Classes
The Order of Leopold is issued in five classes:
- Grand Cordon ('Grootlint'), who wears the badge on a collar (chain) or on a sash on the right shoulder, plus the star on the left side of the chest;
- Grand Officer ('Grootofficier'), who wears a badge on a necklet, plus a star on the left side of the chest (created on 31 December 1838);
- Commander ('Commandeur'), who wears the badge on a necklet;
- Officer ('Officier'), who wears the badge on a ribbon with rosette on the left side of the chest;
- Knight ('Chevalier/Ridder'), who wears the badge on a ribbon on the left side of the chest.
All five classes come in three divisions (civil, military, maritime).
Only the Belgian king is entitled to chair the order and to be named Grand Master ('Grootmeester'). The Grand Cordon title is reserved in general for national and foreign royals, heads of state, Belgian senior cabinet ministers and former Prime Ministers, 3-star generals and a few senior civil servants.
Read more about this topic: Order Of Leopold (Belgium)
Famous quotes containing the word classes:
“Journalists belong in the gutter because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.”
—Gerald Priestland (b. 1927)
“Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen,—a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him;Mnature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the dame’s classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and the feldspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)