Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

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JMcMillan
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby JMcMillan » 26 Jun 2014, 15:38

Chris Green wrote:Joseph: Your wheels look to me more like water wheels than torture wheels. To conform to the usually accepted hagiography, a wheel representing St Catherine should be broken, since she was said to have been condemned to be broken by the wheel but instead it broke and she was eventually beheaded.


Well, this was put together quickly, meaning I used the standard clip-art of a Catherine wheel, with the curved spikes, which appears in this form in numerous arms in various countries, all alluding to St. Catherine, as on the arms of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.

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I have no objection to showing it broken, although that would seem to be a specific reference to St. Catherine herself, rather than as an instrument of torture more generally. If the priest in question has a particular devotion to St. Catherine, that would make sense, but (it seems to me) not otherwise.
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby Chris Green » 26 Jun 2014, 16:23

I used the standard clip-art of a Catherine wheel, with the curved spikes, which appears in this form in numerous arms in various countries, all alluding to St. Catherine, as on the arms of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.


I agree that what is often referred to as a "Catherine Wheel" generally has protrusions from the rim. However these more often than not look like those appropriate to a water wheel. Broxbourne Borough Council's water wheel is a representative example.''

Image

The extremely unpleasant death by torture apparently used an ordinary cart wheel (anyone who wants the gory details can Wiki it themselves!).
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby Ryan Shuflin » 29 Jun 2014, 00:55

Since imprisonment is not martyrdom, perhaps fetters or a broken fetterlock would be more appropriate?

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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby GSelvester » 29 Jun 2014, 22:29

JMcMillan wrote:
Image



This is how I have always seen a St. Catherine's wheel depicted in heraldry and how it usually is depicted in Catholic hagiographical iconography. It is always important to remember that certain traditional heraldic forms have evolved over time that don't always correspond to how something really looks. Heraldry isn't photography.

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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby GSelvester » 29 Jun 2014, 22:33

Chris Green wrote:
I must say that I find the idea of representing an instrument of torture on a modern CoA somewhat distasteful. Moreover, if I read Edward's original post correctly, the priest in question was badly treated in prison but not tortured to death. If the priest survived his incarceration, perhaps something like a bird flying from the broken bars representing his prison cell might be more uplifting.


I don't see what it being a modern coat of arms has to do with it. Torture still happens all the time in the modern world. We can't relegate it to being a thing of the past because that makes us feel better. That's dishonest. This priest was tortured. It is entirely appropriate to use a symbol of one who, likewise, was tortured for the faith even if the torture did not end in death. I don't see how it is the role of heraldry to be more "uplifting". That shouldn't enter into it at all. The goal of heraldry is to create a symbolic form of identification of an individual. If that individual was tortured there is no reason to sugarcoat that.

The St. Catherine wheel, which is, after all, the symbol appropriate to her, seems eminently appropriate here as the wheel was an instrument of torture but not the instrument of her death. Similarly, the priest in question suffered torture that did not result in the loss of his life. I would say it is the ideal symbol to use.

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Chris Green
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby Chris Green » 30 Jun 2014, 06:30

I don't see what it being a modern coat of arms has to do with it. Torture still happens all the time in the modern world. We can't relegate it to being a thing of the past because that makes us feel better. That's dishonest. This priest was tortured. It is entirely appropriate to use a symbol of one who, likewise, was tortured for the faith even if the torture did not end in death. I don't see how it is the role of heraldry to be more "uplifting". That shouldn't enter into it at all. The goal of heraldry is to create a symbolic form of identification of an individual. If that individual was tortured there is no reason to sugarcoat that.


I am relieved to hear that you do not suggest depicting some modern contraption with electrodes. An heraldic artist tasked with depicting such a blazon would probably not be very accurate, and I suspect that the same was true of depicting a wheel used in torture. Such a torture was extremely unusual (thank the Lord) in medieval Europe, so heraldic artists asked to illustrate such a thing would be most unlikely to have witnessed such an event. So I imagine they might have tried to come up with something that didn't look like a common cart-wheel (although such accounts as exist of such torture mostly say that that was what was used).

But my point was not to minimise the dreadful fact that in modern times a priest was tortured for his faith, rather to suggest that there might be heraldic ways of illustrating his overcoming his suffering rather than relying on the traditional and rather innacurate heraldic charge associated with St Catherine.
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby Bruce E Weller » 30 Jun 2014, 07:59

An instructive series of posts for which, my thanks.

While the blazon can and should, I agree, recognise and honour the recipient's faith and history, my own inclination, too, would be to try to draw a lesson for the future, if indeed, such shattering experience can offer more than admiration for his personal endurance. Perhaps the recipient has drawn a conclusion?

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Edward Hillenbrand
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby Edward Hillenbrand » 05 Aug 2014, 23:15

My apologies for not getting back to this project sooner. There is a lot of good information by all the posters here. I like the second idea of Joseph McMillan, Esq ;) It is easy on the eyes and simple, which I always have liked.

I do have a few other questions: I thought the Catherine's Wheel was supposed to have a break in it? Also, I used the flag of the Vatican to indicate where or for whom he was tortured. Is that misinformation? Realize I am using a lot of online heraldry books/sites so wrong information is not unheard of.

I did use the lozenge shaped shield as the Father worked in Kenya and that shield has a lot of meaning for Padre.
Ed Hillenbrand

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JMcMillan
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby JMcMillan » 06 Aug 2014, 01:25

Edward Hillenbrand wrote:I did use the lozenge shaped shield as the Father worked in Kenya and that shield has a lot of meaning for Padre.


So by "lozenge shaped" you mean rather the vesica-shaped shield, the traditional East African form used in the arms of Kenya, Botswana, and Uganda? I.e., pointed at the top and bottom and rounded on the sides?

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Joseph McMillan
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Re: Looking for help: Blazon for Maryknoll Priest

Postby Edward Hillenbrand » 06 Aug 2014, 02:58

Yes.
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