In heraldry, the five traditional colours are black, red, blue, green and purple. Yellow and white are known as metals and should be called gold and silver. It fascinates me how the same motif can be varied combining colours and metals in different ways. Celebrating International Heraldry Day, I’ve drawn twelve different banners with two things in common: the main heraldic charge is a so-called lion rampant, and all of them are based on coats of arms existing in the real world.
Top row – combinations with the heraldic colour Sable (black):
1. Brabant/Belgium
The Kingdom of Belgium has a golden lion on black in its national coat of arms. The heraldically correct way to describe, to blazon, the shield is: Sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Gules. Belgium’s independence from the Netherlands was declared in 1830 and the new nation adopted the arms of the medieval Duchy of Brabant.
2. Flanders
The arms of the medieval County of Flanders was a black lion on gold (correctly blazoned: Or, a lion rampant Sable, armed and langued Gules). The black lion on gold is still in use by the Belgian region of Flanders; the Flemish flag is a heraldic banner of these arms.
3. Aosta
The Italian autonomous region of Valle d’Aosta has a silver lion on black in its coat of arms (Sable, a lion rampant Argent, armed and langued Gules). The medieval County, later Duchy, of Aosta was ruled by the Savoyard dynasty which became the Italian Royal Family in the 19th Century.
4. Bertrancourt
Bertrancourt is a small municipality with a few hundred inhabitants in the Somme Department in Northern France; the village lies half way between the cities of Amiens and Arras. The municipal arms as well as those of the medieval Lords of Bertrancourt have a black lion on silver (Argent, a lion rampant Sable, armed and langued Azure). Bertrancourt appears in the 15th Century Grand Armorial of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Middle row – combinations with the heraldic colour Gules (red):
5. Zaragoza
A golden lion on red (Gules, a lion rampant Or, crowned Or). Zaragoza is the capital of the Spanish autonomous community of Aragon.
6. Holland/South Holland
A red lion on gold (Or, a lion rampant Gules, armed and langued Azure). The arms of the medieval County of Holland were inherited by the modern Dutch province of South Holland.
7. Bohemia/Czechia
A silver double-tailed lion on red (Gules, a lion rampant queue forchée Argent, armed, langued and crowned Or). The arms of the Kingdom of Bohemia are now used by the Czech Republic.
8. Braunschweig
The arms of the city of Braunschweig in the German state of Lower Saxony is a red lion on silver (Argent, a lion rampant Gules, armed Sable, langued Gules, dented Argent). The city statute specifies that the lion’s claws are black, its tongue is red and its teeth are white.
Bottom row – combinations with the heraldic colour Azure (blue):
9. Lviv Oblast
A golden lion on blue (Azure, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Argent, crowned Or) today appears on the flag and coat of arms of the Ukrainian region of Lviv. The golden lion on blue stems from the arms of the old Polish Voivodeship of Ruthenia, centered around the city of Lviv – known in Polish as Lwów.
10. Percy
A blue lion on gold (Or, a lion rampant Azure) is the so-called modern arms of the House of Percy, an old noble family in Northern England. A yellow banner with a blue lion fly above Alnwick Castle, the ancestral home of Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke of Northumberland.
11. The County of Saarbrücken
A silver lion on blue, the shield strewn with small crosses, were the arms of the medieval Counts of Saarbrücken in southwestern Germany (Azure, semé of crosslets Argent, a lion rampant Argent, crowned Or and langued Gules). Together with the arms of other historic territories, Saarbrücken is represented in the coat of arms of the German state of Saarland.
12. Brescia
The arms of the Italian city of Brescia, in the northern region of Lombardy, is a blue lion on silver (Argent, a lion rampant Azure, armed, langued and queued Gules). Notably, in Brescia, the lion’s tail has a colour that differs from the rest of the lion’s body.
Anton Pihl 