Editing House of Medici (section)

==Coats of arms==
The origin of the Medici coat of arms is not recorded. One unproven story traces their ancestry to a knight of Charlemagne's, Averardo, who defeated a giant, Mugello. In reward, Charlemagne is said to have rewarded Averardo with the shield mauled by the giant, with the dents in the shape of balls, and the giant's lands in Mugello.

[[File:Stemmi delle Arti fiorentine, sec. XVIII - san dl SAN IMG-00003045.jpg|thumb|Florentine Guild Arms with the Moneychangers in top row 3rd.]]

[[File:Blood_Orange_2.jpg|thumb|Here seen sliced in half, an art historian suggests that whole blood oranges could be the imagery in the Medici coats of arms]]

The simplest, though also unproven, theory suggests that the balls represented coins copied from the coat of arms of the Guild of Moneychangers (Arte del Cambio) to which the Medici belonged. That shield was red strewn with Byzantine coins (bezants).<ref>{{cite book |last= de Roover |first= Raymond |title= The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline |publisher= Pickle Partners Publishing |year= 2017 |pages= note 1}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last= Mackworth-Young |first= Rose |title= The Medici balls: Origins of the family's coat of arms |journal= The Florentine |issue= 160 |publisher= B'Gruppo Srl |location= Florence |date= 29 March 2012 |url= http://www.theflorentine.net/lifestyle/2012/03/the-medici-balls/ |access-date= 17 October 2017}}</ref> The number of balls also varied with time, as shown below. It has also been argued that these coins referenced the three coins or golden balls associated with [[St. Nicholas]], particularly as the saint was invoked by Italian bankers as they took oaths.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Clare |first1=Edward G. |title=St. Nicholas: His Legends and Iconography |date=1985 |publisher=Leo S. Olschki |location=Florence |page=76}}</ref>

As an Italian vocabulary word, "medici" means "medical doctors" and identifications with the family members as physicians may be found among their names as early as the eleventh century. Fanciful stories depict the images as pills or cupping glasses, a late-medieval medical instrument used to draw blood. Pills did not exist until much later and bloodletting was not a common practice at the time of the first Medici coat of arms. Art historian Rocky Ruggiero suggests plausibly however, that the images may represent whole ripe [[blood oranges]] that typically are grown in Italy. Although knowledge of vitamins did not exist at the time, the benefit of oranges for certain diseases was recognized and their association with recommendations by medical doctors suggests to Ruggiero that this likely is the imagery intended in the coats of arms for the Medici family.<ref>Ruggiero, Rocky, Ph.D., ''[https://rockyruggiero.com/episode-93-florence-the-medici-dynasty/ Rebuilding The Renaissance, Episode 93 – Florence: The Medici Dynasty] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210829014209/https://rockyruggiero.com/episode-93-florence-the-medici-dynasty/ |date=2021-08-29 }}'', Making Art and History Come to Life, October 28, 2020, an audio file</ref>

Alternatively, it has been suggested that the Medici coat of arms was initially inspired by symbols drawn from Etruscan votive sculpture, examples of which feature an oval dome with balls (echoing the forms of the Medici shield), as well as six balls within a triangle (as found in the alternative, triangular version of the Medici emblem).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jelbert|first=Rebeca|date=2020|title=The Medici Coat of Arms and Etruscan Votive Sculpture|journal=The Coat of Arms: Journal for the Heraldry Society (UK)|volume=3|pages=190–208}}</ref> This particular influence offers an explanation for the red hue of the Medici balls, the colour of the terracotta sculpture. It would also have reflected the family's interest in Etruscan art and culture.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gáldy|first=Andrea|title=Cosimo I de' Medici as Collector: Antiquities and Archaeology in Sixteenth-century Florence|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|date=2009|pages=46–47, 58}}</ref> In addition, the notion of Etruscan votive sculpture would have chimed with the participation of the Medici in the religious custom of offering up votive statues, a practice that recalled the ancient Etruscan convention of donating sculptures in the hope of, or gratitude for, divine favour.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kent|first=Francis|title=Lorenzo de'Medici and the Art of Magnificence|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|date=2007|page=76}}</ref> Such favours would have included the wish for a strong and healthy family, both for the supplicant and their descendants.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Scopacasa|first=Rafael|date=2015|title=Moulding Cultural Change: A Contextual Approach to Anatomical Votive Terracottas in Central Italy, Fourth-Second Centuries BC|journal=Papers of the British School at Rome|volume=83|pages=1–27, 343–344|doi=10.1017/S0068246215000021 |s2cid=163129780 }}</ref>

<gallery class="center" style="font-size:88%; line-height:130%">
File:Coat of arms of Cosimo il Vecchio (type 2).svg|Old coat of arms of the Medici used by Giovanni di Bicci and Cosimo the Elder
File:Coat of arms of the House of Medici (old) - type 2.svg|The intermediate coat of arms of the Medici, ''Or, six balls in orle gules''
File:Augmented Arms of Medici.svg|The "augmented coat of arms of the Medici, ''Or, five balls in orle gules, in chief a larger one of the arms of France'' (viz. ''Azure, three fleurs-de-lis or'') was granted by [[Louis XI]] in 1465.<ref name=Woodward162>John Woodward, ''A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Heraldry'', 1894, [https://archive.org/stream/atreatiseoneccl00woodgoog#page/n258/mode/2up p. 162]</ref>
File:Great coat of arms of the Medici di Ottajano.svg|Great coat of arms of Medici of Ottajano
File:Coat of Arms of the Grand duchy of Tuscany.svg|Coat of Arms of the Grand-Duke of Tuscany
File:Coat of arms of Medici popes.svg|Coat of arms of Medici popes
File:Coat Cardinal De Medici.svg|Coat of arms of the Medici Cardinals
File:Arms of Catherina de' Medici.svg|Coat of Arms of Catherine of Medici, as Queen of France
File:COA french queen Marie de Médicis.svg|Coat of Arms of Maria of Medici, as Queen of France
File:Coat of arms of the House of de' Medici.png|Achievement of the House of de' Medici
</gallery>