The carp in heraldry
- Éric Deboutrois
- il y a 5 jours
- 5 min de lecture
During my research, I came across coats of arms decorated with fish . This sparked my interest in heraldry , as I thought it might also reveal historical information . One thing led to another, and I found a few carp among many other fish , which indeed reinforced my understanding of the distribution of species in different areas during the Middle Ages .
In " Heraldry of Fish " (Thomas Moule, 1842), one finds a whole bestiary of aquatic creatures, but no early example of a carp on English coats of arms, despite them being among the oldest, along with French ones (around the 11th century). This implicitly corroborates the fact that the carp was not yet present across the Channel at the beginning of the Middle Ages. In France, I have not found any more coats of arms displaying carp (perhaps I haven't looked in the right places), except for the description of the De Blocg coat of arms . Gules (red) with three silver carp one above the other (IV) in the work of Pierre Palliot (1660, p. 547 and following) see here
In fact, while researching the carp in Poland, I had already found the Korczborg family coat of arms in the Insignia seu clenodia Regis et Regni Poloniae . In 1466, the Polish historian Jan Długosz (1415-1480) described the family coat of arms of knights fighting in the Battle of Grunwald, including that of the family " Corczbog, que tres pisces, qui carpones vocantur, unum super alterum locatum, defert in campo rubeo. " (Corczbog, which bears three fish, called carp, placed one above the other, on a red field). Was this the De Blocg family that Pierre Palliot would later mention? In any case, this story of coats of arms and knights (I didn't dare suggest carp and swords) piqued my curiosity.
It was towards the end of the 12th century and then into the 13th that most noble families also adopted coats of arms and a common heraldic motif (here, three carp) to show that they descended from a common ancestor. Family names did not yet exist at the time; lords took the name of their estate (and changed their names when they changed estates), with spellings that could vary from language to language, which presented a real challenge. Another challenge was that families used coats of arms within a family group, which each branch retained and/or modified.
Thus the Korczbok ( Corzybog/ Korczibog/Kurzback) are an ancient Germanic-Silesian lineage that has common ancestors with the Seidlitz family (von Seydlitz, Seidlitz or Zeidlitz) who would have originated from the banks of the Rhine (Thuringia) and share - in negative of colours - the same coat of arms ( Johanne Sinapio / Silesian Curiosities first presentation. ... / Leipzig 1720 (38))
A branch of the family settled in Silesia in the 13th century, in the principality of Wrocław and Schweidnitz. From Silesia, the family then spread to Bohemia, Poland, Upper Lusatia, and Brandenburg.
I found that Jan and Dam of Seidlitz had participated in the fifteenth imperial tournament, which took place in Regensburg during the reign of Emperor Rudolf I in 1284. I did not focus on the result considering that such participation was already more than glorious in the sense that it was necessary to prove the antiquity of one's coat of arms and to be the equal of other old families in one's nobility in order to compete.
During the first half of the 14th century, the Seidlitz family of Lažany (Laasan), then the Bechinie family of Lažany , the Seidlitz family of Schönfeld , the Kurzbach family of Milíč and Trachenberg gradually separated from the original Seidlitz house.
In 1317, Günzel Seidlitz of Lažany (Gunczelin Seydlitz von Lazan) was burgrave of Klitzdorff and lived at the court of Charles IV, Count of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. His son, Kunzel , served King Wenceslaus IV. Kunzel's son, Jindřich Lefl of Lažany , settled in Bohemia. He was one of King Wenceslaus IV's favorites and became his confidant. He was Grand Chamberlain and for many years the governor of the Principality of Wrocław (Lower Silesia in Poland).
In 1413 he purchased Náchod Castle, which he exchanged for Bechyně Castle ( South Bohemia , in the Czech Republic) , where he established his residence before becoming burgrave in Kraków. After settling in Bechyně, the entire family adopted the name Bechyně of Lažany. ( Bechinies of Lažany). After being promoted to aristocratic status, two shield-bearers were added to the coat of arms of the Bechyně family of Lažany (silver emblem with three red carp).
The three carp have thus been used by several dozen families over time (I counted about thirty), including the Hodějovský of Hodějov (Southern Bohemian village). Their ancestor Hněvek appears as a servant of the lords of Rožemberk (see here ) and head of the church in Čestice from 1378 to 1400. His coat of arms features a golden carp on a blue shield; a carp is also present on the crest. It differed from that of the aldermen of Čestice, who had a silver carp .
The carp is found on the crest of the Karpfen family ( Sibmacher's Wappenbuch , Swabian Coats of Arms, p. 120) : "Azure (blue) with two carp addorsed argent, are the arms of the Karpfen family of Swabia, in accordance with the pictorial manner in which family names were represented in their coats of arms. Karpfen bears as a crest, on a gold crown, on the dexter side a silver carp, on the sinister side a half stag's antlers azure."
As mentioned, the evolution of coats of arms is linked to family history. At the beginning of the 13th century, a family whose coat of arms featured one or more stag antlers and whose possessions extended from below Wroclaw on the Oder to the confluence with the Weistritz, died out (no male heirs). The daughters of the family brought a rich inheritance along with a stag antler in the coats of arms of various related branches. Thus, the Tchammer Luck Wentzky family bore a stag's antlers and a buffalo horn, the Salisch family an eagle's wing and a stag's antler, and the Radak ad H. Lasan Schönfeld Buchwald family a fish and a stag's antler in their coat of arms.
The ancestor of the Radak family , the knight Radak, whose coat of arms appears to have been a fish, is mentioned in several documents as having exchanged his estate Ozerowitz (Oderwitz) for Chinino (probably Oderwitz Schildern / cf. Knie). Ozero could derive from the Polish word jeziro = lake; but here it is translated as Oder... Perhaps Ozero was an older form of the word; in Russian, Ozero also means "lake" today.
The name Karpfen is believed to originate from Pomerania (a region straddling the Oder estuary). Among those bearing the name first mentioned in early chronicles are a "Karpe von Rostock" (circa 1257) and the knight Emecho Karpe, born in Mainz in 1270. The name gained prominence as numerous branches of the family established separate houses and acquired estates in various regions, thereby raising their social standing.
To conclude this digression on heraldry, we find a geographical distribution (including in the coats of arms of cities today) which corroborates the presence of the carp in Central Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries and to some extent its importance for certain families (even if I have not been able to make the link).