Eagle displayed
An eagle seen from the front with its wings and legs spread, the way heraldry usually draws it. It was the bird of the emperors, from Charlemagne’s badge to the arms of the Holy Roman Empire.
Meaning
Displayed is heraldry’s word for the eagle spread out flat, wings out (the Court of the Lord Lyon’s guide glosses it as “wings out”), and Fox-Davies notes that in all early heraldry the eagle is always displayed. Oswald Barron ranked it with the lion: “As the lion is among armorial beasts, so is the eagle among the birds.” Its beak and claws are commonly painted in a second colour. Beyond displayed and “close” (wings folded), Fox-Davies found almost no agreement on what the terms for an eagle’s wings mean.
Origin and history
Heraldry did not invent the spread eagle. Fox-Davies traced it to the Roman eagle of the Caesars and found Charlemagne using it as a device; Barron gives the same descent, with Charlemagne said to have taken the eagle as successor of the Caesars. The emperor Henry III (1039–1056) had an eagle on top of the sceptre on his seal, and in the twelfth century the eagle was embroidered on the imperial gloves.
Fox-Davies followed the drawing through the centuries. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the eagle holds its head raised with the beak closed; by the end of the fourteenth the head straightens, the beak opens and the tongue shows.
The German eagle and the English
The eagle mattered more on the Continent. Fox-Davies notes that it never had in early British heraldry the place it held abroad. In German heraldry it is simply “an eagle”, never “an eagle displayed”, and it is drawn with the wings turned down, which by strict English rules is not displayed at all.
Eagle, falcon or martlet
Other birds are drawn so as not to be mistaken for it. The falcon, Barron writes, is usually shown with its wings closed so that it will not be taken for the eagle. The commonest bird in English arms is not the eagle but the martlet, a small bird that never appears alone on a shield; it is also one of the marks of cadency.
Two heads
The eagle with two heads has its own page: Double-headed eagle.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of GermanyGermany’s flag is three horizontal stripes of black, red and gold, black at the top. The Basic Law fixes only the colours and gives them no meaning; the Bundestag calls them the colours of the movement for unity and freedom and of the first German republic. whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of PolandPoland’s flag is two equal stripes, white above red, in the colours of Poland’s coat of arms: a white eagle on a red shield. The white stripe is the eagle and the red stripe the shield, as Professor Beata Możejko of the University of Gdańsk explains; the flag law itself describes the colours without giving them a meaning. whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of KazakhstanKazakhstan’s flag is sky blue with a golden sun and its rays in the centre, a soaring golden steppe eagle beneath it, and a vertical band of golden national ornament along the pole. The President’s website says the blue stands for a pure sky, peace and prosperity, and its single colour for the country’s unity; the sun for wealth, abundance and life; and the eagle for the state’s power, sovereignty and independence. whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of AustriaAustria’s flag is three horizontal stripes of equal width: red, white and red. The constitution fixes the colours but gives them no meaning; they are the colours of the shield of the Babenberg dukes, documented from 1230, and a legend of a bloodstained tunic at Acre in 1191 is told to explain them.Read next
- Next in HeraldryDouble-headed eagleAn eagle with two heads turned opposite ways, drawn with its wings spread. It was the arms of the Holy Roman Empire and of the tsars of Russia, and is on the arms of Serbia and the emblem of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
- In Historical flagsAquilaThe aquila was the eagle standard of a Roman legion, carried on a pole by the aquilifer. Pliny the Elder records that Gaius Marius made the eagle the only standard of the legions in his second consulship, which Smith’s dictionary dates to 104 BC.
See also
Coat of arms, Family crest, Tinctures (heraldic colours), Ordinaries, Marks of cadency, Crosses in heraldry.
Sources
- A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, 1909 (Project Gutenberg ebook 41617), T. C. & E. C. Jack, via Project Gutenberg, Chapter XIV, Birds, pp. 233–236
- Heraldry (1911 Encyclopædia Britannica), Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), vol. 13, article by Oswald Barron, Encyclopædia Britannica, via Wikisource, Origins; Beasts and Birds
- Blazoning: the language of heraldry, Educational sheet, Court of the Lord Lyon, Attitudes of beasts
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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