Featured on PDR in the collection Emblems Ancient and Modern (1699)

Some believe that the tradition of personal badges (or “devices”) and emblems descends from antiquity, when militaristic signs were carried into war to instill terror in enemies and influence the outcome of battles. Daniel S. Russell discusses the “strange or prophetic dimension” that these symbols could mediate in medieval Europe, giving the example of Charles VI, who adopted the device of a crowned, winged deer after capturing a stag wearing a copper collar in the forest of Halatte, which was inscribed with mysterious, ungrammatical Latin: “Hoc Caesar me donavit” (Caesar has given me this”). Into the seventeenth century, these images mixed with heraldry and retained their talismanic properties, but gained newfound associations as reflections of the bearer’s intellect and wit. Here the “emblem” tradition —…