Fleur-de-lis

Most notably, the fleur-de-lis (⚜️) is depicted on the traditional coat of arms of France that was used from the High Middle Ages until the French Revolution in 1792, and then again in brief periods in the 19th century.

According to Pierre-Augustin Boissier de Sauvages, an 18th-century French naturalist and lexicographer:[6] The old fleurs-de-lis, especially the ones found in our first kings' sceptres, have a lot less in common with ordinary lilies than the flowers called flambas [in Occitan], or irises, from which the name of our own fleur-de-lis may derive.

What gives some colour of truth to this hypothesis that we already put forth, is the fact that the French or Franks, before entering Gaul itself, lived for a long time around the river named Lys in the Flanders.

It was thus understandable that our kings, having to choose a symbolic image for what later became a coat of arms, set their minds on the iris, a flower that was common around their homes, and is also as beautiful as it was remarkable.

[10] In the East it was found on the gold helmet of a Scythian king uncovered at the Ak-Burun kurgan and conserved in Saint Petersburg's Hermitage Museum.

[14] For the transition from religious to dynastic symbolism and the beginning of European heraldic use of the fleur-de-lis, see France section, chronologically followed by England through claims to the French crown.

This iconic symbol holds a rich historical significance and has adorned the emblems and crests of various noble houses, reflecting both cultural heritage and a sense of identity within the country.

The coat of arms contained six fleurs-de-lis,[22][h] where the flower itself is today often considered to be a representation of the autochthonous golden lily, Lilium bosniacum.

The fleur-de-lis pattern is clearly depicted in an illustration of emperor Nikephoros Phocas's welcome ceremony in Constantinople (963 AD) included in Synopsis Istorion (dated 1070s).

By the late 13th century, an allegorical poem by Guillaume de Nangis (d. 1300), written at Joyenval Abbey in Chambourcy, relates how the golden lilies on an azure ground were miraculously substituted for the crescents on Clovis' shield, a projection into the past of contemporary images of heraldry.

[citation needed] In the 14th century, French writers asserted that the monarchy of France, which developed from the Kingdom of the West Franks, could trace its heritage back to the divine gift of royal arms received by Clovis.

[citation needed] On 29 December 1429, King Charles VII ennobled the family of Joan of Arc, seen as a French hero in the ensueing Hundred Years' War, with an inheritable symbolic denomination.

[47] His condition that his country needed to abandon the red and blue colors that it had adopted to symbolize the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789 was rejected and France became a republic.

Some cities that had been particularly faithful to the French Crown were awarded a heraldic augmentation of two or three fleurs-de-lis on the chief of their coat of arms; such cities include Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Reims, Le Havre, Angers, Le Mans, Aix-en-Provence, Tours, Limoges, Amiens, Orléans, Rouen, Argenteuil, Poitiers, Chartres, and Laon, among others.

It has appeared on the coat-of-arms of other historical provinces of France including Burgundy, Anjou, Picardy, Berry, Orléanais, Bourbonnais, Maine, Touraine, Artois, Dauphiné, Saintonge, and the County of La Marche.

Originally argent (silver or white) on gules (red) background, the emblem became the standard of the imperial party in Florence (parte ghibellina), causing the town government, which maintained a staunch Guelph stance, being strongly opposed to the imperial pretensions on city states, to reverse the color pattern to the final gules lily on argent background.

As an emblem of the city, it is therefore found in icons of Zenobius, its first bishop,[50] and associated with Florence's patron Saint John the Baptist in the Florentine fiorino.

[51][52] The three fleurs-de-lis design on the Jurbarkas coat of arms was abolished during the final years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but officially restored in 1993 after the independence of present-day Lithuania was re-established.

Additionally, it features in a large number of royal arms of the House of Plantagenet, from the 13th century onwards to the early Tudors (Elizabeth of York and the de la Pole family).

Some of the places that have it in their flag or seal are the cities of Baton Rouge, Detroit, Lafayette, Louisville, Mobile, New Orleans, Ocean Springs and St. Louis.

The historian Michel Pastoureau says that until about 1300 they were found in depictions of Jesus, but gradually they took on Marian symbolism and were associated with the Song of Solomon's "lily among thorns" (lilium inter spinas), understood as a reference to Mary.

Other scripture and religious literature in which the lily symbolizes purity and chastity also helped establish the flower as an iconographic attribute of the Virgin.

[68][69] In medieval England, from the mid-12th century, a noblewoman's seal often showed the lady with a fleur-de-lis, drawing on the Marian connotations of "female virtue and spirituality".

A standard portrayal was of Mary carrying the flower in her right hand, just as she is shown in that church's Virgin of Paris statue (with lily), and in the centre of the stained glass rose window (with fleur-de-lis sceptre) above its main entrance.

"Flower of light" symbolism has sometimes been understood from the archaic variant fleur-de-luce (see Latin lux, luc- = 'light'), but the Oxford English Dictionary suggests this arose from the spelling, not from the etymology.

The symbol was first used by Sir Robert Baden-Powell as an arm-badge for soldiers who qualified as scouts (reconnaissance specialists) in the 5th Dragoon Guards, which he commanded at the end of the 19th century; it was later used in cavalry regiments throughout the British Army until 1921.

It may appear in a building for heraldic reasons, as in some English churches where the design paid a compliment to a local lord who used the flower on his coat of arms.

During the reign of Elizabeth I of England, known as the Elizabethan era, it was a standard name for an iris, a usage which lasted for centuries,[79] but occasionally refers to lilies or other flowers.

French officials in the colony of Isle de France (modern-day Mauritius), which adopted the Code Noir in 1685, punished slaves who attempted to escape or stole property by branding them with the fleur-de-lis.

[85] In the French colony of Louisiana, which adopted the Code Noir in 1724, slaves who attempted to escape and were recaptured would be branded on one shoulder with the fleur-de-lis along with having their ears cut off.