Introduction

Abstract The introduction sets out the subject, sources, approach, and aims of this book, and contextualizes its interest in the perceptions and functions of heraldic communication in the urban societies of late medieval England and Germany with a survey of the place of heraldry in previous scholarship on medieval and urban history. Recently, a ‘new heraldry’ has emerged which rejects the notion of heraldry as a closed-off system, instead adopting methodologies from cultural history and studies in visual culture to analyse heraldry as a versatile and ubiquitous communicative phenomenon susceptible to diachronic change, synchronic contingency, and historical and cultural variation. This perspective informs the book’s analysis of heraldry’s role in urban society, which has until now remained underexplored.