Murten: Heraldry, Gates, Sgraffito

Walled City - Murten

Heraldry, Gates, Sgraffito

1.  City gates.  The entry ways show the depth of the walls. The walls are not always freestanding. Here, there are houses and businesses abutting, even part of it.  See the slant back at the facade of the building just through the gateway - its own kind of buttressing.  Many city walls have a second line of defense past the main gate, before entering the city: a second huge door, or iron portcullis to drop down the slots.  Some have a murder hole above, where defenders can rain down arrows, pitch, on those stuck in the midway before getting through to the town.

Note that an invader has successfully passed through and is waiting for lunch.

Murten, Switzerland, city gate with heraldry

This gate is sectioned into the big swinger, and then its own little door with its own little window - allows the watchmen to let one person in without the vulnerability of the entire gate opening; and the little window to check identities.  No body scanners yet.

2. Heraldry.  There is a heraldry motif on this gate to the city of Murten:  See  a red and white wavy line pattern, seen also on shutters, doors.

Look up heraldry to see meanings, if any. Or it is just personal taste spread about. The white (also silver, or "argent"), according to://www.fleurdelis.com/meanings.htm/ means peace and sincerity; the red ("gules") means "Warrior, martyr; Military strength and magnanimity." A wavy line means water, sea.  Fine:  this city knew many sieges, and it is on Lake Murten, or Murtensee.  The site also notes, however, that there is no one interpretation of any of this. 

3.  View from inside the city.  Here is the other side of the gateway, looking back at the tower and its warning bell, and a cafe next door.

There is ornamentation known as "sgraffito" on the cafe built into the wall, visible from the inside. 

Murten, Switzerland, gateway from inside the city

4. Sgraffito.  Sgraffito is a multiple-step decorative process, where one color of pigment is covered with another; sometimes a layer of plaster will be covered with another layer, then the top one is scratched deep enough to reveal the contrast beneath. See entire pictures on buildings; or designs that can be made to look like stonework, ironwork. Do an images search for sgraffito technique.

5.  Clockworks

Clockworks display, Murten, Switzerland (at ramparts area)

Black and White at Chillon Castle: The Bath, Vincent Freischling, and Bernese Governors

 The Frustration of Heraldry

Where can you find a castle better than Chillon, one so manageable in size, and so varied in what has been preserved.  We wonder about the "preservation" of the obvious (to us) modern Santa Claus, instead of even a traditional Saint Nicholas, in the heraldry, but move on to the prevalence of blacks. And learn little.

Regardless, get comfortable, be sure the linen is laid in the tub to prevent splinters, have a monk (isn't that a tonsure?) and a lady nearby; emerge from the soak, and consider:

Chillon Castle, Switzerland, the Duke Emerges From His Bath

Heraldry and portraiture with numerous black faces or black and white themes at Chillon, some blurry because I messed up:

Chillon Castle, black figures, unknown reference

Motto: "Learning to observe is learning to respect." Whom from, pray tell?

Who is this Vincent Freischling. There is a Freischling in Austria, but that is east of Linz. We see no Vincent at the Freischling history site, at ://www.freischling.info.at/english/history/

Chillon Castle, Switzerland, Vincent Freisching? Black and White in Heraldry. St. Vincent?

 What is the black ram?  Nothing like it at this coats of arms site: ://www.rollintl.com/roll/grcoat.htm/  Black in heraldry is "sable," see ://www.luz-herald.net/free/pimbley/Pimbley%27s%20Dictionary%20of%20Heraldry%20-%20B.htm/ but still no clue.

There is Saint Vincent, and the Cathedral in Bern is St. Vincent's, see ://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g188052-d244410/Bern:Switzerland:Cathedral.At.Munsterplatz.St.Vincent.Munster.Kirche..html/ We see no connection with his biography at ://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=326/.  Who is that?

Chillon Castle, Black and White heraldry (blurred - life is tough)

Why the half dog white and half dog black. Just whim of Bernese governors?  See ://www.planetware.com/montreux/chateau-de-chillon-ch-vd-chill.htm

Chillon Castle Santa. Black Madonna. Heraldry on Walls. And Religion on Ceilings.

Finding Santa Claus, and a Black Madonna, in Unexpected Places.
Chillon Castle, Lake Geneva, Switzerland

Join a tour, have to keep up. But, if you go on your own, you can stay as long as you like, and find things. Here, start looking at frescoes, wall and ceiling paintings, and heraldry. Some things bowl you over.

A. We found Santa Claus.

Yes. He is not at the North Pole.  He is on Lake Geneva, Chillon Castle heraldry room, confronting a big black bear -  possibly a Bern image, but what about Santa? Or is that a black dragon?  The heraldry Griffon, perhaps, also spelled "Griffin" - see ://www.isidore-of-seville.com/griffins/9.html/. Or Gryphon.  There are littler cute griffins or gryphons showing below, black against red griffins there?  Who prevailed:  it looks like the red griffin is bottom up. It looks like waves around, or big winds, black and white again and the red Santa. For heraldry, start at ://www.heraldicsculptor.com/heraldry.html/.

Back to Chillon:  Find a clue:  "Frederic de Gingins."  Who? This is really odd.

Santa Claus in Heraldry, Frederic de Gingins, at Chillon Castle, Switzerland. Santa here. Yes, Santa.

First, Santa:  No clue from our fast look-ups. But it is there. Hoax?

1.  Frederic de Gingins as Baron de Gingins, whose name apppears beneath some unusual (anachronistic?) heraldry in the heraldry hall at Chillon Castle, Switzerland.  He is in a google book now, at "Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne and Savoy; from Roman Times to Voltaire, Rousseau and Gibbon" by an English General Meredith Read (family connections to America, Virginia; Civil War era accomplishments noted) at ://www.archive.org/stream/historicstudies00readgoog/historicstudies00readgoog_djvu.txt/  This is full of Gingins references - skimmed for Santa or a Saint Nicholas or something, did not find.  But long long history of Ginginses.

All that is fine, but when and why and how the Santa? As a Vaudois nobleman, he is listed as Frederic Gingins-La-Sarra, 1790-1863, or La Sarraz (see Author Index at ://fmg.ac/MGR/Indices/Sources/Authors/Links/G.htm/), a historian specializing in medieval times who sometimes went beyond his documents to make something what he wanted it to say, see ://1911encyclopedia.org/Switzerland/. Antoine-Charles de Gingins.  Ancestry.com has an 1859 geneology you can order. Is Santa home? Part of the Sires de Montfaucon comtes de Montbeliard.   

2.  There is a "Christmas Market" in Montreux, town just down from Chillon Castle (is it in Montreux?), but that looks modern, but then again so does this odd Santa, see ://switzerland-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/visit_the_romantic_montreux_christmas_market/  The heraldry is a hoax? Ok. Here is a long history of Switzerland: at ://1911encyclopedia.org/Switzerland/ No mention.

3.  This is not St. Nicolas of Myra, patron saint of children, see ://www.civicheraldry.co.uk/ecclesiastical.html/ and there are no ecclesiastical hats or flock hooks here either. See also ://www.civicheraldry.com/page/7297/  Swiss civic heraldry is indexed at ://www.civicheraldry.com/region/switzerland/ Have not been through them all.

B.  And a Black Madonna at Chillon.  

We found a Black Madonna. This time, up high.


We have seen free-standing paintings of Black Madonnas, and statues.  There are many, and varied in explanations and places in Europe, and, we understand, elsewhere in the New World.  See, an outdated, but good for a start, our collection at an earlier time at Europe Road Ways, Themes, Black Madonnas. 

Here we find our first Black Madonna painting on a ceiling, a ceiling fresco, or, perhaps, it is just a painting there.  Fresco, on the other hand, is a special technique, that means painting on wet plaster so it lasts a long time - we don't know which this Chillon ceiling painting is.  Fresco:  see the Italians who were especially good at it, at  ://www.italianfrescoes.com/frescoTechnique.asp.

Here is the Black Madonna we found at Chillon Castle:

Black Madonna, ceiling (fresco or painting?) Chillon Castle, Switzerland (and black child)

What is the history?  We cannot find it. But there are many other black figures at Chillon, and black-white motifs. Being researched. We see reference to a Madonna da Vico at ://www.archive.org/stream/santuarioofmadon00rossuoft/santuarioofmadon00rossuoft_djvu.txt/, but an Images search of Madonna of Vico shows nothing like this.  Even Dorothy Dix in 1926 makes no mention of this in her travel journal from the US to Eastern Europe, this part at Chillon, see ://library.apsu.edu/dix/lettersanddiaries/diary1926.htm/.

Comment, approach audience from stage: Are we at the point in travel like, with news, all we can get is people's rehash on tours of what someone else said or did. Look at fact content anywhere.  Where are facts. Nowhere to be found.  We get opinions and views in place of news, and in places that are labeled "news" and aren't p they are opinions and propaganda.

Nuts. As with art. Where are the facts.  Here, in art, same thing. We get tours with see this, see that, and the people do, click the same pictures, and leave.  What about all the rest?  The things that are there, but ignored, and who knows what they are. Enough. Somebody pick up on these, however, because they are fun.