Heraldičko nazivlje na temu ratovanja s Osmanlijama
Ottoman wars in the heraldic nomenclature

Summary/Abstract: An analysis of selected coats of arms from the Bojničić’s armorial bearing symbols of enemies and their syntax (interactions between people, animals and objects), has led to a conclusion that wars against the Ottomans resulted in a unique and rich heraldic nomenclature. Families that received coats of arms in the period between mid-fifteenth and the second half of the nineteenth century were members of the military nobility from the Croatian-Slavonian Military Border. They received new coats of arms, or renewed old ones, as a reward for their services in the wars against the Ottoman Empire. By incorporating images from the battlefield, these coats of arms grew more complex and more realistic: they vividly represented the victor (the bearer of the coat of arms) and the defeated (the Turk, with his attributes). This unique heraldry resulted, in the end, in the personalization of the coat of arms and its transformation from a symbol of an individual to a bearer of the collective memory of the past events. This essay attempts to analyze coats of arms that contain images of the Ottoman wars and is thus a small contribution towards the topic discussed above. It furthermore encourages new assessments of Bojničić’s armorial as a source for the study of the methodology and the analytical approach towards the heraldic sources. The purpose of such a study is to construct a clearer heraldic terminology and the blazon formula, as a precondition for high quality scholarly research.

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