THE SHIELD OF ARAGON     

HISTORY

The Shield of Aragón in their present form, four emblems or ' cuarteles', has fulfilled in 1999 half millenium of existence; although three of their four components are much more old. It appeared in the first official history of Aragón, work of Gauberto Fabricio de Vagad. Soldier and writer, cisterciense monk at the end of his life, was lieutenant of Don Alonso de Aragón, Archbishop of Zaragoza and lieutenant of the Kingdom in name of his brother, Fernando ' the Católicó, monarch of whom Guaberto Vagad was Greater Cronista. Its history ' by mandate and request of the Delegated Gentlemen of the Reyno de Aragón' wrote. It was published in Zaragoza, by the presses of the German printer and ' I magnify master Paulo Hurus, of the imperial city of Constanzá, the 12 of September of 1499. In the cover of this ' Chronicle of Aragón' - here reproduced it appears, of anonymous hand, a beautiful engraving with blazon of Aragón, in which it appears a first innovating quarter: the Arbol de Sobrarbe. The other three much more old emblems som. But this version was the one that became shield of Aragón. In more recent times, it thought in his favor the Real Academy of History (1921) and was assumed (1987) by the General Delegation of Aragón from the same moment of his constitutional Renaissance.

The shield of Aragón expresses the millenarian history of the Kingdom from its remote origins. Their three first emblems summarize footpaths battles won, according to the legend, by the Aragoneses with celestial aid, sibolizado in three crossings.

The Arbol de Sobrarbe (First quarter) and the Cross of Inigo Arista (Second Quarter) remember the fights of the mountain dwellers of the Pyrenean Eastern Aragonese (the Arbol) and western (the Cross) in the initial centuries of the Muslim occupation. They recall the ancestral entailment of Aragón and Navarre (then Edge was caudillo of pamploneses Aragoneses and) and the Aragonese doctrine (based on the mythical fueros of Sobrarbe) of the predominance of the law on the king, from where the famous ' liberties would come aragonesas'.

The third quarter remembers the taking of Huesca in 1096 by Pedro I and his brother, the future Alfonso I ' the Batallador' (that would take Zaragoza in 1118), with the help of San Jorge to horse, the whose Red Cross on plant is the main thing of the symbol.

Finally, Barras de Aragón (fourth quarter), that incorporated, by married pact subscribed by Ramiro II, to the House of Barcelona (1137) and, by conquest of Jaime I, the Kingdoms of Majorca (1229) and Valencia (1238).

Aragón today stamps or finishes off its blazon of arms with a real gold crown, opened, in memory of its antiquity, because the crown closed with red cap is used, in Spain, from the House of Austria. The flag of Aragón is the old Real Signal of the House of Aragón, with shield of 1499, crowned. In Spain and outside her, the Signal of Aragón sister, with its bars, to Aragón with other earth and paises and, in special, with Catalonia, Baleares and Valencia, that have formed with the respective bars their ' senyeras'. Majorca and Valencia obtained them from the kings in century XIII and Catalonia adopted them in century XVIII. The Signal of Aragón represents, thus, to all Corona de Aragón in the shield of Spain.

The Justice of Aragón uses the shield of 1499, with its Angel, to symbolize the monitoring and protection of the rights of the Aragoneses.

COMPOSITION

'First quarter, on field of gold, an oak uprooted, with seven raigones, in their natural colors, crowned by cut Latin cross and of gules (red color).

Second, on field of azur, cross kick (with the arms that is high and mighty) of silver, pointed in the inferior and trained arm in the head corner (in the right superior part of the quarter).

Third on silver field, a cross of San Jorge, gules cantonada (with one in each corner) of four heads of Moor, saber (black color) and encintadas (with diadema hanging) of silver.

Quarter, on field of gold, four woods gules, equal to each other and to the field spaces.

The shield goes stamped with eight open Real Crown of florones, four of visible them, with per them, eight flowers of lily, five visible ones, with rubies and emeralds in the hoop, proproción (of height) with the two shield of and average to seis'.

 

Texts and extragone Graphs of the publication of Institution "Fernando the Católico".