Gabrilite Habit

[Evie]

Oh, I forgot to mention earlier, but seeing your drawing again reminds me, there wouldn't be the eight-pointed star in the Gabrilite Order's cross fitchy badge, assuming the blazon listed in the RPG is correct, although that star is in the right palm symbol that appears on the green and white Healer badges.

I wonder if Thomas Deitz the artist was the same person as Tom Deitz the fantasy novelist? If so, those round circles around all of those badges in the artwork are almost certainly meant to be framing bits of the furniture the badges are displayed on, and possibly raised higher than the roundels themselves, since Tom Deitz was in the SCA (in my own Kingdom, in fact) and presumably would have known something about heraldry or at least would have known where to look up the information. Though maybe he got an incomplete blazon, or else KK hadn't decided to make those equal-armed crosses fitchy yet, so he was going by old information. Unfortunately he is no longer with us, so that's a question we're not likely to get an answer for, in this life anyway.   

[Elkhound]

We have the description of the Healer's Badge for Gabrielites and for lay/secular Healers, but what about religious/monastic Healers who are members of other Orders?

[Laurna]

LOL, I know, you know how much I love embellishments... sigh... I rather like the 8 star embellishment... I will leave it where it belongs, on the healer's hand.

Perhaps these are better.


Equal-armed 1) Cross Fitchy   2) Cross Moline   3) Cross Moline Fitchy

And though it is sad to hear Tom Dietz is not longer with us, I think it is nice that he was once part of your SCA group. You will have to ask others that knew him if he did the artist cover for Deryni Archives so many years ago.

[Evie]

LOL, I know, you know how much I love embellishments... sigh... I rather like the 8 star embellishment... I will leave it where it belongs, on the healer's hand.

Perhaps these are better.


Equal-armed 1) Cross Fitchy   2) Cross Moline   3) Cross Moline Fitchy

And though is it sad to hear Tom Dietz is not longer with us, I think it nice that he was once part of your SCA group. You will have to ask others that knew him if he did the artist cover for Deryni Archives so many years ago.

Yes, I know you and your love of embellishments!    But here is why, when it comes to heraldry, the device needs to be emblazoned exactly as described in the blazon. In an age when a great many people were illiterate, the heraldic arms or badges were essentially people's ID cards. Even if their arms were similar (for instance, if a son's arms were exactly the same as his father's except that his had a mark of cadency at the top that showed he was the eldest son, or the second son, etc.), a person looking at them ought to be able to say, "Oh, that's Lord X" or "That's Lord X's heir," etc. Or in the case of a group's badge, they'd need to be able to tell for certain, "This person/item belongs to the Gabrilite order," not just "Hm...that looks sort of Gabrilitish, but maybe it's some splinter group that broke off from the Order and is trying to pass itself off as Gabrilite?"

In modern day terms, changing the emblazon is pretty much the same thing as me looking at my driver's license and saying, "Hm, this looks OK, but I think it would look nicer if I stick Catherine Zeta-Jones' photo in this corner rather than my own photo. She has dark hair and brown eyes like me, so it's really not that much of a difference, but she's prettier, so it will just be a nice little embellishment.  Oh, and you know, I'll just tweak my name also. I rather like the name Catherine Zeta-Jones...."  What I'd end up with might be a prettier driver's license, but as a photo ID for me it would become absolutely useless. If I were to drop it in the mall, no one would show up at Mall Security with it asking to have me paged; they'd page Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Worse, this could be constituted as identity theft or false credentials. In the medieval world, they took their heraldry equally seriously. You could have a little bit of artistic licence in how you drew something as long as it still matched exactly with the blazon--for instance, one artist drawing the Haldane lion might draw it with a big fluffy mane and beautifully drawn facial features, while another artist might draw it with a spikier mane and less skillfully drawn features, but that animal still has to be recognizably a lion, it still has to be the main charge, and it has to be drawn with its arms and legs in a particular position and facing a certain way (rampant) with his head facing the viewer (guardant). It must be gold (or yellow) since that's what the blazon says, and you can't just add random stuff to it like a rose between its teeth unless the blazon is changed to reflect this also, but then it becomes an ID for someone else at that point, not The Haldane's arms anymore.

So getting back to our badges, the "Azure, an equal-armed cross fitchy Argent" emblazon (the #1 example in your image) works perfectly well as an identifier for the Gabriite Order, and it's faithful to the description that KK (I presume?) created for it. Let's not try to turn it into the Ordo Catherine Zeta-Jones!  (Even though, personally, my favorite of those badges is #2, it doesn't have the same symbolic significance. The reason the cross fitchy has that point at the bottom was that it started off as a Crusader's Cross, and that pointed bottom could be driven into the ground wherever they were. Remember that the Gabrilites are not just Healers, they are also a knightly order, and as that order spread throughout the land, it too planted the Gabrilite Cross wherever it established a monastic House of the Order. So #1 might not look as decorative, but it makes a symbolic statement.)

Tom's Wikipedia entry indicates he also did fantasy art, so the picture could well be by the same Tom Deitz. However, the SCA Tom Deitz belonged to a group several hours away in Georgia (my Kingdom encompasses all of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and teeny bits of other states I think), so I doubt I'll have a chance to ask his friends if they knew of him doing any Deryni art, since I haven't been to an event out that way since my son was a toddler. DH knew him a little bit, but he didn't know.

We have the description of the Healer's Badge for Gabrielites and for lay/secular Healers, but what about religious/monastic Healers who are members of other Orders?

My guess is that anyone who started out as a Michaeline (or some other order) but who showed a talent for Healing would have been steered to the Gabrilites or Varnarites for training, since those were the experts. But I think the Healers badges are for Healers no matter what other affiliations they might have, so if someone was trained by the Gabrilites like Rhys Thuryn was, but later decided to become a Michaeline Knight rather than joining the Gabrilites or becoming a secular Healer, they'd probably wear the Michaeline badge and whichever Healer's badge was most appropriate for their status (religious or lay brother).

[Laurna]

I agree the first image is most accurate for the RPG description. However, the original question is still left unanswered. Does the conical source truly say it is a "flared cross"? If it is flared, then the type of flare does not appear to be named in the badge description. Therefore, the artist is left to make a guess.
The Michaeline badge states it has a Moline flare so that is why I chose Moline as in image #3, but I will agree that this is too similar to the Michaeline badge for the Gabrilites badge unless the one order is an offshoot of the other.  But I do not think that this is the situation between these two orders. For me, it is just a matter of artistic curiosity and a little more education in Heraldry, so I will wait to see if FriarJohn00 finds the answer.

[Elkhound]

We have the description of the Healer's Badge for Gabrielites and for lay/secular Healers, but what about religious/monastic Healers who are members of other Orders?

My guess is that anyone who started out as a Michaeline (or some other order) but who showed a talent for Healing would have been steered to the Gabrilites or Varnarites for training, since those were the experts. But I think the Healers badges are for Healers no matter what other affiliations they might have, so if someone was trained by the Gabrilites like Rhys Thuryn was, but later decided to become a Michaeline Knight rather than joining the Gabrilites or becoming a secular Healer, they'd probably wear the Michaeline badge and whichever Healer's badge was most appropriate for their status (religious or lay brother).

But other Orders need healers in their ranks.  Enclosed orders need someone to run their infirmaries, and the Michaelines, as a military order, need people to take care of brothers who get wounded.  It makes more sense to send them for training in the specific healing aspects to the Gabrielites than to ask the Gabrielites to send brothers on 'detached duty' as it were.  Particularly for the Michelines, given the pacifist orientation of the Gabrielites.

I like the image of the Haldane arms with a rose between the lion's teeth.  If a Haldane prince were to marry a woman whose family arms had a rose as its principal charge, he might difference it that way.  (Technically called 'compounding of arms.')

[Evie]

We have the description of the Healer's Badge for Gabrielites and for lay/secular Healers, but what about religious/monastic Healers who are members of other Orders?

My guess is that anyone who started out as a Michaeline (or some other order) but who showed a talent for Healing would have been steered to the Gabrilites or Varnarites for training, since those were the experts. But I think the Healers badges are for Healers no matter what other affiliations they might have, so if someone was trained by the Gabrilites like Rhys Thuryn was, but later decided to become a Michaeline Knight rather than joining the Gabrilites or becoming a secular Healer, they'd probably wear the Michaeline badge and whichever Healer's badge was most appropriate for their status (religious or lay brother).

But other Orders need healers in their ranks.  Enclosed orders need someone to run their infirmaries, and the Michaelines, as a military order, need people to take care of brothers who get wounded.  It makes more sense to send them for training in the specific healing aspects to the Gabrielites than to ask the Gabrielites to send brothers on 'detached duty' as it were.  Particularly for the Michelines, given the pacifist orientation of the Gabrielites.

Yes, which is why the Gabrilites train Healers even if those Healers aren't members of their Order and don't intend to be, such as Rhys, who had a Gabrilite Healer education but chose a secular life. A Michaeline Healer could learn the healing arts from the Gabrilites (or presumably from the Varnarites if he prefers that healing tradition) and still wear the Healer's Badge of a religious along with the Michaeline badge, and anyone seeing these would know he was a Michaeline and also a trained Healer. Wearing a Healer's badge doesn't necessarily mean one is a member of the Gabrilite Order unless one is also dressed as a Gabrilite.

[DesertRose]

IIRC, when KK was writing Dom Queron, she had him mention that Gabrilite priests undergo a very strenuous testing of their vocations as priests because the Gabrilites actively discouraged Healers from becoming priests; they wanted Healers mainly to marry and make more Healers. 

So there are probably rather a lot of men like Rhys, with Gabrilite Healer training and wearing the secular Healer's badge, many more of them than there are Gabrilite Healer-priests.

As a side note, I think it's interesting that Rhys didn't come from a Healer family but had a .500 batting average at fathering Healers. 

[Friarjohn00]

According to KK in the Chat last night #2 is the closest, the description is in the back of Magic.
That said, and I'm now reworking my patterns ... but what size and where on the habit, should the badges be? I saw the cross going on the front of the Capuche/Cowel and the healers badges goin on the arm.
That said, I could see the cross, and a larger one at that, on the chest of the Tunic, and both on the mantel.

[Evie]

If worn on the mantle, the Healer's badge is conventionally worn on the left side, IIRC. I had to look up that detail when costuming Mini-Rhys.

[Friarjohn00]

That makes sense, over the heart. So should a healers Badge go on the left arm as well? (I'm sorry, other than Magic and Rising all my books are packed up.)