The current coat of arms of Serbia was adopted on August 17, 2004, but it has existed since June 1882 as the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbia, with heraldic symbols that point to the 841-year-long history of the Serbian state and nation.

By Vanja Savić
Photo by Courtesy of Arc. Dragomir Acović

The Serbian coat of arms is a two-headed white eagle with the royal crown above their heads, while under each of the claws is a stylised design of an iris flower. On the eagle's chest is a red shield with a white cross between four silver firesteels arranged in quarters around it, all of them facing horizontally outwards. In Serbian heraldic history, the bicephalic eagle stands as a symbol of the state and is better known as the family emblem of the House of Nemanjić, because it was used as a heraldic symbol of Serbian rulers during the period of the Raškan state. The oldest depiction of the double-headed eagle in Serbia is to be found on the founder's image in the Sts. Peter and Paul Church on the Lim River near Bijelo Polje, i.e. on the garment of Prince Miroslav, the brother of Grand Zhupan Nemanja and the man who commissioned the most famous and oldest Serbian written monument, Miroslav's Gospels.

An identical twoheaded eagle can also be found painted on a fresco in the Mother of God of Ljeviša Church in Prizren and in the Žiča Monastery, as well as on the attire of Stefan the First-Crowned, who was crowned in 1217. During the rule of the Byzantine Comnenian dynasty, the first Serbian king carried the title of Sevastokrator and had the right of use as his symbol a red twin-headed eagle. The eagle may be seen on a fresco in the Studenica Monastery; it is executed in gold colour on the red cape of his son and heir Radoslav, but it is also visible at the feet of King Milutin and Queen Simonida in the Sopoćani Monastery as well as on the ring of Queen Teodora, the wife of King Stefan Dečanski, in the Banjska Monastery.

From the 14^th century onward, the symbol of the two-headed eagle in Serbia was mainly used to decorate oriental fabrics that were popular at court, owing primarily to Byzantine influence. It was only as the Serbian state flourished during the rule of Emperor Dušan that the double-headed eagle assumed some of the features of state insignia. On a 1339 map by Angelino Dulcert, a Catalan, Skoplje – the then capital of Serbia – and the city of Thessaloniki were marked with a yellow flag with a two-headed red eagle. Following the downfall of Dušan's empire, this eagle never fully held its own as Serbia's coat of arms, as inferred from frescoes in the Ravanica Monastery, an endowment of Prince Lazar, and in the Ljubostinja Monastery, an endowment of Princess Milica, as it could be seen merely on their garments.

The origin of this symbol is not European but Asian, more precisely Sumerian. Its oldest image was discovered at the excavation site of the Babylonian city of Lagas. According to some, in 2500 B.C. this two-headed eagle represented Gilgamesh, the first man and hero of the epic of the same name, while according to others, it was a symbol of the sun's divine emanation. With the emergence of Christianity, the twin-headed eagle appeared again on monuments dating to the period between 600 and 650 in the region of what is today Iraq and in Central Asia – in Turfan and central Turkistan. As a symbol, it more regularly appears as late as the 11^th century in the upper regions of the Tigris River, but also for the first time in Europe as a decoration on the robes of nobility in the Byzantine Empire, Cordoba (Muslim-held area of Spain at the time) and Palermo on Sicily. With time, it also became popular among the Crusaders and the aristocracy in western countries, while in 1417 Hungarian King Sigismund finally established a two-headed black eagle as the coat of arms of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the 14^th century, the bicephalic eagle was also the coat of arms of the last emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantine XI Paleologus Dragaš. A symbol of the crumbling Byzantine Empire, the eagle 'flew' to Europe from the Orient, and seems to have heralded the subsequent arrival of the Ottoman Turks, the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. As the Byzantine Empire crumbled, this heraldic symbol was taken over by Russia in its pretension to being heir to the Byzantine Empire, the so-called Third Rome, as well as by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople.

In Serbia, during the rule of Despot Stefan Lazarević, this symbol became a heraldic symbol in its own right for the first time after 1402. The so-called double eagle appears together with the family symbol – the lion – among the Branković's, heirs to the Lazarević's, on Serbia's vassal throne.

The white cross on a red background with the four firesteels, in heraldry better known as the Serbian coat of arms or the nation's symbol, was to be found on a seal of the Praviteljstvujušči Sovjet, the first ruling and legislative body in liberated Serbia and on the banners and flags of Karadjordje's insurgents in 1804. Miloš Obrenović issued a decree in 1819 that made it the symbol of the Serbian government and ruler, while the first Serbian Constitution (known as Sretenjski Ustav - 1835) officially installed it as the coat of arms of the Principality of Serbia.

The cross as a symbol appears for the first time on the so-called labarum – a cross-shaped military standard of Roman Emperor Constantine in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on the Tiber River on October 28, 312. Until that time it had been the main symbol of Christ's crucifixion, and after Constantine's Edict of Milan in 313 it became a symbol of the official and recognised Christian religion. With time the cross became a symbol of the Eastern Roman Empire as well as of the Crusaders, beginning in the 11^th century. It appears in various colors and versions with decorative figures between the bars. The Crusaders established it as a token of their rule on flags that were unfurled in each of the lands of the Orient that they conquered. They also did this when they seized Constantinople in 1204. Sixty years later, having rid Constantinople of the Crusaders, Michael VIII Paleologus reinstated the Byzantine banners with his own coat of arms – the tetrabasilion (four stylized initial letters B), a yellow cross with four firesteels in the shape of the Greek letter B (beta) standing in Greek for: King of Kings, Ruling over Kings (Basileus Basileon Basileuon Basileusin).

In the Serbian version, the firesteels, appearing as symbols among the Slav nations from the 8^th-11^th centuries, more resembled the letter "S" in the Cyrillic script, and began to be recognised as such. The oldest authentic example of a Serbian white cross with four firesteels on red background is linked with the family of Prince Lazar. It is found on the grand chandelier in the Dečani Monastery, an endowment of his wife Princess Milica and her sons from 1397.

The two-headed eagle and the Serbian white cross on a red background, used in Serbia at the time of the Despotate and vassalship, are mentioned in many collections and manuscripts from the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries. They were joined together in June 1882, when the white two-headed eagle again 'landed' under the royal crown of the Serbian coat of arms, but this time on a red escutcheon containing a red inescutcheon with a white cross and four firesteels on its chest.

This was the official coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbia in World War I, and after Slovenia and Croatia joined the new kingdom, later called Yugoslavia, it was supplemented with the coats of arms of these two South Slav nations – a blue background with a five-pointed yellow star and 25 red and white checkered fields. After World War II, the white eagle once again disappeared as the official state heraldic symbol. It was removed from the coat of arms of Yugoslavia, but also from the state emblem of the then Socialist Republic of Serbia. What remained was only a red slab with four yellow firesteels below a five-pointed red star among ears of grain. The firesteels are still erroneously interpreted as four Cyrillic letters "S".

The current coat of arms of Serbia was adopted on August 17, 2004, thus bringing together once again the two-headed eagle as the symbol of Serbia's statehood, and the emblem of Serbia as the symbol of the Serbian nation. According to Dragomir Acović, HRH Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjević Crown Council member and Serbian Society for Heraldry chairman, reviving the 1882 coat of arms is very important for Serbia and its international representation.

– Heraldic symbols are to be seen wherever there is a need for establishing identity, whether political, ethnic, professional or ideological. Increasingly confused in a situation of overabundance of information, the world is moving towards something people have resorted to at the dawn of civilisation. They are returning to the language of signs. Hence the overabundance of various logos. Heraldry clearly has a bearing on man's subconscious and his emotional plane, and it becomes even more pronounced in rather difficult situations when someone's identity is being disturbed. The best example for this would be the coat of arms of Belgium, in the context of which the Walloons and the Flemish have been in dispute for many centuries of over the primacy of the lion or the rooster. This problem was also evidenced the last time Montenegro separated from Serbia, when the blue of its tricolor flag was forcibly altered into pigeon blue, thereby effecting – not for the first time – a post festum change of history in this region.

Apocryphal Coat of Arms of the Serbian Empire (midway between 16th and 17th centuries) for the first time heraldically united the lands most of which later became part of the state of Southern Slavs. Around the shield is the chain of the Order of Knights of the Pillar of St. Stephen the First-Martyred founded by Emperor Dušan Coat of Arms of Serbian Grand Prince Lazar Hrebeljenović, St. Lazar (14th century) – from a calendar Coat of Arms of Despot Stefan Lazarević (Council of Costanza in 1415) Coat of Arms of Serbian despots – the Brankovićs (15th and 16th century) Coat of Arms with flags of Karadjordje's insurgents (1804) Princely Coat of Arms of the Obrenović Ruling House (1815) – from a calendar Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Serbia (February 22, 1822) Serbian Coat of Arms within the Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of SHS (1918) Coat of Arms of the Republic of Serbia (August 17, 2004)