Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Fluer-de-lis an image of regalia

I finished reading the article Regalia. Before I described the artical saying "the article talks about what regalia is and how it is depicted and the image of prestige it creates for the person it attempts to define." Now I have found out much more of what constitues as an object of regalia cheifly a sword, crown, sceptre, rod, orb, robes, rings, arm bands. I gained some more insight as to crowns before reading this article I thought that kings and queens were the only people who wore them and I thought that they wore them most of the time. However, crowns were worn by so many people- kings of arms, crown princes, archdukes, dukes of grand dukes, and popes. Crowns were not used very often or for everyday wear but for more ceremonial purposes such as moment of crowning. The reason that we know about Louis XIV using the fleur de lis as an object of regalia at all is because an artist (Hyacinthe Rigaud) preserved an object of regalia (kings robe) in a portrait painting of the king. Here are some highlights from the rest of the article

It is clear from inventories that, in the late Middle Ages, kings had
several crowns made for general use; while the crowns are described in some
detail, they do not specify the occasions on which they were used. The
coronation crown, often regarded as a relic of a sainted ancestor, was reserved
for investiture alone. Some crowns were kept in churches as votive offerings,
or, having relics set in them, were preserved as reliquaries. Crowns were also
made for consorts, usually modelled on the major house, family or country
ornament; they were usually made for each wearer.

Popes used a crown, or papal tiara, with a tall pointed cap, with fillets or ribbons at the back similar to a mitre, augmented in the 14th century with a second and finally a third crown. Successive pontiffs were crowned with ornaments of this style and wore them during processions but put them aside during liturgical rites. In the 16th
century the original conical form became broader at the top, and all surviving
papal tiaras are of this type (examples in Rome, Vatican, Sistine Chapel; see
also Vestments, ecclesiastical).


Crowns were also worn by crown princes, for example in England, France and Sweden. Other European sovereigns, such as Austrian archdukes and the dukes and grand dukes of Tuscany, had the right to wear a crown. Unique to the doges of Venice was the zoia (two examples in Venice, Correr), a fabric cap with a horn that was embroidered and decorated with jewels. The crowns of Germanic princes, who were sovereigns, were ermine and velvet caps with a scalloped edge turned over a single arched circlet. On the Continent some abbesses of royal monastic houses not only had the right to use a coronet heraldically but also wore crowns or coronets when taking part in imperial and royal coronations. The abbesses of the convent of Frauenchiemsee, Bavaria, are depicted wearing two-arched crowns in a series of
portraits preserved at the convent. During the 16th and 17th centuries most
dioceses in France and the Holy Roman Empire were granted ducal or comital
titles, and coronets were added to the appropriate ecclesiastical insignia of
rank.



In the Middle Ages the wearing of coronets, circlets and special hats
to denote status became widespread, although the codification of patterns for
different ranks of feudal society did not take place before the 16th and 17th
centuries, when their principal use was in heraldic art. Such coronets of
nobility could be very elaborate and, like kings, greater nobles would have
several of varying degrees or richness. In the United Kingdom peers and
peeresses use their coronets only at coronations, placing them on their heads at
the moment of crowning. Crowns are also worn by the Kings of Arms, as
representatives of their sovereign...In England two sceptres, one with a cross-head (seen on silver pennies; London, N.P.G.) and the other with a dove (seen on the Great Seal of Edward the Confessor), were being used before 1066. The former may have been combined with the orb (see §4 below) by the Norman kings, and later a sceptre with a fleur-de-lis was introduced by William II. At the end of the 10th century the French kings were depicted on their seals holding a short rod tipped with a fleur-de-lis, which after 1108 was lengthened to reach the floor. By 1314 they had adopted the ivory hand of justice; this was also used by the kings of Navarre, by some officials in the Habsburg lands and later by Napoleon I at his coronation in 1804 .Sceptres were used by dukes from an early date, both for being invested and to signify a transfer of power ...Sceptres were used by dukes from an early date, both for being invested and to signify a transfer of power ...Coronation orders show that the new ruler was vested in the church with certain of the robes; and a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon order specifically refers to the pallium, later called the stole. The English kings used the same types of robe, but in France the stole is not mentioned in the 14th-century coronation book of Charles V. The robes described in the coronation books for Eleanor of Austria as Queen of France in 1530 and for Henry II of France in 1575 show how richly jewelled the robes and all the dresses of the court were. Henry’s mantle was worked with a deep border of his personal devices in pearls and, like all the French coronation mantles, would have been embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis.


John A. Goodall. "Regalia." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 1 Mar. 2011 http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T071111.

To sum it all up this article was very usefull because it reinforces a possible conclusion and connection I want to make in my final report and that is that people today wear apparel and clothing that has the same fleur de lis image on it that was worn by the VIP of old. I still haven't figured out why there has been this revival of the fleur de lis image but I am convinced that it is all tied up with this concept of power. For Louis XIV it symbolized absolutism his God given right to rule perhaps people today unknowingly are drawn to wear clothes containing this image because it makes them feel refined and of importance.

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