The origin of coats of arms is the invention, in medieval western Europe, of the emblematic system based on the blazon, which is described and studied by heraldry.
Emblems were used in ancient history and during the earlier Middle Ages. However, it was not until the 12th century, between 1120 and 1160, that coats of arms first appeared.
The origin of coats of arms can be traced mainly through the study of seals. Seals go from depicting a few coats of arms on a rider's gonfanon to equestrian seals bearing coats of arms on the shield. One theory assumes that this innovation emerged simultaneously in different parts of Europe. Another distinguishes two specific areas of origin: southern England and the borders of Vermandois and Champagne in northern France.
The Plantagenet enamel, often dated 1160-1165, which shows the coat of arms of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, is the earliest known heraldic representation in colour.
Coats of arms are an invention of the medieval West. They form a system based on the fusion of elements from signs, banners, seals, coins, and shields. Banners seem to play a key role. Coats of arms may combine individual, family and fiefdom emblems, some of which have been canting arms from the outset. Family emblems, however, which can be studied through heraldic groups, seem to be essential.
Coats of arms spread, perhaps because military equipment no longer made it possible to recognize the identity of combatants and, more certainly, thanks to the fashion for tournaments, supported by the development of aristocratic competition and the valorization of the individual. The adoption of coats of arms is correlated with a growing need for identification, which explains the appearance of hereditary surnames and more varied clothing simultaneously.
Coats of arms first appeared among the nobility in the 12th century, before spreading throughout society in the 13th century, albeit at different times depending on the country. At the same time, heraldry was born.
Before the coat of arms
Ancient times
In ancient times, the Greeks used collective emblems found on official documents such as coins, seals, and terracotta stamps. They also used individual or family emblems, quoted in literary texts or depicted on vases. These are various images (letters, attributes of a divinity, animal, etc.). These emblems do not constitute a system, and their representation obeys no precise rules.
Under the Roman Republic, the great families (gens) used a hereditary emblem, depicted on the reverse of coins minted by magistrates. At first, Roman armies had ensigns representing various animals. With the reform of Marius in 107 BC, the eagle became a general military emblem. Later, under the Roman Empire, each legion, in addition to the imperial eagle, also used a particular ensign, be it an object, an animal or a representation of a god.
It is not known how much credence to give to the drawings in the Notitia dignitatum, which depict the shields of the legions of the Late Roman Empire, and which are known from copies made in the 15th century.
Middle Ages to early 11th century
The emblems used during the earlier Middle Ages, mainly studied by German historians such as Percy Ernst Schramm, are poorly known and their influence on the birth of coats of arms is debated. Charlemagne wore an unadorned shield but had his emblem, an eagle, placed above his palace of Aachen.
In the 11th century, figures and colours were painted on shields, without any particular system, since according to the chronicler William of Poitiers, the Duke of Normandy William the Conqueror and the Count of Anjou Geoffrey II (Geoffrey Martel), before a battle in 1049, took care to recognize the colours of clothing and the decoration of shields. Coats of arms did not yet exist at the time the Bayeux tapestry was embroidered, in the last third of the 11th century, since the figures depicted on combatants' shields vary for the same character, and, conversely, some use the same shields. Nor are the emblems used on the coats of arms in the 11th century consistent.
Similarly, the shields depicted anachronistically in the miniatures of the Cîteaux Bible, or Harding Bible, which dates from 1109, do not yet include real coats of arms. However, they are much closer than the Bayeux tapestry designs. The Cîteaux Bible contains heraldic partitions and ordinaries: the pale and party per pale, the chevron and counter-chevron, the bend and party per bend, the fess, and gyronny, although the rules of blazon are not respected. This bible was produced during the abbacy of Stephen Harding, of English origin, and the drawings could be traces of memories of actual shields of Anglo-Norman or Northern French lords.
The first coats of arms in the 12th century
Armorial objects and literature
As early as the 14th century, Jacques de Hemricourt, in Le Miroir des nobles de Hesbaye, asserts that coats of arms originated in the 11th century. In the 19th century, Anatole de Barthélemy dates the appearance of the feudal coat of arms "only to the last third of the 11th century". In 1958, Robert Viel postulated a continuity between the emblems used in antiquity, the designs of the Bayeux tapestry, and coats of arms, the latter emerging from Geoffrey Plantagenet's enamel during a phase of diversification following a tightening of the number of figures used.
The enamelled funeral plaque of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, features what appear to be a real coat of arms, azure (blue) with six golden lions. Since , this has often been considered the oldest known coat of arms, granted to Geoffrey Plantagenet when he was knighted in 1127 by his father-in-law Henry I, King of England. Until Michel Pastoureau's studies, this was the date often chosen for the origin of coats of arms. Pastoureau however showed that the enamel depicting Geoffrey Plantagenet seems to have been produced around 1160–1165, and the account of his knighting, which mentions the shield with the six lioncels (an obsolete term for lions when there is more than one on a shield), was written by Jean Rapicault, a monk from Marmoutier Abbey, around 1170–1175, while his only surviving seal, dated 1149, has no coat of arms. It is therefore likely that Jean Rapicault projected for 1127 a representation typical of his era, the 1170s.
Consequently, it is more accurate to consider this funerary enamel to be, in the words of , "the earliest known evidence of heraldic representation in colour". Furthermore, even if this work is dated to the 1150s, it reflects the Anglo-Norman influence on the Counts of Anjou, reinforcing the geographical origin of heraldry demonstrated by the seals. This is a case where the husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet, adopts the family emblem of his wife, Empress Matilda, a prestigious king's daughter, to claim his inheritance.
Although the vocabulary of the chansons de geste can be examined, narrative sources are of little help in studying the precise process by which coats of arms were born. The texts available are symbolic constructs in which references to decorations, while confirming the iconographic sources, do not make it possible to delve much deeper. Nevertheless, the Roman de Rou can be cited, which, around 1160, calls them "connoissances". Mult veissiez par les grant plaignes
moveir conreiz et chevtaignes;
ni a riche home ne a baron
qui n'ait ez lui son gonfanon,
ou sa maisnie se restreigne,
connoissances e entresainz,
de plusieurs guises escuz painz.
In modern French: Vous verriez par les grandes plaines,
accourir de nombreux groupes armés et compagnies
où il n'y a pas de riche homme ni de baron
qui n'ait près de lui son gonfanon
autour duquel sa troupe se rassemble
avec leurs emblèmes personnels et signes communs
dont leurs écus sont peints de plusieurs manières.
In English: You would see across the great plains
numerous armed groups and companies
where there is no rich man or baron
who does not have his gonfanon by his side
around which his troop gathers
with their personal emblems and common signs
with their shields painted in various ways.
The appearance of coats of arms on seals The best sources for dating the appearance of coats of arms are seals. However, these are only default sources, small and monochrome, which are used for lack of anything better, because other objects bearing coats of arms, often in colour (banners, garments, frescoes, painted or engraved objects and utensils, weapons, etc.) have almost all disappeared due to the fragility of their materials. The diffusion of seals predates that of coats of arms.
The first emblematic signs appeared on seals around 1120–1150, first on the gonfanon, then on the shield. Jean-François Nieus counts seventeen armorial seals up to 1150 and thirty-three up to 1160, using as a criterion the hereditary nature of the proto-heraldic emblem, i.e. its use by the descendants of the lord concerned.
Armorial seals on the gonfanon
Pastoureau proposes a chronology in three sequences. Firstly, around 1120-1130, some equestrian seals of great nobles, such as William I, Count of Luxembourg, show a gonfanon decorated with geometric figures, the future coat of arms. However, Nieus does not include this seal in the list of early heraldic seals, because what it depicts corresponds rather to the flames of the rider's lance pennons.
The first seal bearing a coat of arms is apparently that of Ralph I, Count of Vermandois, which could date from around 1110/1120 or 1126, or even 1130/1135. Nieus also uses the seal of Renaud II, Count of Clermont, in use around 1130/1150. Renaud II of Clermont was the second husband of Ralph I of Vermandois' mother, Adelaide, Countess of Vermandois. Both seals bear a chequered shield, the Vermandois chequers, on the gonfanon, his marriage enabling Renaud II to display this emblem. They would thus be the first two proto-heraldic seals. Nieus conjectures that, given the political context, these seals could have been used as early as 1110/1120, while Pastoureau and Nicolas Civel doubt that they were genuine coats of arms.
Armorial seals in the field In addition to equestrian seals, some seals do not depict a rider but have the field invaded by the heraldic emblem, such as those of Richard de Lucy (the emblem is a pike) and Rohese de Clare (the emblem is a chevron), niece of Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Pembroke, and wife of Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln.
For Pastoureau, this type of seal represents a second stage, dating from around 1130–1140, between the equestrian seals with gonfanons and the equestrian seals emblazoned on the shield. Nieus lists other seals of this type, belonging to Hugh III, Count of Saint-Pol, bearing a sheaf of oats in the field and dating from 1127/1129, Hugh I of Rodez (an eagle, 1140), Baldwin de Redvers, 1st Earl of Devon (a griffin, before 1144), Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester (died 1147; a lion passant), Ebles de Mauléon (a lion rampant, c. 1130/1149).
Armorial equestrian seals