Some variations of the Shield of the Trinity diagram are shown in the image below: A shield-shaped version of the diagram placed on a red shield (heraldic
gules) was
attributed as the
arms of God (and of the Trinity) by heralds in 15th-century England and France. The "banner of the Trinity" which
Jean Le Fevre, Seigneur of St. Remy, and
Jehan de Wavrin attest that
Henry V of England displayed at
Agincourt would have been the same, but with the
emblem on a red flag instead of a red shield. This coat of arms was given the following heraldic
blazon in "On Sacred Heraldry" by E.L. Blackburne, attached as Appendix II to
Emblems of the Saints, By which they are Distinguished in Works of Art by
F. C. Husenbeth, edited by Augustus Jessopp, 3rd.ed. 1882:Gules, an orle and pall Argent, conjoined and surmounted of four plates, occupying the dexter and sinister chief and the base and fess points respectively; the first inscribed "", the second "", and the third "", the centre ""; the connecting portions of the orle between them having the words "", and those of the pall "".The diagram on a blue shield (heraldic
azure) was the coat of arms of the Priory of
Black Canons (
monastery of Christ Church) near
Aldgate in the
City of London. See also the 15th-century coat of arms attributed to
St. Michael the Archangel and the modern coat of arms of the Anglican diocese of Trinidad
shown below. Two of the
13th-century manuscripts have the diagram on a green shield (heraldic
vert), which is also found in the coat of arms of
Trinity Parish, Jersey
shown below. Green is the color of
Trinity Sunday or the Trinity liturgical season in some traditions. Other variant forms of the diagram have the lettering on nodes and links with a golden background color (instead of silver), since gold (heraldic
or) is the other
heraldic metal. So the arms attributed to
St. Faith in late medieval England consist of a diagram with lettering on yellow, placed on a red or blue shield, while the parish of the
Forest, Guernsey uses a diagram with lettering on silver or golden nodes and links, placed on a green shield. In the Middle Ages, the shield-shaped version of the diagram was sometimes imagined as a protective shield wielded by the Archangel Michael, or by an ordinary soul, in the
spiritual warfare against dark forces described in
Ephesians chapter 6, as in the allegorical illustrations in manuscripts of Peraldus' and the De Quincy Apocalypse. A symmetrical rounded form of the diagram with one
vertex up and two down was popularized in the modern period by the Audsleys'
Handbook of Christian Symbolism. This rounded form also occurs with one vertex down and two up. The outer node captions can be reduced to simple initials ("P", "F", and "SS"). On the coat of arms of Trinity Parish, Jersey
shown below, all four node captions are reduced to single initials. In some late medieval English church decorations (such as the bench end at Holy Trinity church,
Blythburgh,
Suffolk and the font at St John the Baptist church,
Butley, Suffolk) the four connected circles are intended as a symbol of the Trinity even when all text is omitted. Many further slight artistic variations can occur in the relative sizes of nodes and links, their exact placement, in lettering styles, in further decorative elaboration, etc. Occasionally one or more of the outer nodes is drawn as a non-circular shape to fit within a space allotted. The diagram can be color-coded in order to bring out the interrelationships between its elements more clearly. In the version included above, the positive or asserting parts of the diagram are shown in black, while the negative or denying parts of the diagram are in red. This is similar to the version of the Shield of the Trinity present in a 15th-century stained glass window in St. Peter and St. Paul church, Fressingfield, Suffolk, England, where only the positive or asserting parts of the diagram are shown—see link
below. A version of the diagram with translated English-language captions is shown in the illustration above. For simplicity, the
definite article could also be left out of the English translations of the outer node captions, as in the next illustration below. In the Middle Ages,
Latin was the liturgical language and main language of scholarship of Western Europe, so that Latin captions were then most often used. At least one old rendition of the diagram in another language is attested in the c. 1260
Anglo-Norman French allegorical illustration in the De Quincy Apocalypse.
Orientation of diagram, and placement of outer node captions As the First Person of the Trinity, the Father is always in the most honorable position in the diagram. So in the form of the diagram with one vertex down, the caption or
Father is always placed in the top left node, which is heraldically in
dexter chief, i.e. top right when considered from the point of view of someone holding the shield from behind. In the form of the diagram with one vertex up, the caption or Father is always placed in the topmost node. The placement of the captions or
Son and or
Holy Spirit in the remaining two outer nodes can vary. In the 13th-century versions of the diagram, the caption is placed in the bottom node. Often a
cross is drawn in the link between the center node and the bottom node, in order to symbolize the idea that the Second Person of the Trinity entered into the world (or that "The Word was made flesh", as is stated in a Latin annotation on the diagram included in
Matthew Paris' which quotes from the
Vulgate of
John verse 1:14). When this form of the Shield of the Trinity diagram with one vertex down is used after the 13th century, the Son is much more often placed in the top right node, and the Holy Spirit in the bottom node (as shown in the illustrations above). The diagram below shows the earliest and most recent major variants of the Shield of the Trinity diagram: On the left, the form attested in various manuscripts c. 1208–1260 AD, and on the right the form popularized among some English-speaking Protestants in recent years by
Paul P. Enns' 1989 book
The Moody Handbook of Theology and H. Wayne House's 1992 book
Charts of Christian Theology and Doctrine. Note that in the 13th-century manuscripts, the cross is often drawn as a detailed artistic illumination of Christ on the cross, which is not attempted here. A few authors of 20th-century books on Christian symbolism (such as Edward N. West in
Outward Signs: The Language of Christian Symbolism, 1989) have been of the opinion that the form of the diagram with one vertex down and the captions and in the two top nodes is more appropriate for Western Christianity with its
Filioque. The form of the diagram with one vertex up represents more closely the doctrine of the Trinity in Eastern Christianity (without the Filioque)—though this hyper-refined interpretation does not agree with 13th-century usage, nor with the use of versions of the diagram with one vertex up by modern Catholics and Protestants. ==Links to depictions of the Shield of the Trinity diagram==