Cardinals' coats (of arms) of many colours

Sydney
16 February 2003

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Cardinals' coats (of arms) of many colours

Cardinals' coats (of arms) of many colours

Michael McCarthy with a copy of his book Heraldica Collegii Cardinalium

By Chris Lindsay

Michael McCarthy, author and world authority on the heraldry of the Catholic Church, clearly has a sense of humour.

His publishing company, Thylacine Press, is named after the Tasmanian tiger, which is an extinct species.

And so, for many people, is heraldry.

But Michael McCarthy is helping save it for posterity with publication of the second volume of his series on the coats of arms of every cardinal the Church has had - the first and only time this has been done.

"I like to think it is a work of the Spirit," the author says.

This latest volume of the beautifully printed Heraldica Collegii Cardinalium covers the cardinals from 1198 to 1799.

The first volume dealt with cardinals from 1800 to 2000.

And there is a supplement on the cardinals created since 2000.

Michael says that after Vatican II, cardinals seemed to lose interest in coats of arms. But this is changing.

For him they are both a form of decoration and a 'shorthand of history'.

When his interest in this history of the Church seen through the coats of arms first blossomed and became "a bit of an obsession", he went in search of a book from the library to look them up.

But to his surprise there wasn't one.

"In fact, in 1970 there wasn't even a full list of cardinals anywhere," Michael says. "The list was not being kept up to date.

"There is still not a list of all the bishops of the Church."

Michael went to the Vatican Library in the 1970s to do research on the cardinals and their coats of arms for Heraldica Collegii Cardinalium.

But tracking down the coat of arms of every ardinal, which has taken him 30 years, has been as much detective work as it has been research.

"You just have to keep looking everywhere for clues," he says. "You get a bit of information and just keep chasing it."

Michael was fortunate in Australia because the correspondence of Cardinal Patrick Moran (Archbishop of Sydney 1884-1911 and cardinal from 1885) was kept in the archives of St Mary's Cathedral.

"Back then cardinals sent each other Christmas greetings and the coats of arms were on their letterhead," he said.

Michael has written to a number of cardinals asking for their assistance.

"Cardinals, it seems, don't answer letters," he says, "because in many cases I got no reply to a number of requests."

When cardinals are appointed they are given a titular church in Rome, of which theoretically they are the 'parish priest'. The tradition was for the cardinal to have his coat of arms on the front of the church (although some did not bother), which has been a source of information for Michael.

He also has an associate in England who does research for him.

Michael says that although the coats of arms in the book are as accurate as he can make them, depending on the information available, there is some flexibility in his painting of the designs.

"I consider myself an artist and I wanted to rellustrate the coats of arms in a consistent style," he says.

"I prefer to do the cardinal's hats as they would look if hung from the wall, not from a side view.

"But it is what is on the shield that is important. Normally it consists of a family coat of arms, and also the coat of arms of the diocese."

Michael is an administrator at the School of Asian Studies, University of Sydney.

He was a seminarian in his youth but it "didn't work out" and he went home to Tasmania. He has maintained strong links with the Church, though, and last year was installed as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.

He has just received a small grant from the National Library of Ireland to produce a book on the coats of arms of the bishops of Ireland.

He has already published a book on the coat of arms of every Australian bishop: An Armorial of the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Australia.

Heraldica Collegii Cardinalium costs $220 and is available from Thylacine Press, 8 Little Surrey St, Darlinghurst, NSW 2011. Email: thylacinepress@ bigpond.com