Florentine lily

The fleur-de-lis (plural: fleurs-de-lis) or flower-de-luce is a stylized lily (in French, fleur means "flower", and lis means "lily") that is used as a decorative design or symbol. Many of the saints are often depicted with a lily, most prominently St. Joseph. Since France is a historically Catholic nation, the Fleur de lis became commonly used "at one and the same time, religious, political, dynastic, artistic, emblematic, and symbolic", especially in French heraldry.

The fleur-de-lis is represented in Unicode at U+269C (⚜) in the Miscellaneous Symbols block.

While the fleur-de-lis has appeared on countless European coats of arms and flags over the centuries, it is particularly associated with the French monarchy in a historical context, and continues to appear in the arms of the King of Spain (from the French House of Bourbon dynasty) and the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and members of the House of Bourbon. It remains an enduring symbol of France that appears on French postage stamps, although it has never been adopted officially by any of the . According to French historian Georges Duby, the three petals represent the medieval social classes: those who worked, those who fought, and those who prayed.

It is unclear where the fleur-de-lis originated. Among the Egyptians, Persians, Arabs and Greeks, this arabesque evoked warrior-like power. In France it is widely used in city emblems like in the coat of arms of the city of Lille, Saint-Denis, Brest, Clermont-Ferrand, Boulogne-Billancourt and Calais. Some cities that had been particularly faithful to the Crown were awarded an heraldic augmentation of two or three fleurs-de-lis on the chief of their coat of arms; such cities include Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Reims, Le Havre, Angers, Le Mans, Aix-en-Provence, Tours, Limoges, Amiens, Orléans, Rouen, Argenteuil, Poitiers, Chartres and Laon among others. The fleur-de-lis was the symbol of Île-de-France, the core of the French kingdom. It appeared on the coat-of-arms of other historical provinces of France, like Burgundy, Anjou, Picardy, Berry, Orléanais, Bourbonnais, Maine, Touraine, Artois, Dauphiné, Saintonge and the County of La Marche. Many of the current departments use the ancient symbol on their coats to express this heritage.

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Wikipedia