Origin of the coat of arms

The origin of coats of arms is the invention, in the medieval West, of the emblematic system based on the blazon, which is described and studied by heraldry.

Emblems were used in Ancient history and during the High Middle Ages. However, it wasn't until the 11th 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 Geoffroy Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, is the earliest known heraldic representation in color.

Coats of arms are an invention of the medieval West, and there's no need to look elsewhere for their origins. 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 patronymic names and more varied clothing simultaneously.

Coats of arms first appeared among the nobility in the 11th century, before spreading throughout society in the 13th century, albeit at different times depending on the country. At the same time, heraldry was born.

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 know 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 to us from copies made in the 15th century.

Middle Ages to early XI century
The emblems used during the High 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 atop his palace of Aachen.

In the 11th century, figures and colors were painted on shields, without any particular system, since according to the chronicler William of Poitiers, the Duke of Normandy Guillaume le Conquérant and the Count of Anjou Geoffroy II Geoffroy Martel, before a battle in 1049, took care to recognize the colors 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 some use the same shields. Nor do the emblems used on the coats of arms in the 11th century.

Similarly, the shields depicted anachronistically in the miniatures of the Cîteaux Bible, or Étienne Harding's 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 partitions and ordinary of the coat of arms: the parti, the pale, the chevronné, and counter-chevronné, the bend, the fess, the bandé and the gironné, although the rules of blazon are not respected. This Bible was produced under the abbatiate of Stephen Harding, of English origin, and the drawings could be traces of memories of actual shields of Anglo-Norman or Northern French lords.

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 Geoffroy Plantagenêt's enamel during a phase of diversification following a tightening of the number of figures used.

The enameled funeral plaque of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, features what appear to be real coats of arms, azure with six golden lions. Since Louis Bouly de Lesdain, this has often been considered the oldest known coat of arms, granted to Geoffroy Plantagenet when he was accolade 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 the coat of arms. Indeed, Pastoureau shows that the enamel depicting Geoffroy Plantagenet seems to have been produced around 1160-1165, and the account of his knighthood, which mentions the shield with the six lion cubs, was written by Jean Rapicault, a monk from Marmoutier, around 1170-1175, while his only surviving seal, dated 1149, has no coat of arms. It is therefore likely that Jean Rapicault planned in 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 Laurent Hablot, "the earliest known evidence of heraldic representation in color". What's more, even if we date this work 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, Geoffroy Plantagenet, adopts the family crest of his wife, Empress Matilda, a prestigious king's daughter, to claim his inheritance.

Although the vocabulary of chansons de geste can be examined, narrative sources are of little help in studying the precise process by which coats of arms are born. The texts available are symbolic constructs in which references to decorations, while confirming the iconographic sources, do not allow us to delve much deeper. Nevertheless, we can cite the Roman de Rou, 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 doesn't 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 color (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
Michel Pastoureau proposes a chronology in three sequences. Firstly, around 1120-1130, some equestrian seals of great nobles, such as Count Guillaume I of Luxembourg, show a gonfanon decorated with geometric figures, the future coat of arms. However, Jean-François 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 pennon lance.

The first seal bearing a coat of arms would be that of Raoul I de Vermandois,   which could date from around 1110/1120 or 1126, or even 1130/1135. Jean-François Nieus also uses the seal of Renaud II de Clermont, in use around 1130/1150. Renaud II de Clermont was the second husband of Raoul I de Vermandois' mother, Adelaide, Countess of Vermandois. Both seals bear a chequered shield, the Vermandois chequer, on the gonfanon, his marriage enabling Renaud II de Clermont to display this emblem. They would thus be the first two proto-heraldic seals. Jean-François Nieus conjectures that, given the political context, these seals could have been used as early as 1110/1120, while Michel Pastoureau and Nicolas Civel doubt that they were genuine coats of arms.

Armorial seal 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 Luci (the emblem is a pike) and Rohaise de Clare (the emblem is a chevronné), niece of Gilbert de Clare Earl of Pembroke and wife of Gilbert de Gand.

For Michel 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. Jean-François Nieus lists other seals of this type, belonging to Hugh III, Count of Saint-Pol, bearing a sheaf in the field and dating from 1127/1129, Hugues I de Rodez (an eagle, 1140), Baldwind de Redvers (a griffin, before 1144), Robert de Gloucester (died 1147, a lion passant), Ebles de Mauléon (a lion rampant, c. 1130/1149).

Armorial horse seals
Finally, around 1140-1160, several high-ranking personalities had an armorial equestrian seal. The earliest seal to feature an armorial shield worn by the rider may be that of Galéran de Meulan, Count of Meulan and Worcester, but its dating (1136-1138) is uncertain according to Michel Pastoureau, and is contradicted by a later seal of the same personage without a coat of arms on the shield. Adrian Ailes and Jean-François Nieus, on the other hand, have identified two armorial equestrian seals of Galéran de Meulan, one from 1137/1139, the other from 1139/1140, both showing a chequered shield. Jean-François Nieus adds other armorial seals also dating from 1130-1150: the seals of Enguerrand II de Coucy, Bouchard de Guise, Hugues Cholet de Roucy, Yves de Nesle, Count of Soissons, the uncle and nephew Gilbert de Clare, respectively Earl of Pembroke and Earl of Hertford, a second seal of Raoul I de Vermandois and another of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona. The latter is dated 1150 by Louis Bouly de Lesdain. For Michel Pastoureau, the second seal of Raoul I de Vermandois is the oldest armorial equestrian seal dated (1146) .It seems that Galéran de Meulan's seal shows not only a shield bearing a coat of arms but also an armorial saddlecloth. This marks the beginning of a process of heralding the horse itself. The first equestrian seals, depicting the rider riding to the right and holding his shield to his left, logically show only the inside of the shield. In order to depict an armorial shield, the engravers rotate it slightly and show half of it. It was only later that the knight's arm was twisted so that the viewer could see the whole shield.

Geographical origin of the coat of arms
According to Michel Pastoureau and, following him, Nicolas Civel, coats of arms appeared throughout Western Europe between 1120 and 1160 and spread more rapidly to England and the regions between the Loire and the Rhine. Thus, coats of arms were invented concomitantly in different regions of the West, without it being necessary to postulate, despite appearances, an earlier chronology in the region between the Seine and the Rhine. On the contrary, German historian Lutz Fenske describes a clear precedence for France and England in the appearance of coats of arms. Jean-François Nieus suggests that the process should be shifted slightly, starting earlier, around 1000-1110. Above all, he distinguishes two geographical foci where coats of arms originated. The first is southern England, where the de Clare and de Beaumont-Meulan families, allies of King Stephen, and their enemies Robert de Gloucester and Baudouin de Reviers, who were on the side of Matilda the Empress and her son Henry II Plantagenet, adopted armorial seals. The second focus is in northern France, more precisely on the borders of Vermandois and Champagne. The users of armorial seals on both sides of the English Channel were related lords: Raoul I de Vermandois was the maternal uncle of Galéran de Meulan, while Renaud II de Clermont was also the maternal uncle of Gilbert de Clare.

By the 1130s, the use of the seal had already begun among Anglo-Norman lords, and spread from Brittany to Flanders in the first half of the 11th century. In this vast area, where the seal became commonplace even among average lords, the choice to decorate seals with coats of arms was a particular feature of these two areas of southern England and the confines of Vermandois. In the neighboring region of Île-de-France, for example, the generalization of the seal was a given, but its massive decoration with coats of arms only arrived at the end of the eleventh century. From the 1140s, the coat-of-arms seal spread geographically throughout southern Europe. Around 1155, Raymond V of Toulouse imitated his enemy Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona and had the Toulouse cross engraved on his seals and coins. In Italy and Central Europe, in the same 1150s, Welf VI, Duke of Spoleto and Marquis of Tuscany, Henry II Jasomirgott, Duke of Austria, and Ottokar III of Styria adopted seals with armorial shields. In the Kingdom of León, the choice of the lion as emblem (speaking arms) on the coins of Alfonso VII from 1134 onwards, then on the charters of his son Ferdinand II of León, also shows the success of this fashionable heraldic figure.

Finally, it would appear that the group of great Anglo-Norman and Picard lords who initiated the use of armorial seals launched a European trend, which spread through tournaments, the Second Crusade and Reconquista expeditions to Spain.

In the Holy Roman Empire, Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, special coins called bracteates bear the effigy of the issuing prince, with shield and gonfanon. The decoration of the shield does not appear to be fixed until 1160-1170, while the gonfanon appears to be stable earlier.

A combinatorial system
From the second half of the 11th century onwards, coats of arms were created as a system, combining elements that had previously existed from different sources: ensigns, banners, shields, seals, and coins.

Indeed, some of the figures come from signs in the round. From banners come the colors and certain geometric constructions of the coat of arms, as well as the relationship between the coat of arms and the fief. Seals conveyed many family emblems, including talking figures, and the hereditary nature of coats of arms. The same applies to coins. The triangular shape of the coat of arms, the furs, and some geometric figures come from shields. Shields are a marker of chivalric identity, common to the first coat-of-arms bearers.

Seals also show the precedence of banners or gonfanons over shields. During the First Crusade (1095-1099), chieftains used personal banners that were recognizably monochrome (Robert Courteheuse's was gold, Baudouin de Boulogne's was white, while Bohemond of Taranto used red). Banners seem to play a key role in the origin of coats of arms since many blazon terms come from the vocabulary of fabrics. In the seventeenth century, Du Cange was the first to understand the importance of the influence of fabrics on coats of arms. In the combination of individual signs (shields) and collective signs (the lord's banners), the latter seems to be the most important. Banners are rallying signs linked to the fiefdom, which vassals adopt to show their group affiliation. The blazon's rule of contrasting colors, which forbids the juxtaposition of metals or stain, seems to stem from banners, whose visibility is essential.

Banners with coats of arms could be a step between the monochrome gonfanon and the coat of arms. The latter, worn by the great lord in battle, who can no longer also carry a banner, indicates his presence, while the banner is carried beside him and his horse is dressed in a similarly armorial cover.

The choice of the shield as the preferred support for the coat of arms is explained by its symbolic importance. Too large and heavy to be used on foot, it is, like the lance and sword, one of the knight's weapons par excellence. It is also the lord's main physical protection. The coat of arms thus combines the emblem of the lordship with the body of its owner. In medieval iconography, it is positively connoted and commonly worn by defenders of the Good. It also became a symbol of peace and justice.

A triple heritage
According to Michel Pastoureau, hereditary emblems were used in certain large noble families, especially in Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, and Flanders, before coats of arms were created. They were used in the first coats of arms, but at the same time, fief coats of arms developed on banners. Seals show that many great lords used two coats of arms, either personal or fief-related. A choice was then gradually made, either in favor of one or the other, or by adopting new coats of arms.

These hereditary emblems are sometimes found in heraldic groups made up of families linked by a common ancestor. For example, the two fishes leaning against each other are a canting family emblem, appearing on coins of the Counts of Bar as early as the 11th century, and in the coats of arms of a dozen lineages descended from Thierry II of Bar in the 13th century: the Counts of Ferrette, the Counts of Bar, the Counts of Chiny, the Counts of Clermont, the Sires of Nesle, the Sires of Gaucourt, the Counts of Montbéliard, the Counts of Salm-en-Ardenne, the Counts of Salm-en-Vosges and the Counts of Blâmont. From coins to seals and from seals to coats of arms.

Mostly family emblems
For Jean-François Nieus, the distinction between individual, family, and feudal coats of arms is not supported by historical sources. Indeed, on the earliest armorial seals, the emblems appear to be familial, with two exceptions. The first is the seal of Count Hugues Cholet of Roucy, which shows a cabbage, a talking emblem inspired by the nickname "Cholet" (cauliculus, "little cabbage"). His successors kept this emblem. The second is the sheaves of oats of Hugh III, Count of Saint-Pol expressing his nickname, "Candavène", "field of oats" in Picard. As a general rule, men don't choose their coats of arms; they are identified by them.

Jean-François Nieus also disputes the early existence of coats of arms linked to a fiefdom, which did not appear to him before the early thirteenth century at the earliest. According to Michel Pastoureau, the pale of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona could be a legacy of the ancient kingdom of Burgundy, which disappeared in 1032. According to Jean-François Nieus, this hypothesis does not make the pale a territorial rather than a family emblem, since Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona was born of the marriage of Douce, heiress of Provence, and Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona. From Roger-Bernard I onwards, these pals were used by the Counts of Foix.

For Jean-François Nieus, coats of arms are generally family coats of arms from the outset, including when the husband adopts his wife's coat of arms, which is not uncommon until the 13th century. In his opinion, the interpretation of heraldic groups, even if not unequivocal, shows the transmission of family emblems. Such is the case with the Vermandois shield, an emblem found on early seals, which passes through marriage to the de Beaumont-Meulan, de Warenne, and de Beaugency families, thus displaying pride in belonging to a lineage which, through the intermediary of Adélaïde de Vermandois wife of Hugh, Count of Vermandois, is of Carolingian descent.

A common origin could also explain the same use of the sheaf symbol by the Candavène counts of Saint-Pol and the counts of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis.

For Jean-François Nieus, the first coats of arms were therefore of family origin, but within families open to influences from the families of mothers, wives and collaterals. This openness to different contributions explains the instability of early coat-of-arms choices. Around a remarkable individual identified by an emblem, a certain number of people are linked by kinship. The link thus manifested can also extend to a chosen affinity, through vassalage or accolade.

An invention of the medieval West
In the 17th century, Jesuit heraldist Claude-François Ménestrier laid the foundations for a systematic study of coats of arms. In 1671, in his book Le Véritable art du blason et l'origine des armoiries (The True Art of the Coat of Arms and the Origin of Coats of Arms), he listed over twenty hypotheses, some dating back to the Middle Ages, on the origins of coats of arms. Many of these seem outdated or unscientific today, attributing the invention of the coat of arms to Noah, David, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or King Arthur.

Others are then proposed. All these hypotheses are based on three types of explanation: affiliation with the emblems of Antiquity, the influence of barbarian, Germanic or Scandinavian emblems, or borrowing by Westerners from Muslims during the First or Second Crusades. This last hypothesis, which has had some success, is definitively invalidated, since the adoption of practices resembling coats of arms by Muslim peoples occurred after the birth of coats of arms in the West. More precisely, the earliest Eastern coats of arms date from the 13th century, while coats of arms appeared in Western Europe in the 11th century. Similarly, the search for the origins of Western coats of arms in the Byzantine Empire has proved unconvincing, since here too the birth of emblems that can be linked to coats of arms post-dates their appearance in the West.

The reasons for the invention of coats of arms are in fact endogenous to the medieval West.

War, tournaments and social change
According to Anatole de Barthélemy, coats of arms are added to seals because equestrian seals are too similar.

War, an incomplete explanation
Many historians, including Michel Pastoureau and Adrian Ailes, have taken up a classic explanation: coats of arms appear because combatants on the battlefield are rendered unrecognizable by the hauberts and nasals of their helmets. The figures painted on shields therefore serve as a sign of recognition. The need to identify oneself on the battlefield became even more pressing with the adoption of the recumbent spear and the development of hauberts and, above all, great helms, which, from 1210-1220, became closed cylinders. Indeed, numerous accounts show how even kings and dukes had to be recognized on the battlefield by removing their helmets, for example, Edmund Ironside at the battle of Sherstone in 1016 or William the Conqueror at Hastings in 1066.

Nevertheless, this explanation, based on the necessities of combat, has been called into question. On the one hand, the hauberts and nasal helmets are older than the generalization of coats of arms; on the other hand, on the battlefield, it is the collective signs that seem essential. It's not certain that the face of William the Conqueror, for example, could be recognized by many of the combatants in his army at Hastings. On the other hand, where we tend to see similar defensive equipment, William the Conqueror's contemporaries could certainly see that he had a better quality hauberd. Likewise, the sovereigns' helmets are recognizable by their quality, and their horses allow them to be identified.

The chief's heraldic emblems can be a rallying point for the group of subordinates, but the effectiveness of recognizing heraldic figures in the melee of battle, where group cohesion takes precedence, seems low. Long before the appearance of coats of arms, banners and battle cries were used effectively, as well as colorful fabrics that served to maintain the bond between combatants and were identified with the sovereign himself. On the other hand, at the battle of Marchfeld in 1278, although heraldry had been developed in Austria for over a century, it did not seem to be very effective. It was still necessary for each side to wear signs of recognition: in the army of Rudolf I of Habsburg, a white cross was pinned to the chest, while the fighters of Ottokar II of Bohemia wore a green cross and a band of cloth on the back.

Another explanation could be the appearance of new decorative surfaces on the knight's equipment (the pennon of the lance, the surcoat, and the shield without Shield boss). However, the shield is not the best object for identifying its bearer; indeed, it is necessary to face the wearer, and the shield curves in the 11th century. Moreover, the first coats of arms were not individual.

On the other hand, the need to know who one is fighting does not explain the development of the rules of blazon,  and these figures become true coats of arms when they are used consistently for the same individual according to precise rules. These are the rules that underpin heraldry as an original system.

The role of the tournament
The influence of tournaments seems to have been decisive. Indeed, the time of the invention of the coat of arms was also the time of the birth of tournament fashions, particularly in Northern and Western France, which were an important vector for the dissemination of this new emblem. Tournaments were the ideal place to show off one's coat of arms, as part of a ritualized system that emphasized individual achievement.

The first documented tournaments appear to have taken place in northern France, one of the earliest known tournament organizers being Charles le Bon, Count of Flanders and Count of Amiens, close to Vermandois, one of the birthplaces of the coat of arms, and allied with Renaud II de Clermont. The organizers of the first tournaments were high-ranking figures such as the great Anglo-Norman lords, Robert I de Dreux (who bore the Vermandois escutcheon) and Henri the liberal, Count of Champagne. The two phenomena, tournaments and coats of arms, appear at the same time and in the same place, and are therefore linked, forming part of a trend to enhance the status of the aristocracy.

The development of coats of arms must therefore be linked to a form of individualization of the feats that knights are expected to accomplish. The knight's prowess must be easily recognizable, and this prowess must be traceable to the lineage to which he belongs.

Identity: lineage and anthroponymy
The birth of coats of arms is closely correlated with the new social organization established by seigniorial lineages. From the mid-11th century onwards, coats of arms were used to situate individuals within their group and society. They were born of seigniorial encellulement, which anchored each individual in a group. By the end of the twelfth century, coats of arms had become hereditary.

The invention of the coat of arms is also linked to other contemporary changes, such as the appearance of the first patronymic names and the adoption of long clothing. Men's clothing took on new colors and ornaments; society increasingly needed signs to identify individuals,  and color played a role in this identification.

Both heraldry and anthroponymy are ultimately ways of expressing kinship and are therefore linked to the transmission of property.

From counts to great-vassals
The heraldry of the shield was first seen among the aristocratic elite of counts, before spreading by imitation to squire lords and then to ordinary knights. By the end of the eleventh century and into the thirteenth, coats of arms were being adopted by all noblemen, right down to simple squires.

Between the Loire and Meuse rivers, in western France and England, knights bannerets adopted coats of arms around 1160-1200, simple knights around 1180-1220, and simple squires around 1220-1260. In central and southern France, the lesser nobility began to use coats of arms a little later. In the Holy Roman Empire, while all nobles used coats of arms around 1210-1220, ordinary knights did not have personal armorial seals until around 1250. In Scotland, Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia, the process of heraldization occurred with a chronological lag. In most cases, vassals and great-vassals begin by adopting their lord's coat of arms as is, when it is linked to the fiefdom. The personal arms they then adopt are often the same, but slightly modified. The result is a group of coats of arms made up of unrelated families from the same region, with very similar coats of arms. These are common in northern and eastern France, the Holy Roman Empire, Navarre, and Aragon. In the Holy Roman Empire, princes often first chose the eagle emblem, symbolizing their attachment to the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, the Austrian Duke Henry II Jasomirgott, his son Duke Leopold V, and his grandson Leopold VI wore an eagle as an emblem, before the new Austrian Duke Frederick II adopted in 1230 the symbol that has been perpetuated to this day in Austria, a silver bar on a red background.

Some coats of arms are also passed down through adoubement. In this case, the adoubtee adopts the arms of the adoubeur, a more powerful lord, in whole or in part. This is the story told of Geoffroy Plantagenet, knighted in 1127 by his father-in-law Henry I, King of England, and whose coat of arms can be seen on Plantagenet enamel. Other sources attest to this practice. Thus, Hugues IV Candavène, knighted in 1179 by King Henry II of England, uses a seal showing a shield with the arms of both England (Gules, three golden leopards) and Candavène (Azure, three golden sheaves). Similarly, around 1170, Guillaume de Hainaut bore arms part of France and part of Hainaut. Other examples are known. As early as 1180-1200, the system of cadency seals appeared, especially in France, England, Scotland, the Rhine Valley, and Switzerland. According to Michel Pastoureau, the earliest known breach dates from 1177: the brother of Count Arnould II of Guînes, Guillaume, used the arms of the Counts of Guînes on his seal, adding a band.

According to Jean-François Nieus, the seal of Walter Fitz Robert de Little Dunmow (c. 1147/1160), showing a shield, horse cover, and saddle cloth covered with the chevron of the Clares, of whom he was a cousin, may even be older. This allows the main emblem to be used in a variety of ways. It is not used everywhere: in Italy, for example, all members of the lineage bear the same arms.

Women's coats of arms
The earliest coats of arms of noblewomen date from the second half of the 11th century. In England, the earliest female arms are thought to be those of Rohaise de Clare (died 1156), niece of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke. In France, it's the seal of Yseult de Dol, wife of Asculphe de Subligny, affixed to a text from 1183. In 1188, the coat of arms on the seal of Agnès de Saint-Vérain, a shield charged with two fesses and an orle of martlets, was recorded. The following year, in 1189, Theresa of Portugal, wife of Philip of Alsace, used arms similar to those of Portugal on her counter-seal. In 1198, Marie de Champagne, wife of Count Baldwin IX of Flanders, made the opposite choice, using her husband's coat of arms.

Then, in the first half of the 13th century, women's coats of arms became more widespread, a little later in the Holy Roman Empire than in France or England. Women's coats of arms were those of their fathers or husbands and, rarely, personal coats of arms. For example, Mathilde de Courtenay uses a shield with a lion passant on a field strewn with billets, the arms of the County of Nevers of which she is heiress, while the Courtenay arms are gold with three torteaux gules, those of her first husband Hervé IV of Donzy are a plain shield with a vairy chief, and those of her second husband Guigues IV of Forez are gules with a golden dolphin

More often than not, married women's coats of arms are double coats of arms, formed by juxtaposing their father's and husband's coats of arms. When a wife brings her husband material and immaterial goods of greater value than those of her husband - for whom marriage is, therefore, hypergamous - it is not uncommon for him to adopt his wife's coat of arms. Thus, in the early thirteenth century, Guy II of Dampierre adopted the coat of arms of his wife Mathilde of Bourbon, heir to this seigneury. The heir son also takes his mother's coat of arms, as did Roger de Meulan at the end of the 12th century, who became lord of Gournay-sur-Marne, inherited from his mother, Agnès de Montfort: his family branch then used the Montfort coat of arms. Similarly, in 1234, Roger IV de Foix used the arms of his mother, Ermessenda de Castellbò, because he was, through her, heir to the viscounty of Castelbon.

Coats of arms throughout society from the 13th century onwards
As the use of seals increased in the 13th century, the use of coats of arms became more and more common, in all social categories. Thus, it was through the seal that the use of coats of arms spread throughout society. Seals and coats of arms share the same function: to express identity

Ecclesiastics
In the 13th century, high prelates used coats of arms specific to their bishopric. The earliest would be those of the bishopric of Langres, used by bishop Guillaume de Joinville around 1210-1215 on coins, azure semé de lys d'or, au sautoir de gueules brochant sur le tout, followed by those of the bishopric of Beauvais, seen on a seal affixed to a deed of 1222 by bishop Milo of Nanteuil, argent à la croix de gueules cantonnée de quatre clefs du même.

However, popes as early as Innocent IV (1243-1254) used their family coats of arms. From the 14th century onwards, ecclesiastics, from the simple parish priest to the prelate, were sealed with their coat of arms.

Bourgeois and peasants
In the 13th century, the use of coats of arms spread, including among commoners. Of the entire corpus of medieval coats of arms currently known, two out of five are commoners. Unsurprisingly, the coats of arms of the bourgeoisie and artisans were most numerous in the most urbanized regions: Northern France, Flanders, Germany, Northern Italy, and Languedoc.

Peasants' coats of arms also appeared in the early thirteenth century and then spread, especially to England, Normandy, Flanders, and Switzerland. Frequently, they are not inscribed in a shield, but affixed directly to the field, so that some authors dispute that they are coats of arms. In Normandy, the most common figures are plants, especially flowers.

In the 14th century, common women also adopted coats of arms, but many of them, like the nobles, used changing emblems.

Coats of arms are therefore not reserved for a particular social class. However, they are essential to the nobility. Every noble family claims to have been granted a coat of arms by a prestigious personage. The adoption of the coat of arms by non-combatants attests to the symbolic significance of this object, which is an emblem of power and strength, but also of peace and justice, and shows the link between the individual and the group.

Cities and communities
As the use of seals expanded, so did the use of coats of arms by communities and institutions. The oldest known city seal is that of Cologne, dating from 1149 and depicting the apostle Peter, the city's patron saint, but the first armorial city seals appeared later, at the end of the 11th century. The earliest is that of Hertford, England, affixed to a text dated c. 1180-1190. In the first half of the 13th century, many towns adopted the armorial seal.

In the 14th century, especially in the second half, tradesmen also adopted coats of arms, inspired by those of the lord or the town, or evoking the trade concerned. At the same time, religious communities began to use coats of arms, probably first and foremost the chapters.

Introducing heraldry
By the middle of the 12th century, the main components of the heraldic system were already in place: coins, geometric partitions and, perhaps later, animal furniture (especially the eagle and lion) and plant furniture (Candavène sheaves, Roucy cabbages). . In this new system, colors are more important than figures. They are limited to six: white, yellow, red, blue, black and green. Their hue is irrelevant, whether light or dark. Even more important than the colors themselves are the rules governing their combination: they are divided into two groups, metals (gold and silver, yellow and white) on the one hand, and enamels (gules, azure, sable, vert, i.e. red, blue, black and green) on the other, with the rule of color contrariety forbidding the superimposition of two colors from the same group. This rule seems to have originated as early as the middle of the 12th century, the first coats of arms being bichromatic so that they could be seen from a distance.

From the end of the 11th century onwards, coats of arms, which were simple at first, usually two-colored and featuring mainly animal figures, became more complex. During the 13th century, the language of blazon began to take shape, and Western heraldry became organized and regulated. The repertoire of figures became fixed. The first armorials were published after 1270. From the outset, the language of coats of arms was the vernacular, not Latin, since the Church played no role in the creation of coats of arms, and Latin was ill-suited to such descriptions.

From the second half of the 12th century, very soon after the birth of coats of arms, the heraldic crest spread throughout Europe. Initially, it was a figure painted on the combatant's helmet, before becoming a separate object, of which very few examples have survived. We know it almost exclusively from the crests depicted on seals. The crest was first used individually, before becoming a family emblem in the Holy Roman Empire from the middle of the 13th century, and throughout Western Europe in the 14th century.