“ Flower Of Louis &quot;

Friday, January 23, 2009

Louis VII (ca. 1120-1180) was king of France from 1137 to 1180. He strengthened the authority of the royal court, went on the Second Crusade, and repelled the aggressions of Henry II of England.

Irises have a long and rich history. The Fleur-DE-Lis, a stylized representation of the iris, has a long history with French monarchy, beginning with Clovis the I a Frankish king whose empire birthed the French state. Legend claims that when Clovis became a Christian he dreamed of an angel who gave him an iris to commemorate the event. After his dream, Clovis adopted the iris as his emblem.
Fleur-De-Lis translates as “flower of Louis” and gained the name when Louis VII, who went on the Second French Crusade in 1147, used the emblem on his banner.

The Fleur-De-Lis is often used symbolically in art and is often seen as the terminal ends of the arms of the cross, which effectively leads us to the importance of the iris in Christian history. The reason the iris connects with Christian history is that the number three is what the iris is all about. It has three standards and three falls. Three is the number of completion according to Pythagoras and three is the number of the Trinity the center of the Christian faith. As a result, Christian art adopted the Fleur-De-Lis as a symbol.

Fleur-De-Lis translates as “flower of Louis” and gained the name when Louis VII, who went on the Second French Crusade in 1147, used the emblem on his banner.

BTW, this is the ceiling that Anne Boleyn gazed upon.

The fashionable Fluer De Lis had made it's trendy little self known in England, where it began to adorn it's castles, and fabrics.

Fleur-De-Lis translates as “flower of Louis” and gained the name when Louis VII, who went on the Second French Crusade in 1147, used the emblem on his banner.

The name, anglicized, means "lily flower", and the symbol is in fact a stylized Iris pseudacorus L.. It was adopted by King Philip I of France in the 11th century.

In case you were wondering; as a garden plant, irises moved quickly around the globe often in the path of conquest. Irises were some of the first ornamental plants that came to the New World. They were found on gardening lists for Virginia as early as the 1600’s and soon became the center of many public and private gardens because of their dependability.

Today The Fleur De Lis has become so common place it is virtually everywhere.