Last modified: 2003-07-05 by dov gutterman
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from <neris.mii.lt>
Coat of Arms adopted 20 September 1991.
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From neris
site:
The State Emblem - The state emblem of the Republic of
Lithuania is the Vytis (the White Knight). The heraldic shield
features a red field with an armoured knight on a white (silver)
horse holding a silver sword in his right hang above his head. A
blue shield hangs on the left shoulder of the charging knight
with a double gold (yellow) cross on it. The horse saddle,
straps, and belts are blue. The hilt of the sword and the
fastening of the sheath, the charging knight's spurs, the curb
bits of the bridle, the horseshoes, as well as the decoration of
the harness, are gold.
The charging knight is known to have been first used as the state
emblem in 1366. It is featured on the seal of the Grand Duke of
Lithuania, Algirdas, which marks a document belonging to that
year. The old prototype of the present Vytis depicts a knight on
horseback holding a sword in his raised hand. The symbol of the
charging knight on horseback was handed down through the
generations: from Algirdas to his son, Grand Duke Jogaila, then
to Grand Duke Vytautas and others. By the 14th century, the
charging knight on horseback with a sword had begun to be
featured in a heraldic shield, first in Jogaila's seal in 1386 or
1387, and also in the seal of Vytautas in 1401. As early as the
15th century, the heraldic charging knight on horseback became
the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and of its
central part - the Duchy of Vilnius. 16th century documents refer
to it as Vytis (it is believed that the word Vytis was used in
the 15th century). At first, the charging knight was depicted
riding in one or the other direction and sometime held a lance.
But as of the first half of the 15th century, he is always shown
riding to the left (as see by the viewer) with a sword in his
raised hand and a shield in the left hand.
In the 15th century, the colours of the seal became uniform. The
livery colours became fixed: a white (silver) charging knight on
a red field of the heraldic shield. The shield of the charging
knight was blue then and set against the blue field was a double
(gold) cross. The coat of arms featured the grand duke's headgear
on the crest.
A first, the charging knight showed the figure of the ruler of
the country, but with time it came to be understood and
interpreted as that of a riding knight who was chasing an
intruder out of his native country. Such an understanding was
especially popular in the 19th century and the first half of 20th
century. The explanation has a sound historical foundation. It is
known that at the Zalgiris (Grunwald) battle, where the united
Polish-Lithuanian army crushed the army of the German Order, thus
putting an end to its expansion to the east, thirty Lithuanian
regiments out of the total forty were flying with the sign of the
Vytis.