Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/537



34. Gules, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crosslets or.

35. Paly of ten or and azure, on a fess gules, three mullets of six points argent, voided with a cross azure. (?).

36. Party per fess gules, fretted or, and ermine. (?).

37. Same as 9.

38. Or, on a cross gules, five escallop-shells argent.

39. Barry, a chief paly and the corners gyronny, or and azure, an inescutcheon ermine.

40. Same as 6.

41. Party per fess, argent three eight-petaled flowers formed as it were out of a knot made cross-wise, with two flowers at the end of each limb, and azure with a string of lozenges like a fess argent, and three fleurs-de-lis (?) two and one or.

42. Gules, a fess checky argent and azure, between twelve cross crosslets or. Possibly one of the many coats taken by.

43. Azure, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crosslets or.

44. Ermine, on a chevron gules, three escallop-shells or. or.

45. Gyronny of twelve or and azure.

Besides their heraldry, squares upon which are shown swans and peacocks wrought at each corner, afford, in those birds, objects of much curious interest for every lover of mediæval symbolism under its various phases.

In the symbolism of those times, the star and the crescent, the peacock and the swan, had, each of them, its own several figurative meanings. By the first of these emblems was to be understood, according to the words, in Numbers xxiv. 17, of Balaam's prophecy,—"a star shall arise out of Jacob,"—our Saviour, who says of His divine self, Apocalypse xxii. 16, "I am the bright and morning star." By inference, the star not only symbolized our Lord Himself, but His Gospel—Christianity—in contradistinction to Mahometanism, against which the crusades had been but lately carried on. The star of Bethlehem, too, was thus also brought before the mind with all its associated ideas of the Holy Land.

The crescent moon, on the shields with the Holy Lamb, represents the Church, for the reason that small at first, but getting her light from the true Sun of justice, our Lord, she every day grows larger, and at the end of time, when all shall believe in her, will at last be in her full brightness. This symbolism is set forth, at some length, by Petrus