Bastard thread

Jean de Dunois with his coat of arms covered with a bastard thread

The bastard thread is one of the most common symbols in heraldry (heraldry) and stands for the illegitimate origin of the bearer (a " bastard ") from the nobility , mostly the high nobility .

use

Bastards did not have the right to the coat of arms and the father's name , but had a high interest in showing the father's coat of arms. But only the respective ruler could give the person this coat of arms - but then with the bastard sign. It was made clear that the carrier was illegitimate and had no inheritance claims in the father's family.

Markers were used more frequently in Western Europe than in Central Europe. A prominent example in the Middle Ages was Jean de Dunois , known as the Bastard of Orléans : He carried three golden lilies on a blue background, above a silver tournament collar ( House Orléans ), covered by a silver bastard thread. An example from Germany are the Counts Holnstein and Moritz von Sachsen.

In the older literature, the bastard thread, which is very common in class society, is often referred to (for example by the bastard of Orléans in Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orléans ). Vladimir Nabokov still used it in 1947 as a novel title ( Bend Sinister ).

Appearance

Classic bastard thread

It is a thread , a very narrow bar of different color (or different metal ), which leads from heraldic top left to heraldic bottom right (from the point of view of the beholder: from top right to bottom left) over the father's coat of arms of the bastard (oblique left thread) .

The bastard thread does not necessarily have to run over the entire shield, but can be limited to the center of the shield, i.e. an oblique left break (oblique left break) , and is then also emblazoned as pieced .

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  Family coat of arms of the Ducs de Vendôme

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  Family coat of arms of the Dukes of Grafton

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  Family crests of the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensberry

See also

• bastard
• Bastard coat of arms
• Additional character

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See: Konrad Fuchs , Heribert Raab: dtv dictionary for history. Volume 1: A - K (= dtv 3283). 6th edition (81st – 95th thousand), Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-423-03283-9 , p. 83.