Impersonal arms on lozenges

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Arthur Radburn
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Re: Impersonal arms on lozenges

Postby Arthur Radburn » 05 Dec 2015, 14:32

It would be interesting to know why Aragon chose lozenges for civic arms. Unless municipalities are regarded as female, gender would not be a factor.
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Arthur Radburn

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Chris Green
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Re: Impersonal arms on lozenges

Postby Chris Green » 05 Dec 2015, 15:32

Arthur Radburn wrote:It would be interesting to know why Aragon chose lozenges for civic arms. Unless municipalities are regarded as female, gender would not be a factor.


When I was putting together the Vuelta thread I said:

.... Valencia, whose arms are displayed on a lozenge. This is not unusual in Spain (mostly in those parts formerly in Aragon), but I have not (yet) come across it elsewhere. Valencia was granted the privilege of using the royal arms of Aragon by King Peter IV of Aragon (and Valencia) in 1377. They were apparently commonly depicted on a lozenge from an early date, possibly to avoid confusion with the royal arms.


Using the royal arms of Aragon undifferenced would have led to all sorts of complications. I surmised that the use of a lozenge was to permit of the use of the royal arms while making it quite clear that it was Valencia that was using them, not the King.

We Anglo-Saxons look at a CoA on a lozenge and immediately assume that the armiger must be female. This may not be true in Spain, or wasn't in the 14th century.

Sadly no expert in Iberian heraldry has yet come forward to confirm or contest my theory.
Chris Green
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Bertilak de Hautdesert

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Michael F. McCartney
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Re: Impersonal arms on lozenges

Postby Michael F. McCartney » 06 Dec 2015, 04:54

FWIW in Spanish nouns are masculine or feminine. A city is La Ciudad - La being the feminine article - so the arms of a city being on a lozenge doesn't surprise me.

On the other hand, I'm not aware of any Spanish city outside of the old Aragonese kingdom whose arms are displayed on a lozenge so my gender theory seems a bit far-fetched!
Michael F. McCartney
Fremont, California

Ryan Shuflin
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Re: Impersonal arms on lozenges

Postby Ryan Shuflin » 22 Dec 2015, 14:03

Michael F. McCartney wrote:FWIW in Spanish nouns are masculine or feminine. A city is La Ciudad - La being the feminine article - so the arms of a city being on a lozenge doesn't surprise me.

On the other hand, I'm not aware of any Spanish city outside of the old Aragonese kingdom whose arms are displayed on a lozenge so my gender theory seems a bit far-fetched!


Also, on the Royal arms, the Bourbon arms on an Oval, despite the King being neither a woman or a priest.

It is possible that some Aragonese herald thought cities were female, so they should have lozenges, or it is just the result of an accident.

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Chris Green
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Re: Impersonal arms on lozenges

Postby Chris Green » 22 Dec 2015, 16:12

It is possible that some Aragonese herald thought cities were female, so they should have lozenges, or it is just the result of an accident.


Clearly no accident since many communities in Aragon have had lozenges for hundreds of years. As for some herald thinking that cities were female, well yes, since as has been pointed out the city is "la ciudad" in Spanish. But I still stick to my theory that in granting Valencia the use of the royal arms in 1377, King Peter IV of Aragon and Catalonia, or rather his herald, needed to make a clear distinction between the arms as used by the King and the arms as used by the city, hence the use of the lozenge. Any other difference - a bordure say - would have rendered the royal arms not the royal arms.
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JMcMillan
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Re: Impersonal arms on lozenges

Postby JMcMillan » 23 Dec 2015, 13:36

Chris Green wrote:But I still stick to my theory that in granting Valencia the use of the royal arms in 1377, King Peter IV of Aragon and Catalonia, or rather his herald, needed to make a clear distinction between the arms as used by the King and the arms as used by the city...


But no such distinction appears to have been required when Peter IV's contemporary, Peter I of Castile, decreed in 1351 that the arms of Toledo would be those of the king of Castile. The arms of Toledo never seem to have been displayed on anything other than an escutcheon (see http://www.ayto-toledo.org/archivo/otro ... ipales.pdf).

According to http://www.heraldica.org/topics/female.htm, the association of the lozenge with arms borne by women is a post-medieval development, and during the Middle Ages there are examples of men in France using lozenge shaped shields. Maybe the Catalonian/Aragonese custom of putting civic arms on lozenges, like so many heraldic customs, simply is what it is, with no logical significance to anything outside itself.
Joseph McMillan
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