The (, Book of the Chief Armourer) is an illuminated manuscript dating back to 1509, during the reign of King Manuel I of Portugal. The codex is an armorial, a collection of heraldic arms, authored by the King of Arms João do Cró. It is considered one of the masterpieces of illuminated manuscripts preserved in Portugal, alongside, for example, the Apocalypse of Lorvão, from the 12th century, the Book of Hours of King Duarte, or the contemporary Bible of the Jerónimos Monastery and Book of Hours of Manuel I, also produced for the Venturoso. Being the oldest surviving Portuguese armorial to this day, being the oldest source we have regarding certain arms, and also for the beauty of its magnificent illuminations, it is considered the most important Portuguese armorial. It has been called the "supreme monument of what we can call Portuguese heraldic culture."AZEVEDO, Francisco de Simas Alves de: Uma Interpretação Histórico-Cultural do Livro do Armeiro-Mor, p. 69
The work is called this because it was entrusted to the custody of the Chief Armourer, Álvaro da Costa, appointed in 1511, in whose family the position and the custody of the book remained for more than ten generations. For this reason, the Livro do Armeiro-Mor escaped the great 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which destroyed, among many other things, the Chancellery of Nobility. The book was also the origin of the Book of Nobility and Perfection of Arms, still in the first half of the 16th century. The Thesouro de Nobreza, in the third quarter of the 17th century, somewhat followed the model of João do Cró's work.
This article lists all the nearly four hundred arms in the Livro do Armeiro-Mor, in the exact order in which they are presented in the five chapters of the work.
Characteristics
The Livro do Armeiro-Mor contains 161 folios of parchment, with dimensions of 403 x 315 mm, and is written in Portuguese. At the end of the monarchy, it belonged to the private library of King Carlos. Today it is preserved in the national archive of the Torre do Tombo Archive (Royal House reference, Chancellery of Nobility, book 19).
The book was commissioned by King Manuel I, as can be read at the beginning of the work:
It is therefore an official and normative book, resulting from the attempt of a monarch to regulate the use of heraldic arms in his kingdom:
King Manuel I, through a series of fundamental legislative reforms, managed to carry out... what King John I had initiated but had failed to complete. The publication of the Ordinations, the reform of the charters, the reform of justice, the reform of finance... are, among others, manifestations of the monarch's unifying and centralizing criterion. And from this criterion, the Hall of Coats of Arms and its great contemporaneous armorials also reflect it. Reflections because the prince ceases to articulate with the nobles and lords as great landholders, difficult to control, in order to pass, only, to have them as servants of the crown...Vasco Graça Moura, "Presentation", Livro do Armeiro Mor (2007), p. XIII
The same King Manuel I later had the Hall of Coats of Arms painted in Sintra, whose ceiling is decorated with the arms of the 72 most important lineages of the kingdom. All the arms represented in the Hall of Sintra are also found in the Livro do Armeiro-Mor. Very significantly, practically all the noble titles conferred in Portugal during the Ancien Régime until the end of the 18th century were conferred on one of these 72 lineages, which shows how the Livro do Armeiro-Mor is a mirror of the extraordinarily stable elite of Portuguese society at that time within the European context.MONTEIRO, Nuno Gonçalo: "17th and 18th century Portuguese Nobility in the European Context..."
The Livro do Armeiro-Mor is a general armorial - because it includes arms from the entire kingdom - and universal - because it also includes arms from other kingdoms, whether real or imaginary. It does not include descriptions of the arms.
The volume contains an index that divides the work into five chapters (see below). After legendary and European arms, the body of the book deals with the arms of the Royal House of Portugal and the main families of the kingdom, a total of 287 Portuguese arms. The Portuguese arms are arranged in descending order of importance, starting with the lineages of the old or immemorial nobility, some dating back to the time of the County of Portugal. The book presents one coat of arms per page in the sections that present the legendary, foreign, or main nobility arms of the kingdom. In the last section of the book, four coats of arms of minor or more recent lineages are presented per page.
The analysis of the Livro do Armeiro-Mor is extensive. The work was published in 1956 by the Portuguese Academy of History, accompanied by the most important study of it to this day. This work is currently out of print. More recently, the same academy published a second edition in 2007, which reproduces excerpts from the 1956 study and includes the latest research on the subject. The most important study of the lineages presented in the Livro do Armeiro-Mor remains the work Brasões da Sala de Sintra, in three volumes, by Anselmo Braamcamp Freire. More recently, José Augusto Sotto Mayor Pizarro published his doctoral thesis, Linhagens Medievais Portuguesas: Genealogies and Strategies 1279-1325, in three volumes, in which we can follow the path of some of these lineages during the reign of King Denis.
Author's nationality The authorship of the work has been disputed, mainly the nationality of the King of Arms Portugal, with an English Master Harriet, a Portuguese bachelor named António Rodrigues, and a Frenchman named Jean du Cros being suggested. According to the comments on the most recent edition of the work, the first two are definitively ruled out, and the Portuguese nationality of João do Cró seems to be confirmed.José Calvão Borges, "Brief History of the Livro do Armeiro-Mor", in Livro do Armeiro Mor (2007), p. XXII-XXIV
Helms and mantlings The Livro do Armeiro-Mor stands out for not presenting the crests of the respective arms - only inscribing the word crest above 86 of the Portuguese shields, in the last section of the work -, giving all attention to the shield and only ornamenting it with helmets and magnificent mantlings, and a torse. Since the shield is the absolutely fundamental element of heraldic arms, this can be considered a tradition that gives due importance to the shield and, by keeping the arms simple and limited to the essentials, gives them great dignity. However, in the subsequent Book of Nobility and Perfection of Arms, by António Godinho, whose initiative was due to King Manuel I but was only completed during the reign of King John III, the respective crests were also represented.
Several models of mantlings have been identified in the work, and seven models of mantling, three of which adorn 190 of the arms, and the remaining four only 24.José Calvão Borges, "Description and Analysis", in Livro do Armeiro Mor (2007), p. XXXVI As for the helmets that top the shields, there seem to be no criteria, in the case of noble Houses, regarding the use of gold helmets (34 cases) and silver helmets. "...only one explanation remains. The illuminator did not respect any rule in choosing the metals or colors and the shape of the elements outside the shield. The choices were based solely on artistic criteria, due to the inspiration and creativity of the artist."José Calvão Borges, "Description and Analysis", in Livro do Armeiro Mor (2007), p. XXXVIII As the same author mentions, this was relatively common in armorials of the time.
Certain minor errors in João do Cró's work were corrected by António Godinho, whose work, although not without errors, "should be preferred in establishing the Portuguese armorial".Martim de Albuquerque and João Paulo de Abreu e Lima: "Introduction, Notes...", in Livro da Nobreza e Perfeiçam das Armas, p. 19 The Livro do Armeiro-Mor, however, is unquestionably the reference work for heraldic art.
First Chapter of the Nine of Fame The first chapter of the Livro do Armeiro-Mor presents the arms of the so-called Nine of Fame, historical or legendary heroes of great renown, and also a figure outside the Nine of Fame. In total, ten beautifully illuminated pages, where each shield is presented alongside a figure, although the arms are largely fantastical. The heroes of Fame are divided into three groups of three: three Hebrew kings, three Pagan kings, and three Christian kings. The order of presentation of the ten figures is chronological, except among the pagans, where Hector, the legendary prince of Troy, is presented after Alexander the Great. The other legendary figure is King Arthur, who heads the list of the Christian heroes.
The figure outside the Nine of Fame represents Bertrand du Guesclin, constable of France during the Hundred Years' War.
Following Chapter of the Coats of Arms
The States of Europe, Asia, and Africa
The following chapter of the work, titled "of the Coats of Arms" in the index, presents the arms of 49 major and minor states, on an equal number of pages. Among these states are the main kingdoms of Western Europe, including the kingdoms of the British Isles and Scandinavia. We also find certain historical arms of kingdoms that no longer existed at the time of the execution of the work in 1509, namely three Christian kingdoms of the Holy Land founded during the era of the Crusades: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, and the Kingdom of Cyprus. Similarly, we find the arms of the Byzantine Empire and the Palaiologos dynasty, the last dynasty of the Empire.
Finally, in this chapter, similar to what was seen in the first chapter, we find arms of kingdoms or legendary figures, such as the White Queen. Some of these legendary, more or less fantastical, or unidentified arms are represented in the following list in italics.
These illuminations, unlike the previous ones, do not present figures but only the shields, hung from a crowned helmet and mantlings.
Greater India (folio 6r) Lesser India (folio 6v) King of Jerusalem (folio 7r) Emperor of Germany (folio 7v) King of the Romans (folio 8r) King of France (folio 8v) King of England (folio 9r) King of Castile (folio 9v) King of Portugal (folio 10r) King of Bohemia (folio 10v) King of Sicily (folio 11r) Sultan of Babylon (folio 11v) King of Constantinople (folio 12r) King of Palaiologos (folio 12v) King of Navarre (folio 13r) King of Tarso (folio 13v) King of Hungary (folio 14r) King of Scotland (folio 14v) King of Aragon (folio 15r) King of Mailogres (folio 15v) King of Ireland (folio 16r) King of Cyprus (folio 16v) King of Clavomnia (folio 17r) King of Mens (folio 17v) King of Elves (folio 18r) King of Granada (folio 18v) King of Conimbra (folio 19r) King of Armenia (folio 19v) King of Denmark (folio 20r) King of Norway (folio 20v) King of Poland (folio 21r) King of "Grifonia" (Pomerania or Greece) (folio 21v) King of Gravate (folio 22r) King of Morocco (folio 22v) King of Sardinia (folio 23r) King of Tunis (folio 23v) King of Dalmatia (folio 24r) King of Thessaloniki (folio 24v) King of Wallachia (folio 25r) King of Danamt (folio 25v) King of Bugia (folio 26r) King of Estunell (folio 26v) King of Africa (folio 27r) King of Arabia (folio 27v) King of the Orkneys (folio 28r) King of Bosnia (folio 28v) King of Poland (Coat of arms of Kalisz) (folio 29r) White Queen (folio 29v) King of Sweden (folio 30r)
'Chapter of the Election of the Emperor of Germany'
The Seven Electors of the Empire