Talk:Papal coats of arms

Crowned Ethiopian
What is the significance of the so-called "crowned Ethiopian"?

The upper left-hand section of the arms depicts a brown-faced Moor with red lips, crown and collar; it is a symbol of the former Diocese of Freising, of which Benedict was bishop, dating back to the eighth century. Though it is not known why the Moor came to represent Freising, the Pope wrote in his book "Milestones" "it is an expression of the universality of the church which knows no distinctions of race or class since all are one in Christ".

So it looks somewhat surprising (!), but seems to be OK...

Wrong color for Pope Benedict XVI
The color of the Coat of Arms for Pope Benedict XVI is wrong. The bagground for the bear should be bluw, see Local Catholic Network / Kurt L - Denmark

Dead Popes COA
I read that once a pope dies, his coat of arms no longer has the keys... is this true? 68.175.27.35 07:53, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Crossed Keys
Surely, the crossed keys are not classical or pagan in origin but a reference to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 16, verses 18-19?

"You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

Thus, one key symbolises the binding or loosing on earth, and the other in heaven, and hence, the spiritual authority of the Papacy to forgive sin. Isn't this axiomatic?

Blazonings
Shouldn't the blazons of the various coats of arms be listed on this page, instead of just showing images? -Agur bar Jacé (talk) 17:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale...

 * Image:JohnXXIIICOA.jpg is being used on this article....
 * Image:BenedictXVCOA.jpg is being used on this article....
 * Image:LeoXIIICOA.jpg is being used on this article.... BetacommandBot (talk) 23:34, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I recall some previous discussion of use of images from, but I can't find the discussion. Gimmetrow 00:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Found explanation on Image:Stemma-Leone-XIII.jpg on commons.

La bildo estas kopiita de wikipedia:it. La originala priskribo estas:

Stemma di Leone XIII

Dalla pagina: http://www.araldicavaticana.com/Pontefici.htm

Autorizzato alla pubblicazione dal detentore del copyright, via e-mail.

Autorizzazione del curatore Fabio Ceresa in data 01.11.2004 Gentile Sig. Silla, grazie per i complimenti, inaspettati e graditi. Se non fossi preso dalla redazione della tesi gusterei il suo studio sui due poteri, ma temo che dovrò rimandare il piacere; in ogni modo, contraccambio il complimento sulla fiducia. Usi pure gli stemmi come meglio crede; purtroppo il webmaster (che non sono io) ha dovuto rimpicciolirli per questioni di spazio e memoria, quindi la definizione ne è lievemente compromessa. La saluto con cordialità e stima, Fabio Ceresa

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Gimmetrow 08:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Accuracy
Hi, How does one know if these images are accurate? There is This image which is different and a new user added this image now which he made by himself which is ornate and different from the usual 2 dimensional Vatican coat of arms images. How do we know which was Leo's coat of arms? Thanks. History2007 (talk) 17:34, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * They're equally valid representations of the same concept, except that Liptak's comet looks too much like an estoile. —Tamfang (talk) 01:35, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Colour of the cord
sorry, I do not know the “cord fixing the keys” correct heraldic name: is it red, or gold? in fact, http://www.vaticanstate.va/IT/homepage.htm shows red cord, http://www.vatican.va/phome_ge.htm just shows b/w. by now, in article is given: CoA Pope gold, Vatican red, "emblem" both red --W!B: (talk) 17:49, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Displays of keys and tiara
The coats of arms presented here are all in the current fashion and not accurate to contemporary depictions. This presents inaccurate coats of arms that were created based not on historical content, but, rather, out of misunderstandings and a misguided belief that things that are were always thus. Some things to note are:


 * 1) The two keys are crossed in saltire for the first time in the 12th century.
 * 2) Both keys ar depicted as argent until the 15th century; examples of this are found well into the 16th century still.
 * 3) The keys are not always found displayed with or in the arms, sometimes only the tiara was used. Sometimes neither.
 * 4) The tiara is not always found above or in the arms, somtimes only the keys were used. Sometimes, as mentioned before, neither are used.
 * 5) The tiara did not always have three crowns. ThEven after the first triple-coronet tiara appeared, double- and single-coronet types were still occasionaly found.
 * 6) The keys and tiara (or one and not the other) were often added as an augmentation to a pope's arms on a chief gules. This was a common practice up to at least the 16th century.
 * 7) Another display seen in earlier centuries is the use of a cross wbehind the pope's arms. Usually this would be seen in use with the tiara, the cross ofset to the dexter instead of being centered.

50.44.145.236 (talk) 09:18, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I was going to complain about the same thing. If you have information on a coat of arms, just create an image based on the information you have, and cite your information. Don't just make up stuff by analogy, it does not work like this. I don't know how many coas shown here are correct, probably just the ones of the 19th to 20th centuries, perhaps also the 18th, probably not the 17th, certainly not the older ones. --dab (𒁳) 10:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

It seems that the problem originates with commons:User:Odejea who made a File:Template for Papal coat of arms.svg in 2008, and then like a golem combined it with absolutely every papal coa he could find. I.e. we do have File:Blason UrbainVIII.svg (uploaded in 2007), but Odejea turned this into File:C o a Urbano VIII.svg in 2008, and he then put them all on this page. To be fair, he just based his images on templates like File:Urbano VIII coat of arms.jpg, which were in turn taken from this website. Well, the mistake was made by araldicavaticana.com, but this is no excuse for Wikipedia, because anyone editing here should know better than just to trust random webpages they find online.

The anonymous user states that "The two keys are crossed in saltire for the first time in the 12th century", but our article Coats of arms of the Holy See and Vatican City provides references which claims that this was first the case in the 14th century, so I don't know about the 12th and 13th, references are needed. As for the heraldic customs of arranging stuff around the escutcheon as an integral part of the coa, this practice originates in the 17th century. So while it may be possible to find such stuff in depictions predating 1600, it should be considered random ornamentation, and not integral part of the coa. For the coas of 1600 to present, it is possible to add such items, provided they are based on a reference, and this reference is presented explicitly. --dab (𒁳) 10:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

So I suppose it is reasonable for the moment to assume the keys-and-mitre fashion for papal coas arose in the 1590s. --dab (𒁳) 11:31, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * for Clemens VIII, I found a reasonably close and reasonably contemporary depiction of his coa here, so I am for the moment assuming that coa's will be likely to be correct (which is not the same as verification) from there onward
 * for Innocent IX, I find this, which is also claimed as contemporary (1590s), but being black-and-white, I cannot judge which tinctures the keys are supposed to be in. At least the basic ingredients keys, tiara, cord, are there.
 * for Gregory XIV, Urban VII, Sixtus V, I have no information
 * for Gregory XIII, I find this image, apparently a coa dedicated to him when he was already pope (1580), but not showing any keys or mitre.
 * Surely the external ornaments are not essential. The Holy See, which I suppose is the highest authority on papal arms, has presented the arms of the popes without external ornaments, as can be seen in editions of the Annuario Pontificio prior to 1970, which gave the arms of the popes from Innocent III onward ("Stemmi dei Sommi Pontefici dal sec. XII ad oggi") in the form of the escutcheon alone, even for the then most recent popes, including Paul VI.  It would be much neater if the same system were followed here.  It would also eliminate errors such as those complained of above and the mistaken placing of the keys in the arms given here for Pope Pius VII.
 * The 1970 edition of the Annuario Pontificio no longer gave the arms of the popes and of the living cardinals - perhaps because the latter were becoming too numerous.
 * In the Annuario Pontificio the shape of the shield was uniform, without the, again non-essential, vagaries used by the artists.    Esoglou (talk) 12:27, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * this is entirely my point, if they are non-essential, we should not show them, as we are just introducing an additional source for error unnecessarily. We can compile an additional, referenced section about the history of these ornaments instead. --dab (𒁳) 10:37, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * now here is a problem: the Holy See is certainly the primary authority, in the sense of WP:PRIMARY for how papal arms should be represented today. But even they do not have jurisdiction over history. If they claim Innocent III had such-and-such a coa, this is subject to verification like any other historical claim. As our article is aware, coas of historical popes began to be made up from the 17th century. Now we can report these "fictional" coas, but we need to draw a distinction between coas that are actually historical, and those that were invented at a later time. --dab (𒁳) 10:37, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't believe that the Holy See has made any declaration whatever about how papal arms should be represented. As the article Blazon states, the visual representation of a coat of arms traditionally allows the artist considerable latitude.  Even for modern popes, the design that each of them chooses is not obligatory, as long as the essential elements as described in the blazon are preserved.  As for historical papal arms, the Holy See is not a primary source.  Even what it published in pre-1970 editions of the Annuario Pontificio is no more a primary source than any other study of the historical evidence.  What appears in that publication is an example, not the only one, of papal arms represented without external ornaments, even in the case of recent popes.  It was for that purpose I cited it.  If the Annuario Pontificio could represent the arms of the popes without external ornaments, surely Wikipedia can also.  It is also an illustration of what the Blazon article says about the freedom of the pictorial artist, since it makes all the escutcheons uniform, stripping them of the variations in shape that appear in this article.  Esoglou (talk) 17:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I am beginning to think that you misunderstand the purpose of Wikipedia entirely. --dab (𒁳) 10:16, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * the purpose of the Annuario Pontificio is to list popes, and they choose to list them with coas. This is one of many, many sources we can draw upon.
 * the purpose of this Wikipedia article is to discuss the topic of "papal coat of arms" from all possible angles, drawing from as many references as we can. Ideally secondary references which already give a structured overview, but we can also use primary references like the list in Annuario Pontificio, among many, many other references published over the past 500 years. Differences between these should be discussed in the spirit of WP:DUE. There is no conceivable reason why the 1969 reference should be given precedence over any other. Yes, we can cite it. No, it is not a "reliable" reference in the sense that the entire article should be structured around it. There is a reason this article is not titled "papal coats of arms in the 1969 edition of the Annuario Pontificio", and I do not think Wikipedia needs such a page.

From Die Wappenrolle der Päpste by Hugo Gerard Ströhl printed in 1909, http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~thylacinepress/images/pont.jpg. The central image shows the basic template that the popes would have displayed, a tiara with two coronets instead of three. Then we have a page by Michael Francis McCarthy printed sometime around 2006, http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~thylacinepress/images/amor%20pont.jpg, which shows modern renditions based on historic examples. Would anyone be able to at least update the popes presented here? Or would anyone have access to the full works by these heraldists? 50.82.40.97 (talk) 12:08, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Assumption as Pope of a distinct personal coat of arms
So it transpires that from the 13th, or possibly 12th century, popes would simply keep using their personal coa if they had one. I.e. there was nothing "papal" about these coas, they just expressed the continuing identity of the pope as a member of such-and-such a family Such popes as did come from noble families, which was most of them, continued to do this at least into the 18th century. Clement XII (Laurent Corsini, 1652-1740) still simply used the Corsini coa. The question now is, at what point did popes who were commoners feel compelled to design a "papal coat of arms" upon being elected. I suspect Sixtus V, but this needs verification.

Another question would be, was there a point where a new pope would design a "papal" coa upon election even if he already had a personal coa? I think the last pope who was from a noble family was Leo XII, born Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Girolamo Nicola Sermattei della Genga. I am not sure but I think he still just used his family's coa. It would then be a matter of identifying which coats of arms in the "modern" section are in fact designed as papal coas, and which are an actualy family's coa. --dab (𒁳) 13:03, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The book of about 1400 by Christine de Pizan, which I have cited in the article, shows that already as far back as that time it was customary for people who achieved any position of prominence to assume a coat of arms. So it was natural for someone who had no family coat of arms to assume a coat of arms on becoming pope, especially if he was not already a bishop and had to be consecrated by the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia.  There is no basis for claiming that no pope before Benedict XVI modified an already existing coat of arms of his on becoming Pope.  His immediate predecessor John Paul II made only a slight modification, rejecting Bruno Heim's efforts to have him adopt more radical changes, efforts that indicated that a modifica.  John Paul I certainly modified his arms on passing from the see of Vittorio Veneto to that of Venice, so there is no reason to imagine he could not have modified it again on passing to the see of Rome.  The same can be said of the two previous popes who kept in their Roman arms the chief that they had added to their escutcheons only on becoming Patriarch of Venice (John XXIII and Pius X).  Esoglou (talk) 17:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I have now seen that Bruno Heim was in some way involved in designing the personal papal arms of John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul I, as well as those of John Paul II. Esoglou (talk) 20:57, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It is a pleasure to talk to somebody who actually knows about the topic. You are right, indeed, this is a matter of case-by-case research.
 * What I was trying to say was, I was misled to believe that it was customary for a new pope to adopt a coa. It now turns out that the vast majority in fact just used their "gentile" coa, and the vast majority of those who did not have one did just continue using the one they had adopted as bishop. Benedict XVI is a notable exception, but there may well be others. I am afraid I do not think the argument of "there is no reason to imagine he could not have" is convinving: it does in fact appear that there is a tradition of popes not changing their coa upon election (presumably as a gesture of humility). We can collect examples of popes who did, but these will be few indeed. --dab (𒁳) 06:26, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

"papal coat of arms"
It now turns out that strictly speaking there is no such thing as a "papal coat of arms". There is the personal coat of arms of the individual elected as pope, and as this individual he would continue using this just as before. Elected popes would not alter their personal coat of arms. If they were commoners, they would have adopted a coa upon their appointment as bishop, long before they knew they would become pope. It seems the only exception to this is Ratzinger, who as Benedict XVI ceased to use the coa he used as bishop and adopted a new one (with a design still based on the earlier one). So it would seem there is one "papal coat of arms", designed in 2005, and all others are simply coats of arms of people who happened to be elected as pope. --dab (𒁳) 15:19, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * In an earlier discussion I (mis)understood by "papal coat of arms" the arms of the Holy See, which I still think is a valid interpretation of the phrase. The plural "papal coats of arms" is not so ambiguous, and can quite legitimately be applied to the coats of arms actually used by popes, whether specially invented or modified for that position or not.  I have commented above on the claim that Benedict XVI's arms are the only ones that have differed from what the same person used before becoming Pope.  Esoglou (talk) 17:15, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Not quite-the Arms of Benedict XVI were still his personal Arms-they were just altered on the occasion of him becoming Pope.JWULTRABLIZZARD (talk) 23:16, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Annuario Pontificio 1969
I have started a section presenting the personal coats of arms of popes as in the 1969 Annuario Pontificio, in the hope that someone better than I am at this work will continue. I have simply isolated the escutcheon in the six chronologically first images that were given with external ornaments. There can surely be no objection to giving them in the form in which the Annuario Pontificio presented them, the only difference being that in the Annuario Pontificio they were in black and white with the colours indicated in the traditional way. I have only produced .png images. Perhaps someone can continue the work and give all the images in .svg form. If it is left to me, it will take many weeks to complete. In case someone raises an objection, I have uploaded these images only to the English Wikipedia. Esoglou (talk) 20:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

So you are saying the Annuario Pontificio gives them without external ornaments, right? I appreciate your addition, but I suggest we try to combine the Annuario Pontificio material with the rest, otherwise we will end up with two galleries of coas. I was going to suggest that we might change the format from gallery to table, i.e. one coa per row with a column for "popes" and one for "comments". The Segni popes could then be listed alongside their coa, say, as follows, what do you think?

Much research could go into each individual coa still, it is fine to say this is how the AP presents them, but this is just a starting point. What is our evidence that Innocent III used this coa? When is it first attested? What about variants? The Italian blazoning contradicts the English one, viz. the English description states the eagle has a silver head and a golden crown, while the Italian one says golden beak+claws and no crown. Nb. the Italian is just taken from here, an example where this website makes a blatant mistake, as the source it shows does show the eagle crowned. --dab (𒁳) 06:20, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * yeah I think the eagle should be crowned. This is not going to be the last problem with these coa images. I am also concerned that this may be the coa of Alexander IV (1250s), which was simply substituted for the earlier Conti popes by Vatican heraldists without any positive evidence. It is fair to say that "heraldists show this coa for the Conti popes", but this isn't the same as claiming "Innocent III used this coa" in Wikipedia's voice. --dab (𒁳) 07:06, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * My suggestion is to remove entirely the complex unsourced images with external ornaments whose authenticity you have strongly questioned, and replace them all with the plain uniform escutcheons, for which we do have a reliable secondary source in the pre-1970 editions of the Annuario Pontificio.
 * In addition, the official designs of the latest popes, together with their external ornaments, could be added as a separate small gallery.
 * I do not think it would be appropriate to add to whichever main gallery is kept further tables about the relatively few popes who shared the same family arms.
 * For all I know, the Annuario Pontificio may even have been giving those images for a century or more. The oldest edition at my disposal is that of 1964.
 * If it is thought worthwhile (something I strongly doubt), variants based on reliable sources can be added as footnotes. That would cover your interest in crowns and claws.  We can't add original research.
 * The Annuario Pontificio does not say that the popes it lists actually used those arms. It only says that these were the arms of those popes.  Unless we cite a reliable source that says those were not their arms, we must in Wikipedia accept what this reliable source says.  Esoglou (talk) 08:23, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, this is not the Annuario Pontificio article. Yes, we can say that the AP shows such-and-such a coa, but this is of limited interest. We have plenty of other sources to draw from. I consider the AP a quotable primary reference, but I do not consider it a "reliable", let alone a reliabele secondary reference on heraldry. We can use it as long as we have nothing better, but you need to stop pretending that this entire article needs to be structured around your single source.
 * So the AP says the Conti eagle in the coa attributed to Innocent III has no crown? Well, this is tough, here is a 17th century source, just as venerable and just as "primary", where it does have one. This is already the end of the illusion that the AP is in any way authoritative. We can still cite it for lack of a better reference, but as soon as we find out what exactly was the deal with the Conti coa, your reference becomes perfectly redunant. --dab (𒁳) 10:10, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * also, what we are doing here is not a list of popes along with their coas. We already have this, here. The AP lists popes with their coas. We do this at list of popes. This article is about the coas, so if anything it should be a list of coas, not of popes. I.e. the Conti coa can be listed as a single item along with a specification which popes used it. --dab (𒁳) 10:26, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Have you perhaps, without first obtaining consensus, deleted part of the series of papal arms that had been in this article for years? I find the new arrangement confusing, so perhaps you have not.  If you have (and I am not claiming that you have), we can come to that question later.  For now, it is enough to say that that series agreed, as regards the content of the escutcheons, with what the Annuario Pontificio gave. The images in that series may even have been indirectly derived from the Annuario Pontificio, being based on Internet images of a period several decades later than those editions of the Annuario, Internet images that may in turn have been based on the Annuario Pontificio, especially since the series corresponds exactly to that in the Annuario Pontificio.
 * You questioned these long-standing images as regards the external ornaments, not concerning the escutcheons, and you said that, since those ornaments are not essential, they should not be shown. In other words, you were then arguing for a display of the personal arms of popes in the form (without external ornaments) in which the Annuario Pontificio displayed them.  Yet now you have deleted the initial form of a series that corresponded with what you were then arguing for.
 * You may disagree with the Annuario Pontificio, but it is, according to the Wikipedia definition, a reliable source. Even if it were a primary source decreeing particular coats of arms for particular popes, which it is not, it could still be cited for what it expressly says, since "a primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge" (WP:PSTS).
 * If you know of other reliable sources that attribute to certain popes coats of arms different from those the Annuario Pontificio attributes to them, by all means cite them and ensure WP:BALANCE. You know very well that arguing that a pope of a certain family had a certain coat of arms on the basis only that that family had that particular coat of arms is not allowed in Wikipedia (see WP:OR]).  You need a reliable source that actually says what was that pope's coat of arms.
 * The essential point here is that the Annuario Pontificio is a reliable source for a view about the coats of arms of certain popes. If we cannot agree here about whether the Annuario Pontificio can be cited as such, I can only suggest that we take the question to the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. Esoglou (talk) 19:18, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Reverting edits
I trust you will agree that it is better not just to revert each other's edits. I will therefore let your text stand until we have discussed our differences one by one. To start with, you changed the opening words, "For at least eight centuries", which is based on the cited source's, "There is an at least 800-year-old tradition for Popes to have their own personal coat of arms", to "For about eight centuries", thus inserting a claim that the tradition goes back no more than about eight centuries. That may be true, but truth alone is not enough for Wikipedia and no source is cited in support of that claim. The source that is cited seems to contradict the claim by indicating that the tradition may be even more ancient. I submit that the unsourced "For about eight centuries" is not an allowable edit in Wikipedia. Esoglou (talk) 19:18, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Since this edit has remained undefended, I am now undoing it.
 * Next, the first of the several changes made with this edit: changing "initially" to "typically". The cited source says that, from 1300 onwards, the popes began to display family coats of arms.  Instead, the change makes the unsourced claim that for about eight centuries the arms displayed by the popes have "typically" been family arms.  While initially the personal arms of popes were indeed family arms, this claim is obviously false with regard to the most recent centuries and, more important for Wikipedia, no reliable source has been brought forward to support it.  Unless such a source is produced, the change can and indeed should be undone.  Esoglou (talk) 11:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Absence of defence of this change too makes me think it better to undo the changes in question one by one and await objection before taking any of them to discussion. Esoglou (talk) 14:15, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it is not necessary even to do so one by one, as I intended. Esoglou (talk) 14:19, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

yes, sorry, I was distracted from this topic. Look, even if your source has such a turn of phrase, this isn't sufficient to insist it should be the very opening of the lead section. The statement can be attributed, but we have enough references that cast severe doubt on the claim's factuality. In fact, we have enough references that positively state it is wrong. There may or may not have been individual popes who happened to have personal coats of arms (as individuals, not in their role as pope) from as early as 800 years ago. From this it does not follow that each and every pope since 1213 had such coats of arms. There is no reason not to stay on the safe side and not make dubious claims in the opening paragraph.

Now, the interesting question would be, which was the first pope who created a "papal coat of arms" upon election (because he didn't have a "secular" one)? This would be relevant in discussing the history of the concept, and the information so far is simply missing because we haven't been able to figure it out yet.

So far, we have as terminus ante quem, I do not think we have evidence for such practice prior to 1800, but I cannot preclude the possibility it may have happened at some point during the 14th to 18th centuries, this has to be checked. --dab (𒁳) 10:24, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Pius VII in 1800 did have a family coa but he modified it upon election
 * Pius X did not have a family coa and in 1884 (when made bishop) he made up a coa from scratch


 * we also have Clement XIV with the emblem of the Franciscans in chief, so the terminus may be pushed to the 18th century. Also promising is the dove of Innocent X, if this is "ecclesiastical heraldry", we would even be at 1600. Since everyone in the Renaissance was more or less nobility to begin with, I doubt we can go much earlier with this. no, the dove is in the Pamphili family coa, so the "ecclesiastical" heraldic tradition is probably limited to the "modern" period proper, from the second half of the 18th century. --dab (𒁳) 12:49, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

whoa, I just found Pope Nicholas V used the keys of Peter as his personal coa, apparently the first to do so. He seems to have been a typically "evil" Renaissance pope, but atypically of modest birth (son of a physician). He may not only be the origin of the "papal coa" tradition, but of the "Coa of the Holy See" tradition as well. This will be worth noting. We then have a genuine and solid claims of "papal coas" having a coherent history going back to the 1440s. --dab (𒁳) 13:04, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I finally figured it out, including proper references. They just used their family coas in the 13th century. In the 14th century, they started using the tiara. The introduction of the keys of Peter is due to Nicholas V (1447). Nicholas V remained the only ever pope to select a coat of arms upon election until the 1700s, everyone else just used their family coas. Pius VI (1717) was the second pope to do this, but again this example was not followed again during all of the 18th and 19th centuries. This only became a "trend" in the 20th century, beginning with Pius X (1903), Pius XI (1922), and it finally became the "new norm" in 1958 with John XIII, followed by all of his five successors since (they all used coas they had chosen when they became bishop, optionally "updated" upon becoming pope). I am glad this has finally been settled for the purposes of this article, because it will greatly facilitate checking coa imags for their authenticity. Details remain to be worked out. Some 19th century coas clearly appear to be modified family coa (addition of some religious emblem). The keys used in the 15th century were silver, so at what point did one key become gold? Ideally, the "finished" article will cite specific references for each pope individually. --dab (𒁳) 14:04, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Coat of arms description
In the "Late Middle Ages and Renaissance" list of arms. When viewing the arms listed with it, the following description makes no sense. Also the note describes the arms well, and makes no reference to the below description.

--Xavier (talk) 23:03, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
 * "Gules, a pale embattled counter-embattled argent, a chief azure (?)"

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 * Added archive https://archive.is/20130218091006/http://www.lucisullest.it/dett_news_print.php?id=3823 to http://www.lucisullest.it/dett_news_print.php?id=3823
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131206134335/http://wedvickofjarlsby.org/webvick-gallery/displayimage.php?album=7&pos=24 to http://wedvickofjarlsby.org/webvick-gallery/displayimage.php?album=7&pos=24

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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 10:08, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Blazon error?
The blazon "Gules a lion rampant argent holding a castle triple-towered or." does not match the image next to it, the lion isn't argent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.183.48.194 (talk) 21:34, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

lozengy
A recent edit hid the image (thanks for not deleting it!) with the comment image shown has inverted colors (Loz. argent & azure). I call that a distinction without a difference; what do others think? —Tamfang (talk) 22:49, 22 November 2023 (UTC)