On the Institute's Seal.

I Heraldic Description

Or, an arch quadripartite gules, surmounted by an escutcheon argent bearing the letter M sable; the whole encircled by the motto in capitals of the first.

Rendered in the modern manner, the seal consists of a four-fold archway in the Institute's standing orange, set against a parchment field, supporting a small white shield charged with the canonical letter M. The arch is the principal device; the shield is the differencing element by which the Institute's seal is distinguished from the older university and civic arches it formally resembles.

II Symbolism

The Arch

The arch — quadripartite, that is, divided into four equal compartments — represents the four cardinal continents on which the Institute maintains chartered presence: the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia (with Oceania subsumed under the latter for heraldic economy). The form is borrowed from the entablature of the Old Phoenix Building in Boston, where the founding convocation was held in October of 2020.

The Shield

The shield, charged with the canonical letter, recalls a tradition in fraternal heraldry whereby the body's distinguishing initial is borne in the position of greatest visual authority. The white ground is intended to suggest the parchment of the founding constitution.

The Motto

The motto — Per nomen, communitas — translates loosely as "Through the name, community." The phrase was proposed by M. Power at the third meeting of the founding Board and adopted, after some deliberation as to the case of the substantive, by acclamation. It expresses, in compact form, the Institute's founding conviction: that a shared given name, rightly attended to, can serve as a generative axis for civic life.

III Authorized Use

The seal, in conjunction with the wordmark, is governed by the standards published on the wordmark page. The seal may not appear without the wordmark in any public-facing application except as expressly authorized by the President.

The seal as displayed on this page is the principal authorized rendering. Subsidiary renderings — embossed, single-color, reversed — are reproduced in the wordmark guide.

IV Provenance

The seal was designed in the autumn of 2020 by a small ad-hoc committee chaired by M. Doyle and including, as advisors, two designers of the founding generation. The original artwork is held in the correspondence files at the seat of the Institute, where it may be consulted by appointment. Subsequent revisions have been confined to the optical refinement of the letterform; the compositional structure has not been altered.