A Brill Calendar: July 20

Few cultural phenomena are a better key for explaining European history than heraldry, especially when it comes to visual expression.

With the surprising exception of Japan, a similar symbolic system of recognition and identification developed nowhere else on Earth. The logo of today’s institutes and enterprises sports a fascinating communicative pedigree.

When Leyden University was founded it was obvious that a brand-new centre of education, learning and scholarship couldn’t start properly without a Seal and Coat of Arms. Without heraldry, the structure and meaning of society as a whole could not be explained, or expressed in daily affairs. Less than a year and a half after its founding, the first proposal for such an emblem was registered; on July 20 1576.

From the first, everyone seems to have been thrilled by representing in the emblem the two missions of the brand-new institute: to combine studies of peace with activities of war. It is a classical ‘topos’ since Europe’s Antiquity: ‘Pro Arte et Marte’. Eventually, the Great Seal of the University came to depict not the god of war, Mars, but Pallas Athenae, goddess of wisdom and learning; however dressed as a warrior, although the book she is reading is presently asking all her attention.

In his elegant analysis of this scene, Willem Otterspeer, Professor in the History of Leyden University, notices meditation as well as aggressiveness. It is seldom that these two dimensions, complementing one another, have been combined in one image; however there is clearly no need for Mars to make his entrance.

His divine sister, born in full armour, straight out of the head of Jove himself, is not without her own power and means to fight; if necessary.