Vert - Middle Ages

Middle Ages

Both the English vert and the French sinople have not been used to refer to "green" heraldic tinctures prior to the 15th century. The reason for this is that green was not used as a heraldic colour during the formative phase of heraldry in the High Middle Ages, because green is the "colour of Islam" (historically, of the Fatimid Caliphate), and was not used in coats of arms by Christian crusaders.

The French term sinople was in use prior to the 15th century, but it did not refer to green, but rather to red, being identical in origin to Cinnabar, originally the name of a red pigment also known as sinopia. Descriptions of knightly shields as painted at least partly green in Arthurian romance are found earlier, even in the late 12th century. Here, the Chevalier au Vert Escu ("knight with the green shield") often marks a kind of supernatural character outside of normal chivalric society (as is still the case with the English "Green Knight" of ca. 1390), perhaps in connection with the Wild Man or Green Man of medieval figurative art. The Anglo-Norman prose Brut (ca. 1200) has Brutus of Troy bear a green shield, Brutus Vert-Escu, Brutus Viride Scutum.

Green is occasionally found in historical coats of arms (as opposed to the fictional "green knights" of Arthurian romance) from as early as the 13th century, but it remained rare, and indeed actively avoided, well into the 15th century, but becomes more common in the classical heraldry of the 16th and 17th centuries.

An early example of a green escutcheon was that of the coat of arms of Styria, based on the banner of Ottokar II of Bohemia (r. 1253-1278), described by chronist Ottokar aus der Gaal (ca. 1315) as:

ein banier grüene als ein gras / darin ein pantel swebte / blanc, als ob ez lebte

"a banner green as grass, therein suspended a panther in white, as if alive."