Gonfalon

The gonfalon, gonfanon, gonfalone (from the early Italian confalone) is a type of heraldic flag or banner, often pointed, swallow-tailed, or with several streamers, and suspended from a crossbar in an identical manner to the ancient Roman vexillum.

[citation needed] A picture of a gonfalon is itself a heraldic charge in the coat of arms of the Counts Palatine of Tübingen and their cadet branches.

Images on the gonfalons included the patron saints of cities, villages, confraternities or guilds, the Virgin and Child, Jesus Christ, God the Father, Plague Saints, and the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven, Mediatrix, Theotokos, or Madonna of Mercy.

[citation needed] These gonfalons were often commissioned and kept by confraternities, lay religious groups who gathered together for devotional purposes such as the singing of hymns (laudae), the performance of charitable works, or flagellation.

The banners would be either displayed on the wall of the oratory or packed away until they were needed for their primary use, religious processions.