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Heraldry encompasses all of the duties of a herald, including the science and art of designing, displaying, describing and recording coats of arms and badges, as well as the formal ceremonies and laws that regulate the use and inheritance of arms. The origins of heraldry lie in the medieval need to distinguish participants in battles or jousts, whose faces were hidden by steel helmets.

Vexillology (from the Latin vexillum, a flag or banner) is the scholarly study of flags, including the creation and development of a body of knowledge about flags of all types, their forms and functions, and of scientific theories and principles based on that knowledge. Flags were originally used to assist military coordination on the battlefield, and have evolved into a general tool for signalling and identification, particularly identification of countries.

The Shield of the Trinity or Scutum Fidei is a traditional Christian visual symbol which expresses many aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity, summarizing the first part of the Athanasian Creed in a compact diagram. In medieval England and France, this emblem was considered to be the heraldic arms of God (and of the Trinity). The precise origin of this diagram is unknown, but it was evidently influenced by 12th-century experiments in symbolizing the Trinity in abstract visual form, mainly by Petrus Alfonsi's Tetragrammaton-Trinity diagram of ca. 1109.

The Shield of the Trinity diagram is attested from as early as a ca. 1208-1216 manuscript. The diagram was used heraldically from the mid-13th century, when a shield-shaped version of the diagram (not actually placed on a shield) was included among the heraldic shields in Matthew Paris' Chronica Majora, ca. 1250. Allegorical illustrations ca. 1260 show the diagram placed on a shield. The period of its most widespread use was during the 15th and 16th centuries, when it is in found in a number of English and French manuscripts, books, stained-glass windows and ornamental carvings. (more...)

John Anstis (29 August 1669–4 March 1744) was an English officer of arms and antiquarian. He rose to the highest heraldic office in England and became Garter King of Arms in 1718 after years of plotting. Anstis was born at St Neot, Cornwall on 29 August 1669. He was the first son of another John Anstis and his wife Mary, the daughter of George Smith. Anstis matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on 27 March 1685 and entered the Middle Temple on 31 January 1690. On 23 June 1695 he married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Richard Cudlipp of Tavistock, Devon. They had eight sons and six daughters. (more...)

The flag of Portugal consists of a rectangular (ratio 2:3) uneven vertical bicolor, that is, a field vertically divided into two unequal stripes of green, at the hoist, and red, at the fly. The minor version of the national coat of arms (armillary sphere and Portuguese shield) is centered over the boundary between the colors at equal distance from the upper and lower edges. Portugal officially adopted this design for its national flag on 30 June 1911, replacing the one used under the constitutional monarchy, after it was chosen among several proposals by a special commission, whose members included Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, João Chagas, and Abel Botelho. (more...)