Fleur-de-lis - Earliest Usage

Earliest Usage

In French, fleur de lis literally means "lily flower". It is widely thought to be a stylized version of the species Iris pseudacorus. Decorative ornaments that resemble the fleur-de-lis have appeared in artwork from the earliest human civilizations. According to Pierre-Augustin Boissier de Sauvages, an 18th century French naturalist and lexicographer:

"The old fleurs-de-lis, especially the ones found in our first kings' sceptres, have a lot less in common with ordinary lilies than the flowers called flambas, or irises, from which the name of our own fleur-de-lis may derive. What gives some colour of truth to this hypothesis that we already put forth, is the fact that the French or Franks, before entering Gaul itself, lived for a long time around the river named Luts in the Netherlands. Nowadays, this river is still bordered with an exceptional number of irises —as many plants grow for centuries in the same places—: these irises have yellow flowers, which is not a typical feature of lilies but fleurs-de-lis. It was thus understandable that our kings, having to choose a symbolic image for what later became a coat of arms, set their minds on the iris, a flower that was common around their homes, and is also as beautiful as it was remarkable. They called it, in short, the fleur-de-lis, instead of the flower of the river of lis. This flower, or iris, looks like our fleur-de-lis not just because of its yellow colour but also because of its shape: of the six petals, or leaves, that it has, three of them are alternatively straight and meet at their tops. The other three on the opposite, bend down so that the middle one seems to make one with the stalk and only the two ones facing out from left and right can clearly be seen, which is again similar with our fleurs-de-lis, that is to say exclusively the one from the river Luts whose white petals bend down too when the flower blooms."

Sauvages' hypothesis seems to be supported by the archaic English spelling fleur-de-luce and by the Luts's variant name Lits.

It has consistently been used as a royal emblem, though different cultures have interpreted its meaning in varying ways. Gaulish coins show the first Western designs which look similar to modern fleurs-de-lis. In the East it was found on the gold helmet of a Scythian king (illustration) uncovered at the Ak-Burun kurgan and conserved in Saint Petersburg's Hermitage Museum.

Another (debated) hypothesis is that the symbol derives from the Frankish Angon. The angon, or sting, was a typical Frankish throwing spear. A possibly derived symbol of Frankish royalty was the bee, as found in the burial of Childric I. A 9th century mosaic, from San Giovanni church in Rome, shows St Peter handing the Oriflamme, the imperial banner, to Charlemagne. The finial of the oriflamme is clearly a spearhead and very like the earliest depictions of the fleur-de-lis, on the seals of Robert II (around 1000 AD) and Phillip II (around 1180 AD).

As a side note to this debate, the river Luts runs in Frisia; the Frisians were not Franks.

Also of note is that the red and green circles on the oriflamme are said to depict.....flowers. Whereby a fleur de luce becomes flower of light, where light might allude to the little golden flames that give the banner its name. A conflation, over time, of the lance, the flowers and the flames with the conserved spearhead, used as a sceptre, seems altogether more likely than the symbol of royalty of France deriving from a flower growing near an obscure little river in Frisia.