stumble upon something I found at least somewhat interesting. It is a document that apparently has some old family history stuff on it. I have no idea whether or not this authentic or just some fabrication by someone and it happened to fall into my grandfather’s hands. Unfortunately, some of it makes no sense at all, I don’t know if that is because it is using some bizarre syntax, or if the person that wrote it originally had no idea what they were talking about. But, I digress, here is an excerpt from the document:
Motto
“Fidelitas in adversis”
Arms
“Argent, three bars gules on a canton of the second a castle or.”
Crest
“A dexter arm embowed, vested argent, cuffed sable, holding in the hand proper a sword of the first, hilt and pommel or.”
what does “Fidelitas in adversis” mean?
is that some latin action? Faith in adversity?
Hi Jeff.
The strange syntax around the coat of arms information is in fact normal for heraldry. There is a common misconception, though, that “coats of arms” are “family” things. In the English tradition, they belong to individuals, not to families.
This is the descripton of the sheild from the coat of arms you mentioned: “Argent, three bars gules on a canton of the second a castle or.”
In English, not heraldry-ese, this would read:
The sheild is, overall, white (silver, or argent, being used as a ‘metal’ but it’s alwasy drawn in colour as white), with three red narrow horizontal stripes in red; in the top left corner a red box with a yellow castle (“or” or heraldic gold, is alsways drawn in colour as yellow).
The crest is the thing on top of the helmet in a full representation of a coat of arms. Like the sheild, it is part of an individual design. In the English tradition there is in fact no such thing as a “family crest” despite the widespread popular culture assumption that there is.
Your crest description was written: “A dexter arm embowed, vested argent, cuffed sable, holding in the hand proper a sword of the first, hilt and pommel or.”
This translates to English as:
A right arm, bent at the elbow, dressed in white with black cuff, with hand represented naturalistically, holding a white sword with yellow hilt and pommel.
Does that help??
Also, I would suggest “Fidelitas in adversis” means something closer to “Truthfulness during adversity” but I’m not a latin scholar.
cheers,
- David
Impressive. It’s a good thing I warned people that my post was likely inaccurate.