By Carol Symes, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Heraldry was a symbolic system; one that could identify and brand the individual knightly persona and tie him to a noble lineage at a glance. The expanded use of personalized seals to authenticate documents was a key factor that drove the increasing specificity of heraldic devices. One of the first heraldic devices was the symbol of a lion.
Symbol of Lion: Origin Story
Evidence of lion as one of the first heraldic devices—and one thereafter associated with the ruling dynasties of England and Flanders—comes from one of the earliest Arthurian romances composed by the poet Chrétien de Troyes around 1170.
The story tells of a noble knight called Yvain, known as the ‘Knight with the Lion’. In effect, it is an origin story of how heraldry came to be invented. Yvain becomes the chevalier au lyon when he rescues a lion from the clutches of a dragon. The lion, to show his gratitude, swears homage to the knight and becomes his faithful companion. When the lion is mortally wounded in a battle, Yvain tenderly gathers his bleeding body and carries it away on his shield. When the lion dies, Yvain commemorates him, by having his image painted on that same shield.
In the 13th century, one of the most gallant and famous knights on the tournament circuit, Count Robert II of Artois, used to joust in the guise of Yvain. He had apparently loved this very story above all others from boyhood, since he never ceased to use the first seal he ever owned, at the age of sixteen, which bore the device of a lion.
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Personalized Seals
The expanded use of such personalized seals to authenticate documents was a key factor that drove the increasing specificity of heraldic devices. Until the 16th century, throughout northern and western Europe, the signature affixed to a letter, will, contract, or other legal text was a blob of wax impressed by a seal, whose image had to be recognizable and individualized, to guard against forgery. The shape of a seal was often keyed to the status or even gender of the owner: pointed ovals for women, ovals for bishops and abbots, round seals for men. A given individual could adopt a new seal when he or she achieved a new status or was given a new title.
Also, aristocracy was not the only one that could lay claim to a special identity through the design and use of a seal. Contemporaneous with the development of seals for individual clerics, kings, and knights was the adoption of distinctive heraldic devices for corporations—whether towns, guilds, or universities.
The first urban communes of Francia and Flanders, which obtained charters of liberty from the king or count, also obtained the right to function like lords through the use of a corporate seal. Often, urban seals depicted aspects of the architectural environment that made that town distinctive: the encircling wall, a special bell tower, a church. Sometimes they depicted the town’s patron saint or even a group portrait of the governing burgesses.
Use by Non-noble Groups
Thus, almost as soon as heraldry was developed to stamp and protect the status of only pedigreed persons, it quickly became co-opted by non-noble groups and individuals who were supposed to be excluded from participation in this signifying system. In the mercantile and entertainment capital of northeastern Francia, Arras, not only did the governing commune have its own seals, the precocious confraternity of the town’s jongleurs did, too. The two earliest extant examples, probably meant to be used in tandem, show (on the one hand) the confraternity’s patroness, the Blessed Virgin, holding the Christ Child on her knee and the other seal shows a minstrel holding a vielle, a musical instrument, cradled in the exact same position as the baby.
In Arras, moreover, even individual entertainers owned seals which openly mimicked those of aristocrats in really cheeky ways. A jongleur employed by Robert of Artois had his own ‘coat of arms’ emblazoned with two juggler’s batons.
Coats of Arms
In response to this rapid democratization of heraldic symbols, Europe’s nobility retaliated by elevating the professional status of the heralds on whom they relied. Originally, the word had simply meant messenger. But by the end of the 13th century, princely households employed a new class of professional men whose expertise included the capacity to recognize and authenticate the complex symbolic compositions that were now being adopted to safeguard dynastic claims.
By the middle of the 14th century, it was commonly agreed among the aristocratic classes that no two coats of arms should be the same, and it became the task of a courtly King of Heralds, or King of Arms, to police the forgery or theft of heraldic devices and mottoes, and to design new coats-of-arms for those entering the upper echelons of society for the first time.
The Old French word echelon was itself a heraldic term, meaning a military formation or rank. And French—as the vernacular lingua franca of medieval Europe—came to rival Latin as the language of heraldry.
Common Questions about Heraldic Symbols and Their Democratization
The shape of a seal was often keyed to the status or even gender of the owner: pointed ovals for women, ovals for bishops and abbots, round seals for men. A given individual could adopt a new seal when he or she achieved a new status or was given a new title.
Often, urban seals depicted aspects of the architectural environment that made a town distinctive: the encircling wall, a special bell tower, a church. Sometimes they depicted the town’s patron saint or even a group portrait of the governing burgesses.
By the middle of the 14th century, it was agreed among the aristocratic classes that no two coats of arms should be the same, and it became the task of a courtly King of Heralds, or King of Arms, to police the forgery or theft of heraldic devices and mottoes, and to design new coats-of-arms for those entering the upper echelons of society for the first time.
