The second version consists of the Portuguese shield over the armillary sphere, with this being surrounded by two branches of laurel, tied in the base with a white scroll with the Camões verse Esta é a ditosa Pátria minha amada ("This is my beloved merry homeland").

This is how King Sancho I inherited the shield from his father, Afonso Henriques, with the cross replaced by escutcheons with the silver bezants.

Late explanations interpret them as the five wounds of Jesus Christ and/or the thirty pieces of silver (with the five bezants in the middle escutcheon counted twice).

The red bordure featuring golden castles (not towers, as some sources state) was added during the reign of Afonso III.

It was a navigation instrument used to calculate distances and represents the importance of Portugal during the Age of Discovery, as well as the vastness of its colonial empire when the First Republic was implemented.

The 1910 commission appointed by the government to study the symbols of the new republic suggested the armillary sphere as "the eternal standard of our adventurous spirit".

[1] The original 1910 republican design of the coat of arms of Portugal incorporated a pair of laurel branches forming a wreath.

Starting with the cross azur on field argent, which constituted the putative shield of Henry, Count of Portugal in the 12th century, successive elements were added or taken, culminating with the complex heraldic design that was officially adopted in 1911 (after the Republican Revolution of 1910).

The plates are supposed to represent either the pieces of silver received by Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus or the sovereignty of the Portuguese Kings, symbolized by the right to issue their own money.

These remaining five pieces of blue leather with the bright heads of the nails showing through, are thus proposed as the origin of the five escutcheons azur, each semée of plates.

When the future Afonso III of Portugal asserted his claim to the throne occupied by his brother Sancho II, he adopted as his coat of arms the Portuguese shield differenced by the addition of a bordure gules semée of castles or.

However, the most common presently accepted theory is that the bordure was merely a mark of cadency to signify that Afonso was not the head of the Royal family, the castles probably having been suggested as suitable elements from the arms of his mother Urraca of Castile.

During the 1383–1385 Portuguese interregnum, one of the emerging candidates to the throne was John, master of the Order of Aviz, an illegitimate son of King Peter I of Portugal.

Finally, in 1485, King John II ordered the correction of the Portuguese shield, eliminating features identified as heraldic errors.

[3] Thus the cross of the Order of Aviz was removed and the dexter and sinister escutcheons were set upright, lest left couchée they might be assumed to symbolize bastardy, which was not appropriate in the case of that monarch.

Furthermore, the semée of plates on the field of each of the five escutcheons was fixed in number at five as a reference to the Five Holy Wounds of Christ, being the personal devotion of that monarch, and were arranged in saltire thus forming a quincunx.

During the period of the Iberian Union (1580–1640), the Portuguese shield was placed in the honour point of the complex coat of arms of the House of Habsburg.

Until the early 14th century, the achievement of arms of Portugal consisted solely in the shield, with no external elements surrounding it being represented.

Both the torse and the mantling that appeared in the helmet were represented in argent and gules during the reign of King Manuel I (1495-1521), these being his livery colors.

In latter representations of the Royal achievement of arms, the torse and the mantling included the four colors of the Portuguese shield argent, gules, or and azur.

From the 18th century onwards, the dragons vert that served as the Portuguese crest became also the most often represented supporters in the achievement of arms of Portugal.