Emblemele sigiliilor săteşti ca izvor pentru elaborarea stemelor comunale
The Arms of the Rural Seals as a Model in the Elaboration of the Communal Coat-Of-Arms

Summary/Abstract: The study points out the existence of a sealing tradition for at least one and a half century within the rural communities across the present Romanian territory. Their presence marks a process of modernization with the village being recognized as an administrative unit. Unfortunately, it is only in the case of areas temporarily under the administration of the Habsburg Empire (Transylvania, Bukovine) that one can speak of sealing arms which individualized the villages and which could be used at the elaboration of the coat-of-arms. To these, should be added about 40 Bulgarian-Orthodox Turkish colonies in the south of Bessarabia under the administration of the Russian Empire (after 1812), which maintained their sealing arms also after 1856, when they entered the Romanian administrative system. The rural sites in Moldavia and Wallachia did not have village seals with their own arms. The only exceptions are represented by few mediaeval towns which decayed in time and became simple villages, and which may or not be the centers of the communes. Those without a coat-of-arms could benefit from the universe of symbols assured by the sealing dowry preserved in the territories where this phenomenon existed. The study of the old rural seals also suggests another way of elaborating the communal coat-of-arms: "the speaking arms" (or, sometimes, just allusive). This refers to the translation into a heraldic drawing of the name of the concerned site. One can notice that this is not a recent method and in fact this is how many of the old coat-of-arms had been created. Both the preserved sealing arms and the "speaking arms" provide a wide opening for the communal heraldry towards ethnographic sources of inspiration. Thus the new coat-of-arms may face the risk to diverge quite a lot from the repertory of classic heraldry. That is why a debate is necessary between heraldry specialists so to establish criteria which would help getting optimal results in this field.

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