Same Cathedral, Different Couple

Last time we saw the marital display of the arms of Elector Ferdinand Maria and Henriette Adelaide of Savoy, who founded the Theatinerkirche in Munich, Germany in the 1660s.

This time, we are looking at a similar marital display of arms, but this time on the façade of the church, which was not completed until a hundred years later, in the 1760s.

This is the facade of the Theatinerkirche (Theatine Church) in Munich, whose Baroque exterior matches the Baroque interior which we saw last time.

In the pediment and located between the two matching bell towers, we find this armorial display:

The husband’s arms (on the left) are those of Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria (reigned 1745-1777). The blue-and-white lozenges (fusils) are the Wittelsbach arms of Bavaria. The golden lion is the Palatinate lion, which the Bavarian Wittelsbachs held after inheriting the Palatine electorate. The small shield with the orb (Reichsapfel) marks the office of Arch-Steward of the Holy Roman Empire, an electoral title. The red Electors bonnet above the shield also shows his rank as an Elector of the HRE.

The wife’s arms (on the right) are those of Maria Anna Sophia of Saxony. The first and fourth quarters of a red field with a white eagle is the arms of Poland. The second and third quarters of a red field and a mounted knight in white are the Pahonia (known as Vytis in Lithuania and Pogoń in Poland), the historical coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the center is an inescutcheon of Saxony  (Barry sable and or a crancelin bendwise throughout vert) surmounted by an Electors bonnet. This combination was used by the Wettin rulers of Saxony and Poland-Lithuania in the 18th century. Maria Anna Sophia was the daughter of Augustus III, who was both Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. She married Maximilian III Joseph in 1747.

Underneath the two shields are the collars of two knightly orders:

The uppermost one is the well-known collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

The lower, larger one, is that of the Royal Military Order of Saint George for the Defense of the Faith and the Immaculate Conception (Königlicher Militärorden des Heiligen Georg zur Verteidigung des Glaubens und der Unbefleckten Empfängnis), also known as the Royal Bavarian House Equestrian Order of Saint George (Königlich Bayerischer Haus-Ritter-Orden vom Heiligen Georg). This order was founded in the 1720s by the Wittelsbach elector Charles Albert. The collar is identifiable from its links of the Bavarian blue and white lozenges alternating with two lions rampant respectant each bearing a sword in its forepaw both in front of a pillar.

That's an awful lot of history crammed into a single display of marital arms!

Once again, proof positive that "it's good to be a Wittelsbach"!

Once Again, It's Good to Be a Wittelsbach

Not only is it good to be a Wittlesbach, but if your wife turns out to have a coat of arms with even more quarterings than your own, so much the better!

Our next photograph comes from the nave of the Theatinerkirche (Theatine Church) in Munich, Germany.

Just below the window, and flanked by two pairs of Italianate pillars carved with much panache and frou-frou (this last is a technical term, from the school of "Trust me, bro") we find two elaborate coats of arms.

The shield on the left shows the Bavarian lozenges (the blue-and-white diamond pattern) quartered with the golden Palatinate lion. The small central shield carries the imperial orb, the symbol of the Arch-Steward of the Empire. Maximilian I of Bavaria acquired that office along with the Palatine electorate in 1623, so this is a Bavarian elector’s arms after that date.

These turn out to be the arms of Ferdinand Maria (r. 1651-79), a Wittelsbach ruler of Bavaria and an elector (Kurfürst) of the Holy Roman Empire from 1651 to 1679.

While there are a few (though only a few) Bavarian Electors who bore these exact arms, we were able to pin it down because of the shield on the right, his wife, Henriette Adelaide Marie of Savoy.

This makes especial sense, since they founded the church.

Henriette Adelaide's arms are those of her father, Victor Amadeus I (Duke of Savoy from 1630 to 1637), and feature the traditional heraldic elements of the House of Savoy combined with the quarterings of the territories claimed or ruled by the dynasty (including Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Piedmont).

The Savoy arms appear on the inescutcheon: Gules, a cross argent.

The arms of the Dukes of Savoy were heavily quartered to display their dynastic claims and alliances, featuring, among others in addition to the Duchy of Savoy:

Jerusalem: Argent, a cross potent between four crosses couped or.

Piedmont / Cyprus / Monferrato variants: Including the lion of red (gules) armed, langued, and crowned of gold over a barry field of blue and silver.

Saxony: Barry sable and or a crancelin bendwise throughout vert, along with Lower Saxony: Gules a horse rampant argent.

Here's a better image (from a stained glass window found on-line) of Henriette's father, Victor Amadeus I:

The quarters in the first grand quarter are differently arranged in the window above, and at least one of the quarters has been miscolored in the carving in the church. Nonetheless, they are both quite recognizable.

But, yeah, quite a display of heraldry to be seen here!

Arms of Dominion on the Alter Hof in Munich, Germany

This might also be subtitled, "It's good to be a Wittelsbach."

Our next armorial photograph is of the tower of the Alter Hof in Munich, the imperial residence of Ludwig the Bavarian. Ludwig IV (1282-1347), called the Bavarian, was King of the Romans from 1314, King of Italy from 1327, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1328 until his death in 1347. His second wife, whom he married in 1324, was Margaret II of Hainaut, who brought the county of Holland to the Wittelsbachs, along with Zeeland, Hainaut and Friesland.

So much for the basic history. Now let's get into the heraldry!

But before that, notice the bendwise lozengy pattern that covers the front of the Alter Hof (Old Court). Though the lozenges are rows of alternating blue and gold on white, the pattern is more than reminiscent of the arms of Bavaria, Lozengy bendwise argent and azure. My impression is that the gold lozenges here are probably for his wife, Margaret of Hainault, and the County of Holland that she brought to the Wittelsbachs.

Anyway, moving along:

The shield on the left is Ludwig IV's arms as Holy Roman Emperor: the arms of the HRE (Or an eagle displayed sable armed and legged gules) charged on its chest an inescutcheon of Bavaria (Paly bendy argent and azure).

As always, click on the image above to go to the full-sized photograph where you can zoom in to see all this in more detail.

The three shields on the right are:

Top center: Holland (Or a lion rampant gules). Ludwig the Bavarian’s wife, Margaret II, Countess of Hainaut and Holland, inherited Holland, Zeeland, Hainaut and Friesland, and the Wittelsbachs held these lands in the 14th century.

Bottom left: This is the Palatinate (Sable a lion rampant or) (Rhenish Palatinate, Pfalz, a coat of arms we have see before), the Wittelsbach line’s other main territory.

Bottom right: This is Bohemia (Gules a lion rampant queue-forchy argent).

These coats of arms are all territories tied to the Wittelsbach dynasty, and Ludwig IV specifically.

As I said above, "It's good to be a Wittelsbach."

Fine. I Admit Defeat.

Or at least, I admit defeat temporarily.

I still have four more photographs of armorial memorials on the exterior of the Frauenkirche in Munich,, Germany, that I have been trying -- unsuccessfully, I might add -- to identify and write about for you.

I did a whole lot of checking on-line to see if there were clearer photographs of these memorials, or any websites that would give me more information about the individuals memorialized, all to no avail. A couple of sites had additional photographs, but they were no clearer than the ones I already had, and none of them identified any of these armorials by surname or anything else.

So that was more than a bit frustrating.

Then I tried getting ChatGPT to read and translate the texts on these memorials for me. It seemed to be doing an okay job of that, but then I caught it making some stuff up, and skipping an entire line on one memorial.

Fine, I thought, let's try Claude. Claude did better -- in that it didn't lie to me as much as ChatGPT did -- but these memorials have been sitting outside in the elements for a long time and parts of the text are pretty worn and/or cracked, and Claude let me know when I it couldn't read a word or when it was trying to extrapolate from what letters of a word it could make out.

But "better" isn't "good", and was still insufficient for my purposes.

Further, ignoring the texts and researching for the coats of arms was also getting me nowhere. Admittedly, such research generally does go faster when I have surnames that I am confident in to use, and that was not always the case here. But still, even having some of the surnames, and guessing at some of the others, kept getting me nowhere (with one potential, but only potential, exception).

So I pretty much gave up on properly identifying any of these memorials and was about to move on, when I ran across a book title that gave me some hope: Die Epitaphien an der Frauenkirche zu München.

Published in 1986, a description of the book (which is, obviously from the title, in German) told me that it "contains comprehensive historical documentation for roughly 120 funeral monuments and epitaphs embedded into the exterior brick walls of the cathedral" and that it "provides extensive cultural and genealogical context for each monument. It traces the histories of the prominent Munich patrician families (such as the Ligsalz family), clergy members, court officials, and military figures memorialized on the building's facade."

Well, glory hallelujah! So I did another internet dive and found a copy for sale by a seller on Amazon. So I have right now, as I type this, that copy on order, and it is scheduled to arrive at my door sometime between October 29 and November 19.

Now, is this the final solution to my identification problems? No, it is not.

For one thing, mein Deutsch ist nicht gut. I know only a smattering of words, mostly from my studies of World War II, and thus many of which will not be useful in understanding this book. For example, I don't expect that my knowledge of, say, the words schwalbe, wasserfall, panzerfaust, or even sturzkampflugzeug to appear in the descriptions of these memorials.

For another, given what appears to be the main thrust of the book (based on its title) is on the epitaphs, I don't know how much it's going to say about the coats of arms which are my main interest.

Still, between my poor German, my ability to get translations of words, sentences, and even paragraphs that I am interested in, which can be taken directly from the "the text and inscriptions carved into the stones" (as the book's description states), I expect to be able to come much, much closer making the identification of these people and their coats of arms that I have been able to up until now.

So, I am admitting defeat, but only temporarily. I will move on to other items of heraldic interest and photographs of other coats of arms in the meantime, and will come back to these as yet unidentified arms after my copy of Die Epitaphien an der Frauenkirche zu München arrives in a few weeks.

But I am using this post to remind you, and myself, that, as Shakespeare said of true love in A Midsummer Night's Dream, "The course of heraldic identification never did run smooth."

Well, That Didn't Go As Expected!

Many of you will know, as regular readers of this blog, that I watch an HGTV show called "House Hunters International". I watch this show for several reasons: (1) It's interesting, and I can learn a lot about different places in the world; (2) sometimes I will see someplace that I have visited, and it brings back all kinds of good memories; and (3) occasionally I will see a coat of arms.

In a very recent episode, the show was in Bram, France.

As you can see from the inset map above, Bram is in Occitania, a place where I think I came closest to was when I attended a conference in Besançon, about 700 kilometers away, so not that close! But Bram is a very old town with an unusual city plan.

As you can see from the image above, the oldest part of the town is built in a set of expanding circles, the buildings facing circular streets, all centered on the church in the middle. And frankly, I don't think I've ever seen a city laid out in quite this fashion. (I have seen cities laid out within the loop of a river, like Besançon, France, but that's not quite the same as Bram here.)

Anyway, at one point during the show they showed the cover of a book entitled Decouvrir Bram: La ville circulaire, or in English, "Discover Bram: The circular city".

And the book cover had a coat of arms on it complete with supporters and surmounted by a civic or municipal coronet:

 So I thought, well, that should be easy enough to track down and get the colors and do a quick blog post.

Wrong!

I don't know whose coat of arms that is on the cover (and you can click on the image above to go to the full-size photo to see for yourself), but it is certainly not that of the ville de Bram, whose coat of arms is this one:

Nor is it the arms of the département to which Bram belongs, Aude, which is this:

And finally, it is not the (probably unofficial) arms of the region of Occitania, here:

So I don't know. Is it the arms of Bram (Or a cross gules) with possibly local buildings added to the first and fourth quarters and roundels? some kind of fruit? arranged three two and one in the second and third quarters?

Certainly the shield is topped with a turreted mural coronet, and it has two supporters of lions rampant reguardant.

So it's a bit of a conundrum. And what I thought would surely be a quick and easy identification has become something of a mystery.

Still, it's clearly a coat of arms, and one which I, once again, ran across sitting on my very own couch in my very own living room. And that is one of the main reasons I keep watching new episodes of this show!

An Armorial Memorial to a Young Man

Continuing our look at some of the armorial memorials set into the outside walls of the Frauenkirche, the Cathedral of Our Dear Lady, in Munich, Germany, we come to this lovely example.

This is the memorial of Eustace Ligsalz, a member of the prominent Ligsalz patrician family of Munich, who died at the young age of 22. The main feature of the memorial is his full-length portrait carved in bas relief, with his family's coat of arms and crest at his feet.

The Ligsalz (also spelled Liegsalz) family was one of the wealthiest and most influential patrician dynasties guiding Munich's medieval and early modern city council. The Ligsalz dynasty served continuously on the Munich inner city council and as mayors, remaining a cornerstone of the city's aristocracy from the medieval period until the family line ended in the 18th century.

Additional information about the family can be found on the German Wikipedia website at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligsalz_(Patrizierfamilie)

Transcription of the Latin Inscription on the memorial:

EUSTACHIO LIGSALZ IN FARCHEN NOBILI PATRICIO MONACENSI VICTIO SUPERSTITE FILIO QUEM NON SINE MAGNO DOLORE SUO QUEM PRECLARA SPEM NOMINIS EXCITAVERAT A SALUTIS M D LXXVI SUAE AETATIS XXII DECIMA SEXTA KAL DECEMBER MORS MATURA AD COELITES SUSTULIT PARENTES MOESTI HOC MONUMENTUM POSUERE

And here is the English translation:

To Eustace Ligsalz von Farchen, a noble patrician of Munich, the surviving son of Victius. Whom—not without great sorrow to themselves, as he had raised brilliant hopes for his name—ripe death snatched away to the heavens in the year of Salvation 1576, in the 22nd year of his age, on the 16th day before the Kalends of December (November 16). His sorrowful parents erected this monument.

Rietstap's Armorial Général gives us the blazon for these arms: Ligsalz de Farchach. Écartelé: aux 1 et 4, de gueules, à la bande d'argent, ch. d'une flèche de sable, posée dans le sens de la bande; aux 2 et 3, d'argent, à un garçon issant, habillé de gueules, mouv. d'une couronne d'or. 

The English blazon is: Quarterly: 1st and 4th, Gules on a bend argent an arrow point to chief sable [Ligsalz]; 2nd and 3rd, Argent a boy issuant proper habited gules rising from a crown or [Farchach/Farchen?].

The crest combines the crests of each of the component quarters of the arms: A boy issuant proper habited gules rising from a crown or [Farchach/Farchen?], wearing a hat gules turned up argent, the argent portion charged with an arrow sable, at the peak of the cap issuant from a crown or four ostrich plumes sable [Ligsalz].

It's a touching memorial to a young son by his grieving parents, as well as a lovely display of heraldry.