Project Grbovnik

Project Grbovnik represents the most important project of the Society of Serbian Genealogists Poreklo in the field of heraldry. It was launched in December 2017 and was conceived as a dedicated platform for collecting, processing and systematizing heraldic records important for studying the development of heraldry among Serbs.

The Grbovnik site is divided into three basic parts.

The first and most developed part refers to the so-called Illyrian heraldry. It is a rich heraldic material that relies on the Illyrian coat-of-arms created in the early 90s of the 16th century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it is known that as many as twenty of his copies have been preserved, while approximately as many are known to have existed, but today all trace of them is lost. This very interesting material provides an opportunity to research the origin and genesis of many modern coats-of-arms in the South Slavic area.

When all the transcripts are joined, it consists of 10 land coats of arms and about 200 family coats of arms. In addition to the transcript of the heraldry, this corpus of heraldic material also includes genealogies from the same period, as well as numerous lists of medieval nobility, created in the image of the Illyrian heraldry. Thus, almost all known and available material from this area was collected, and here it is systematized and presented through several subcategories, of which subcategories dedicated to the coats-of-arms of the rulers, of the lands, of the medieval nobility, and finally symbols of Illyrian heraldry.

The second part consists of the Modern nobility and its heraldic heritage. This part is less elaborated, but mainly includes Serbian families who acquired nobility and aristocratic titles from the middle of the 15th to the beginning of the 20th, mostly in neighboring countries like Austria, Hungary, Venice, but there are also examples of Serbian dignitaries who acquired aristocratic status or title by serving Russian Tsars or Napoleon Bonaparte.

The third part consists of Modern Serbian heraldry, the coats of arms of modern Serbian heraldry bearers. This valuable collection currently consists of about eighty coats of arms, whose authors are mostly well-known local heraldic artists. The collection is conceived as one place where we would collect the coats of arms of all modern Serbian coat of arms bearers.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that in parallel with the work on the Grbovnik project, the Committee of Heraldry formed a representative heraldic library, which consists of some very rare titles. This library currently has more than 150 domestic and foreign books in the field of heraldry and related topics.

The work on this project is being realized in cooperation with the Committee for Heraldry of the Society of Serbian Genealogists Poreklo and the Society of Serbian Armigers Miloš Obilić from Belgrade. Access to the web-site is limited, and available only to members of SSG Poreklo and SSA Miloš Obilić.