Coat of arms of Bologna

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Coat of arms of Bologna

The coat of arms of the Italian city of Bologna consisted of an oval shield divided into four parts, two containing a red cross on a white background (the city's arms), surmounted by a 'Capo d'Angiò' and two containing 'LIBERTAS' (liberty) in gold letters on a blue background (the people's arms). The whole coat of arms is surmounted by a lion's head.[1][2]

Blazon

The coat of arms, approved by decree of 6 November 1937, has the following blazon:

Scudo ovato inquartato: il primo e il quarto d'argento alla croce piana rossa, capo d'Angiò; il secondo e il terzo d'azzurro alla parola LIBERTAS d'oro posta in banda.

History

Frontispiece of Historia di Bologna

The coat of arms of Bologna is made up of 3 elements:

  • The cross Gules on a field Argent, Arms of the commune
  • The word LIBERTAS Or on a field Azure, Arms of the people
  • The lion's head guardant

The first one to appear as the symbol of the

first crusade when Lodovico Bianchetti gave a banner depicting the cross, an ensign used by the Bolognese crusaders, to Tartaro Tencarari, so that he could give it to the Magistrate of Bologna, who then decided to adopt it as the symbol of the city. Another tradition says that the coat of arms was adopted when bologna was a member of the Lombard League,[3]
but both of these hypothesis are often discarded as it's more likely that the cross was adopted as a symbol for the Bolognese militia and that it was later adopted as a symbol of the city as a whole.

Although a legend says that the Chief of Anjou was added to represent the fabled donation of the Oriflamme made by Charles VI of France to the city in 1389,[4] the chief was actually added during the war between the Papacy and the Empire as a symbol of the city's allegiance to the Guelph's faction and to the Pope.

Saint Petronius
and the coat of arms of the city

According to Ghirardacci, the second symbol of the city, the blue shield with the word LIBERTAS in gold, appeared around the same period in 1376, the year in which the Bolognese people rebelled against the rule of Cardinal Guglielmo di Noellet in the War of the Eight Saints, during which the city received military aid and a blue banner with the motto Libertas in gold from the Florentines.[5]

The modern coat of arms started to appear on the Bolognese coins during the reign of Sante Bentivoglio, after which the blazon was changed by the other reigning families to include their coat of arms, but the changes never stuck to the emblem.

The final symbol, the lion's head, started to appear in the

papal states.[6]

References

  1. ^ "Lo stemma della Città di Bologna". Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  2. ^ "Lo Stemma del Comune di Bologna". Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  3. ^ Cencetti, Giorgio (1937). Lo stemma di Bologna. p. 18..
  4. ^ Cencetti, Giorgio (1937). Lo stemma di Bologna. p. 20..
  5. ^ Cencetti, Giorgio (1937). Lo stemma di Bologna. p. 21..
  6. ^ Cencetti, Giorgio (1937). Lo stemma di Bologna. p. 22..

Bibliography

  • Giorgio Cencetti, Lo stemma di Bologna, in Il Comune di Bologna, n. 5, Bologna, maggio 1937.
  • Luciano Artusi, Firenze araldica, Firenze, Polistampa, 2006, .