The Arms of Košice City - The lily or fleur-de-lis

Documents issued by towns after the acquisition of their autonomy possessed legal power only when they were corroborated by the seal of the town as the issuing authority. This vital prerequisite forced such towns to have seal-dies or matrices prepared soon after their new authority became active.

The oldest document concerning the seal of the town of Košice is a record and description of it in the first inventory – the Register of rights and privileges of the town of Košice – where the following mention is made in the item group Documents under the letter F concerning seals and crests (symbols) of the town in folio 19:
Primum Sigillum visum in Litteris Cassoviensibus erat In ramo Lilium unum, villa ad-huc existens. Anno 1292.

Register of rights and privileges of the town of Košice. Record of Košice's lily seal.

Translated: The first seal to be seen on writings in Košice was: one lily on a branch, the township still existing at this time. Year 1292.

Unfortunately no documents have been preserved in the Košice City Archives which bear the seal of the „villa" or original township. Moreover, we know of no city records with this seal, and the lily on a branch does not appear as a symbol on any administrative business from that time on.

Reconstructed possible forms of the lily on the seal.

This bids caution in assessing the above reference. Elenchus jurium et privilegiorum Civitatis Cassoviensis- A register of the rights and privileges of the City of Košice – was prepared in the first decade of the 16th century by the city notary, who was typically the most educated person in the place. From his signatures in red ink on the reverse side of the documents and from analysis of the register we can tell that, in undertaking this the first of all registrations of the archives, he must have read through and been familiar with all the documentary material in the city archives. He selected the most important of the documents and arranged them into thematic groups, thus forming a logically integrated system. We can also tell that this register was seen in the city as having very special significance from the fact that it is in book form, all in parchment, an expensive gesture at that period of history, all the more so since the town had been using the cheaper medium of paper for its official books for more than a century before this time. The whole register is arranged according to letters and symbols, and consists of a series of the briefest synopses of the documents together with technical and locational references. The only exception is precisely this one record under the letter F, which disturbs the unity of the thematic listing of the documents and at first sight creates the impression of being a type of record „pro memoria", i.e. for memory’s sake. We are in no doubt that this record sprang from the same administrative need as did the whole register itself, which was to indicate to any future user for whom register was intended that these writings with an affixed seal showing a lily on a branch were official city documents, and that is why this record is classified together with the seals and armorial bearings of the town, and why the information follows that the township still existed at that point. The document dating the record itself is studied in the literature dealing with the legal history.phpects of these writings, and it has been variously interpreted since as early as the 18th century. It is specifically mentioned as existing in the Košice City Archives in Bombardi’s Topografia of 1718 and Timon’s Cassovia vetus ac nova of 1732, in which it is said to be already quite damaged. A new fundamental reworking of the register, which had served the town for two and a half centuries, does not mention the documents in the so-called Tabularia for registration among the new archive support materials during the next third of the 18th century.

If we accept for a fact the existence of the seal with the lily on a branch, and its use until the year 1292, we must attempt to find answers to the questions about the likely origin and then the disappearance of this symbol of the town. The oldest document about Košice dated 1230 already mentions a priest.

This document from the Eger Chapter from the year 1230 concerning the sale of land already mentions a priest.

The church in the town at that time must have been consecrated to somebody, but of course it could not have been to St.Elizabeth of Thuringen, for she was then still alive, and was only canonised in 1235. That means there existed an older patron saint whom we know nothing about. The oldest document showing evidence of a church consecrated to St. Elizabeth is dated 1283. The Košice typarium or seal matrix showing St.Elizabeth was judged to be from the 13th century by heralds of last century, and a further document from the year 1281, which is mentioned but not cited in more detail, fully concurs in time with the above evidence of the church’s patron saint.

The seal with the lily on a branch, then, as mentioned by the author of the archive register, must have preceded the seal showing St.Elizabeth. At the time of creation of the register, the latter seal had been in use for over 200 years and was so well-known and appeared so often in archive materials that the author does not even mention it.

He would have considered it unnecessary to do so since there was no chance of any suggestion of doubt about its authenticity, due to its ubiquitous application, the long historical roots of its use, and its connection with the existing patron saint of the church. The seal with the lily must have originated together with the very first administrative activities in the town, which left a relatively small number of documents that make only isolated appearances among other writings concerning the town. It is also clear that it could not have originated from after St. Elizabeth became patron saint of the town, because the lily is not one of her attributes. This means that the creation of the seal with the lily must have taken place before the year 1283 at least. The one possible explanation and source of the symbol must lie in its connection with the preceding, pre-Elizabethan, unknown patron saint, during the period when the village or township still had no fortified walls, for these are already incorporated into the seal with St. Elizabeth, represented as two towers.

The great seal of Košice with the patron saint of the city St.Elizabeth. Detail showing a tower representing the city's fortifications.

The town desired a distinctive and generally recognised symbolic form to express the identity of its community, which was now developing dynamically after the German colonisation but still could not confirm its status compared with other towns by means of appropriate privileges, and the only available choice of source was the existing patron saint and his symbol. The lily was an attribute of several New Testament saints, but the lily itself as a symbol of purity was not distinctive or unambiguous enough an attribute for any of them for it alone to suffice as identification of one particular saint, and thus to be a clear representation of the patron saint. For the city of Košice, the lily could perform the function of designating one saint most clearly and sufficiently only in the case of St. Emericus, who also happened to come from the royal family, being one of the threesome of domestic Hungarian saints.

Crown price St.Emericus with a lily, and the kings St.Stephan and St.Ladislaus holding the symbols of the realm.

We could therefore identify him as the otherwise unknown patron saint. In fact, as patron saint and represented by the lily, only St. Emericus could subsequently be replaced by St. Elizabeth without causing internal strife in the community between the old and new settlers. The second of this threesome, St. Ladislaus, is another example of a once-recognised patron saint for Košice who has lost this function in the meantime.

The mention of the lily by the first organiser of the town archives accords with a further instance of the use of this symbol on the doorway of the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth, on the side facing the most important space in the town, the original square. On the central dividing pillar of the north portal,architecturally and sculpturally the most richly decorated, also known as the "porta aurea" or golden gate, a single gem remains of the original carved decorations.

1. The northern portal of the Cathedral of St.Elizabeth. 2. Angels holding the coat of arms with the lily.

Two semi-figures of angels are located on the doorway’s central pillar at the point of best visibility, at the height of the baldachin, leaning out from the pillar and holding a coat of arms bearing a lily. The posture of the left-hand angel, holding the lily with the right hand and pointing to it with the left, concentrates all attention on this one spot. The whole scuptural composition in submitted to this intention.

1. Ulm, the Minster: an angel rises from a similar(?) representation of clouds, holding a shield with an eagle. 2. Statue of St.Emericus removed from the northern portal of St.Elizabeth's Cathedral in 1859 or 1860.

Descriptions from the 18th and 19th centuries also mention the presence of St. Emericus and Charles Robert of Anjou among the other original figures in the portal. Their exact location is now not clear, but the symbolism of the first is that of the patron saint, while the second provides the connection with the use of the lily transmuted into heraldic form (fleur-de-lis). The fact is that in the 19th century, these statues were removed from the portal and replaced with others.

/Text: Dr.JOZEF KIRST/
/Translation: A.Y.Billingham/
/© Photo: Marián Krlička/