Silvester Petra Sancta

Pseudonym: Coelius Servilius He was the confessor of the Cardinal Pier Luigi Carafa (1581–1655) from a distinguished Neapolitan family.

Between 1624 and 1634, Petra Sancta stayed with Carafa in Cologne where he fought against rising Protestantism through his sermons and religious discussions.

As a result of his critical visitation, Pope Innocent X reduced the order in his breve Ea quae pro felice on March 16, 1646, into a secular congregation subordinated to the local bishops.

Petra Sancta characterizes the title page of this book in the conclusion as an expression of the power of emblematic way of illustration.

Thus it's obvious that Petra Sancta got the model for his heraldic hatching system from the illustrators and publishers of his books in the Low Countries.

The arms on the title page of one of the Francesco Corbelletti's 1639 publications,[4] i. e. the Rome publisher of Petra Sancta, already represents a complete example of heraldic hatching.

If we consider the time needed to prepare the engravings and the approval by the censor,[A] Corbelletti must have known the hatching system of Petra Sancta even before 1638.

Frontispiece to Petra Sancta's Tesserae Gentilitiae (1638)
The title page of Petra Sancta's De Symbolis heroicis (1634)
Hatching table (De symbolis heroicis, 1634)
Description of hatching system (De symbolis heroicis, 1634)
The portrait of cardinal Carafa from the book De Symbolis heroicis (with kind of a screening, not heraldic hatching at the escutcheon)
The Carafa coat of arms (De symbolis heroicis, 1634) with screening, not heraldic hatching at the escutcheon
The Carafa genealogy (De symbolis heroicis, 1634) with screening, not heraldic hatching at the escutcheons