Blazon of Catalonia

This article specifies the origin of the blazon Héraldique of Catalogne , which is also worth for the Aragon from a historical point of view. The blazon, called Senyera , is regarded as oldest of Europe (seal of Ramon Berenguer IV, 1159), preceding of more than three centuries the Dannebrog Danish.

Blasonnement

Gold with four stakes of Mouths, stamped of a royal crown

Héraldiquement, this blasonnement is known like the Four Stakes (Pal (heraldic)); popularly, like the Four Bars .

History

Myth founder

Charles the Bald person, who, in 870, comes to give to Guifred Hairy the, the counties of Urgel and Cerdagne, requires of him to lend strong hand against the Norman ones to him.

In the battle, Guifred is reached by an arrow. The evening, the frank emperor goes in the tent of the Catalan count, lengthened on his layer close which its shield is, a virgin gold field of any decoration. He soaks four fingers in the open wound of Guifré and trace, of a gesture, the four bars red giving thus to Catalonia, his armorial bearings of gold with four stakes of mouths .

Historical attribution

In all probability, the origin of the armorial bearings of the counts de Barcelone east to be brought closer to the papacy, whose colors are the red and the yellow. Another theory sees in the marriage of Raimond-Berenger III of Barcelona and Douce of Provence the origin of the ecu to the four piles (stakes). It is indeed in the valley of the Rhone and alpine Piedmont that the ecus decorated with pious (stakes) are most numerous.

Posterity

The armorial bearings of the counts de Barcelone became the colors of Catalonia and its flag on which the pious (stakes) are reproduced in horizontal bands ( fasces in terms of blazon). They are commonly called the “four bars”.

Increased armorial bearings of Aragon since the alliance formed by the catalano-Aragonese Crown, the blazon also appears that of the town of Barcelona.

They was the Armoiries sovereign counts of the Comté of Barcelona. It is thus about a heraldic ecu.

Consequently, it is about a “heraldic blazon” which initially represented a line, and then the territory which it controlled.

It is about one of the oldest blazons existing. Its first clear appearance goes back to 1150, in a seal of Ramon Berenguer IV, even if before one had already been able to observe it as “a symbol preheraldic” on the tombs of Ramon Berenguer II (which goes back to 1082) in the cathedral of Gérone, and his Ermessende great-grandmother of Carcassonne (which goes back to 1058) which was the wife of Ramon Borrell I.

The escutcheon is surmounted by a royal crown, because of the marriage with the kingdom of Aragon, it becomes the symbol of the crown of Aragon and consequently does not represent any more one line of counts, but a royal line. It is for this reason, that certain historians insist on the Aragonese origin of the blazon, but those are discredited by the evidence of preliminary existence of the four blades coming on the side Inhabitant of Barcelona before the marriage does not link the two “houses”.

See too

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