Still Finding Heraldry Everywhere

I am, indeed, still finding heraldry everywhere, and once again, "everywhere" includes my living room.

Once again, the HGTV show House Hunters International has come through for me. A recent episode had a family looking to rent a place in Valencia, Spain. And in the course of that, the camera panned to a building:

Which, as you can see quite plainly, has a coat of arms prominently displayed on its façade:

The arms are, obviously enough, those of the Province (formerly, Kingdom) of Valencia.

They are blazoned: Or four pallets gules. And yes, that is indeed A reremouse (bat) displayed sable atop a crown or as the crest.

Interestingly, there are several similar stories about how these arms came to be:

In the first, Prince Wifred (or Wilfred) the Hairy, having been grievously wounded in a battle against the Normans, received a visit from the Emperor Charles the Bald, who dipping his finger in the blood that trickled from the wound, drew four lines down the gilded shield of Wifred, saying, “Earl be these they armorial ensigns:” — four red stripes on a gold field, which became from that time the arms of Catalonia, and afterwards of Aragon.

The second story informs us that Wifred the Hairy lay injured in his tent after doing battle with the Normans (or in some versions, the Moors) when the Emperor Louis the Stammerer visited him. The king asked Wifred how he could reward him for his heroic deeds. When Wifred asked for an insignia to decorate his shield, the king wet his fingers with the Count’s blood and traced four vertical lines on the golden shield that stood by his bedside. Thus, the coat of arms became four red pallets on a golden background.

And finally, other versions of the legend combine the two stories by saying that the golden shield was first given to Wifred the Hairy by Charles the Bald and then the four pallets added by Louis the Stammerer.

How much of these origin stories is factual, and how much simply myth, or to put it less judgmentally, a "just-so story?"*

Well, given that Wifred the Hairy died in 897 A.D., and the first generally accepted use of a coat of arms (the shield given to Geoffrey Plantagenet by his father-in-law King Henry I of England, and which was later borne by Geoffrey's grandson, William Longspee) dates to no earlier than the mid-12th century, we are dealing with a time nearly 300 years before the advent of what we now call heraldry.

Then, we have to realize that we are looking at two (or three) different origin stories for the arms, which differ in important details. And some of those details lack good historical support. For example, Charles the Bald was Emperor for only two years, 875-877, though his domains did include Catalonia.

Louis the Stammerer, the son of Charles the Bald, was never emperor, and he was King of West Francia (which included Catalonia) for only two years, 877-879.

I have not found any evidence other than these stories that either Charles or Louis ever spent time in Catalonia. Their time and attention was generally taken up elsewhere in greater France. And Louis was physically weak, which makes him even less likely to travel to the edge of his realm.

Still, it's always fun to look at origin stories of coats of arms, even when - as here - they appear not to be historically accurate.

And sometimes, you can find a coat of arms which have one of these origin stories while sitting in your own living room watching a show on television.

* A "just-so story" is an often whimsical but untestable narrative that explains the origin of a biological trait, cultural practice, or physical feature. While the term originally refers to Rudyard Kipling’s classic 1902 children's book, it is often used in science and philosophy as a critique for unproven explanations.