Fleur-de-lis
A stylised flower of three petals bound by a band: the emblem of the kings of France, and from them a charge in heraldry. Today it is also the badge of the Scout movement and the emblem of New Orleans.
Meaning
The fleur-de-lis is a flower drawn as three petals, the middle one upright and the outer two curling out and down, held together by a band. Britannica describes it as a device much used in ornament and above all in heraldry, long the emblem of the French crown. Like other royal emblems it passed into the arms of towns, Fox-Davies notes. Its users today include the world Scout movement, whose badge it is, and the cities of New Orleans, Detroit and Montreal, which carry it on their flags. Which flower it began as is uncertain: Fox-Davies points out that the iris was called a lily until fairly recent times.
Origin and history
Fox-Davies thought the shape older than any meaning: a decoration found from the earliest periods of ornament, which need not have meant anything when it first topped a sceptre or a crown. Its royal history is better recorded. Philip I of France sits on his seal of 1060 holding a short staff that ends in a fleur-de-lis. Louis VII is believed to have been the first to bear a blue shield strewn with golden fleurs-de-lis, the arms heralds call France Ancient, and Charles V cut their number to three in 1376, reportedly in honour of the Holy Trinity (France Modern).
England took the lilies too. When Edward III claimed the French throne he quartered the arms of France with the lions of England on his Great Seal of 1340. The English fleurs-de-lis were reduced to three on Henry IV’s second Great Seal in 1411, and they stayed in the royal arms until late in the reign of George III.
The Virgin Mary and the legend of Clovis
One legend makes the fleur-de-lis the lily the Virgin Mary sent by an angel to Clovis, king of the Franks, at his baptism. Fox-Davies could not say when the story was invented, but French bishops put it forward at the Council of Trent in a dispute over the precedence of their king. Britannica adds that the lily was a symbol of purity that the Catholic Church took up to honour Mary, and that Pope Leo III is reported to have given Charlemagne a blue banner strewn with golden fleurs-de-lis when he crowned him in 800. In English heraldry the Marian lily is plainest at Eton, the College of St Mary the Virgin, whose arms have three natural lilies with a fleur-de-lis in the chief; Fox-Davies took the lilies there to stand for the Virgin.
Lily or iris?
The name says lily, and many have seen an iris in the shape. Fox-Davies counted the fleur-de-lis among the figures that have most puzzled antiquaries, with countless origins proposed. His own view was that the old name of the iris settles little, because the iris was itself called a lily until fairly recently. The flower dictionaries’ account of the iris and the French kings is on the iris page.
The Scout badge
Robert Baden-Powell gave brass fleur-de-lis badges to the young men at his first Scout camp, on Brownsea Island in 1907. Critics called the badge a spearhead and the movement military. Baden-Powell later recalled his telegraphed reply: “The crest is the fleur-de-lys, a lily, the emblem of peace and purity.” He chose it, he wrote, because maps, charts and compasses mark north with it, and the three points were to remind a Scout of the three points of the Scout Promise.
New Orleans, and the Code Noir
New Orleans flies three fleurs-de-lis on its city flag, and the New Orleans Saints wear one in black and gold. After Hurricane Katrina, in the words of the city’s basketball team, the mark “came to symbolize the heart and resolve of the city.” The emblem also has a darker history in French America. The Code Noir, the French slave code first issued under Louis XIV in 1685, ordered that an enslaved person who ran away for a month be branded with a fleur-de-lis on the shoulder. Louisiana’s own Code Noir of 1724, 64 Parishes records, branded enslaved people with the fleur-de-lis for repeated offences such as gathering in crowds.
In other coats of arms
Besides its royal use, the fleur-de-lis is an ordinary charge, and in the English system of marks of cadency it is the mark of a sixth son.
Read next
- Next in HeraldryTudor roseA double rose, red outside and white within: the badge of the Tudor kings. It joins the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York, the badges of the two houses in the Wars of the Roses.
- The flower books took the French royal fleur-de-lis for an iris.IrisThe iris meant "message" in the flower dictionaries, after Iris, the rainbow messenger of the Greek gods. Sarah Josepha Hale gave it "my compliments" instead, and the German iris, the fleur-de-lis, meant "flame".
See also
Crown and coronets, Oriflamme, Coat of arms, Family crest, Tinctures (heraldic colours), Ordinaries.
Sources
- Fleur-de-lis, Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 22 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article text
- A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, 1909 (Project Gutenberg ebook 41617), T. C. & E. C. Jack, via Project Gutenberg, Chapter XVIII, Trees, leaves, fruits and flowers: The Fleur-de-Lis, pp. 272–275; Chapter XVIII: the lily in the arms of Eton College, p. 272
- Points in history: Three things to know about why Scouts use the fleur-de-lis, Bryan Wendell, Bryan on Scouting, 13 January 2021, Scouting magazine (Boy Scouts of America), sections 1–3
- Transcription of the Code Noir (The Black Code), Gateway Arch National Park: the 1685 edict in English translation, National Park Service, Article XXXVIII
- Code Noir of Louisiana, 64 Parishes encyclopedia entry, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, entry text
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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