An 'armless question

[Bert45]

I like heraldry. I like the way that a coat-of-arms can be described in so few words, most of them very strange. 'A bend or' for instance. How about: "Or between two Flaunches fracted fesswise two Roundels Sable over all six Guitar Strings palewise throughout counterchanged"? [Sir Paul McCartney]. This leads to my questions: how should the coat-of-arms in the attached photo be described, and whose coat-of-arms is it? The photo was taken in the Praza do Obradoiro. The device is on what I think is part of the Pazo de Xelmírez, and so I suspect that it belongs to the Archbishp Xelmírez who ordered the construction of the building; however, I would appreciate confirmation. I'd like to know what the lower half of the device represents: is it a bridge, or scaffolding?

 

[David Tallan]

On another forum, I hang around a bunch of heralds. I've asked them. I will share whatever answer I receive.

 

[David Tallan]

Top left looks like roundels on a field, top right looks like a checky divided field, and the cap above is certainly ecclesiastical, and with the row of four tassels poking out at the bottom, an appropriate number for an Archbishop.
If the bridge didn't cover the entire base, I'd suspect impaled ecclesiastical arms of a person with their religious job's arms, but the base across the whole field... Maybe the bit in the middle is his job's/diocese arms?

It would be the Archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela. Their armory does include a star, so the star in the center might be an allusion to that.

Digging deep and relying on my very iffy Spanish, it looks like the chief sinister quarter is De Bermúdez de Montaos, *checky Or and gules*.

The chief dexter quarter looks to be *argent hurty*, the ancient arms being *argent, six hurts*.

Genealogía Bermúdez de Castro

Genealogía Bermúdez de Castro

genealogiabermudezdecastro.es

Apropos of nothing, it seems that Wiktionary cites an LoAR for *hurty*: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:hurty

 

[Rick of Rick and Peg]

Sorry @Bert45 but I'm not really interested in your coat-of-arms but @Camino Chrissy just posted a picture of two angels holding two coats-of-arms in Monforte de Lemos. These did get me looking around for their stories. I replied to Chris' post with a link to an intriguing description of them. I'm withholding judgement on believability of the write-up. Chris' post is linked to below, my post is the next one.

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/angel-art-along-the-camino.89127/#post-1298348

 

[Kathor1]

Sorry @Bert45 but I'm not really interested in your coat-of-arms but @Camino Chrissy just posted a picture of two angels holding two coats-of-arms in Monforte de Lemos. These did get me looking around for their stories. I replied to Chris' post with a link to an intriguing description of them. I'm withholding judgement on believability of the write-up. Chris' post is linked to below, my post is the next one.

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/angel-art-along-the-camino.89127/#post-1298348

The blogger's description of a connection between two Galician coats of arms, a murder case in Italy and a renowned Flemish painting of the 15th century is not believable.

I read up a bit on van der Goes and his masterpiece - some of it in German by art historians of the Berlin museum who bought the painting in 1910, apparently for a record sum, i.e. art historians both from the time of acquisition and from very recent years: It is not known who commissioned the painting. It was painted in the Low Countries and was on display in the Low Countries for a while (it got copied numerous times while there). How and when the altarpiece ended up in Monteforte is not known. The website blogger apparently bases his theory on "iconography". I don't want to overuse the word but this ""reason"" in particular is nonsense.