Leerdam, Ladders, and Lascivious Swans: the Arkel Coat of Arms

Previously I'd described the two horizontal zig-zag lines on the Arkel coat of arms as being embattlements or crenellations. A battlement is a low defensive wall on top of a larger wall or tower that has gaps between, the gaps allowing defenders to shoot arrows, etc., at attackers. The gaps are called “crenels” and a wall with crenels is called “crenellated.” Battlements were a regular feature of castle and town walls, and no doubt everyone is familiar with them from countless films and television series such as “Game of Thrones.”

In medieval society most people were either nobles, clerics, craftsmen or peasant farmers. The nobles were essentially soldiers and derived and maintained their power through violence and threat of violence. The clerics derived and maintained their power through their claim to be agents of God and through the carrot-and-stick technique of the promise of a blissful afterlife as the reward for “good” behavior and the threat of eternal damnation in hell as the punishment for “bad” behavior. The nobles and clerics owned all the land and the craftsmen and peasants owned nothing but a few personal possessions. Life was of course much better for the nobles and clerics than for the craftsmen and peasants, so of course anyone who lived in these societies would prefer to be a noble or a cleric rather than a craftsman or peasant. However, these societies were not socially fluid, and most people were pretty much stuck in whatever caste they were born in, and which their ancestors for countless generations had been born in.

The Arkels were part of the nobility, although they appear never to have been titled nobility. As far as I can tell, they were never counts, dukes, or even barons. Rather, they were called “knights” or “lords” (“heeren”). Knights could be considered socially to be somewhere between commoners and nobles, but were certainly closer to nobles than to peasants. They had privileged positions as local rulers in exchange for their loyalty to their count or duke, and in return for their military service when called upon. In Miroir des Nobles de Hesbaye (1791), stating that a Thiery de Haneffe married (after 1215 AD) a daughter of “Seigneur d'Arckel,' from the Duchy of Gelderland, the writer called this Arkel a “riche banneret.” A banneret was a high ranking knight who led a company of troops into battle under his own banner. The Wikipedia article “Knight banneret” explains:

The idea of the banneret as a distinct and superior category of knight is seen as a consequence of the fact that the great lord who did not possess a hereditary title (like count or duke) found himself on the same social level as the subordinate and dependent knights of his retinue. This became a particular issue in the 12th century, with the growth of the aristocratic tournament culture in north east France and the western Empire. One uncomfortable consequence of this for the untitled lord was the rise in standing of the common knight towards noble status. A solution was to exalt magnate knighthood to a level above that of common knights, and identify it with the banner that a lord could carry, but not a common knight. The first indication of the rank was in the tournament roll compiled after the great royal festival at Lagny-sur-Marne in 1179 where the knights 'carrying a banner' were distinguished from the rest. The title 'banneret' (Latin banneretus, vexillifer; Middle French: banerez) was fully established as a military and social rank by the mid 13th century. Initially the term could be applied collectively to all noblemen qualified to raise a banner (including counts and dukes), but before the end of the 13th century it came to be used exclusively as a senior rank of knight or lesser magnate. The term originated in Francophone aristocratic culture in the later 12th century, but was adopted into other cultures. It was adopted into Flemish by 1300 as 'baenrots', a word explained as from baan (command) and rot (troop). The word was taken into Middle High German as baenritz or bannerheer and was current in the principalities of the Western Empire in the 14th century...There was in the 14th century a tension between the evolving title of 'baron' as a hereditary dignity and 'banneret' which could be applied to the same lord. It was resolved in part by employing 'baron' for him in a civil context and 'banneret' in a military context, where bannerets could claim a higher rate of pay on campaign than common knights.

Although the Arkels were never titled nobility, they because quite wealthy and famous, and this was probably the major factor that led to their downfall as their power within the County of Holland threatened not only the authority of the Counts of Holland, but possibly the legitimacy of the entire medieval system system itself. The legal theory was that the Arkels did not outright own any land themselves (allodial land), but only leased the land from the Count of Holland in return for their loyalty to the Count. Thus, they could be dispossessed of the land if they were shown to be disloyal to their count. The excuse for this dispossession was the position the Arkels took in the “Hook and Cod Wars,” but the real issue was probably that the Arkels' wealth, military power, and fame was growing too greatly to be tolerated.

In any case, the Arkels for centuries had maintained their power through their military prowess (their willingness and ability to kill people), and at the height of their power they owned several castes, including one in Leerdam and their primary castle in Gorinchem (Gorcum). This is why I had assumed the Arkel zig-zag lines on their coat of arms represented castle battlements. I never gave much thought to why the zig-zags were red, although of course that color in the context of the Arkels could symbolize the blood they'd shed in the course of their service to their overlords (and to God).

However, I recently read something that caused me rethink the symbolism of those red zig-zag lines. This was a paper by Blöte called “Die Arkelsche Schwanrittersage.” I've mentioned this paper before in discussing the flight of Jan van Arkel in 689 or 694 from Pierrepont to the Land of Arkel after killing Brancio, lord of Bar and relative to the King of France. However, at that time I hadn't read this part of the paper, which is in German and requires translation. Blöte appears to have written a number of papers on Swan Knight stories, the singular form of which in German is called “schwanrittersage.” Blöte's interest in the Arkels relates primarily to the story of the swan leading Jan to the future site of the town of Arkel because it is a kind of Swan Knight story.

The Swan Knight stories appear to have been popular in the early medieval times, and the first of them, a chanson de geste called Le Chevalier au Cigne, was from about 1192 and concerned the legendary ancestor of Godfrey of Bouillon. The theme of these stories is the appearance of a mysterious stranger in a boat pulled by a swan, who rescues a damsel in distress. Godfrey of Bouillon (1060-1100) was famous Frankish nobleman whose, the second son of the Count of Boulogne and had fought with William the Conqueror in his conquest of England. Bouillon was a lordship in the Duchy of Lower Lorraine, and Bouillon Castle is located about 50 miles from Pierrepont. Assuming that the traditional Arkel genealogies are correct, Godfrey of Bouillon would have been a contemporary of the Jan often known as “Jan III van Arkel, de Kruisvaarder” (1065-1118) (who would have been the great-great-grandson of the Jan sometimes called “van Hongarije” who fought for Emperor Otto I and was made Lord of Arkel by Count Dirk II of Holland). Godfrey of Bouillon was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, and was later king of the Crusader state of Jerusalem; supposedly while in the Holy Land he knighted Jan III, who was also a Crusader.

So Godfrey of Bouillon was celebrated as the Swan Knight in Le Chevalier au Cigne, although of course the story was no doubt a complete fiction. Most likely the swan story of Jan van Arkel was meant to associate the Arkel line with that of the more famous Godfrey of Bouillon. Even so, as Blöte points out, the Arkel swan story isn't a true Swan Knight story because the swan doesn't actually pull Jan's boat and also because Jan isn't going to Arkel to rescue a maiden but rather to flee from the consequences of murdering a nobleman.

Now, back to the Arkel coat of arms. Although I had assumed that the two horizontal red zig-zags on the Arkel coat of arms were battlements, Blöte says that they are ladders. This does make sense because in fact battlements only have one row of “teeth” pointing upward, whereas the Arkel zig-zags also have “teeth” pointing downward. These zig-zags with their alternating “teeth” do in fact look more like a kind of offset-rung siege ladder (lying horizontally) than they do castle battlements. Here's a picture of what such a ladder would have looked like, although in this picture the rungs aren't offset:

(Source: Banners, Standards, and Badges - Traceable Heraldic Art; drawing was based on a 1531 English manuscript)

Blöte mentions the zig-zags being ladders in a passage where he is describing one series of documents on the Arkel line that claim that the Arkel the line goes back to the Trojans (Dirck Pauw being one of those sources):

The Arkels [according to these histories]...are real Trojans. After the destruction of Troy, they moved to Pannonia under Francio, Hector's son. At that time they had two red towers on a gold background as a coat of arms, which is why they were called "domini de Turribus". They served under Priam, the descendant of Francio, when he conquered Gaul. As they always hurried ahead of the whole army with their ladders when storming towns and castles and the ladders were colored with their blood, they were given permission to change their coat of arms and henceforth to lead two red ladders on a silver background. (Footnote: The Arkel coat of arms has a simpler origin. It emerged from that of the gentlemen from the Lede or from Leerdam, Lederdam. The ladders (in Dutch, "ledere") appear to derive from Lederedamme, so that the coat of arms of the Arkels might be derived from that of the lords of Lederdam.)

This is my Google Translate-assisted translation of Blöte's explanation, and unfortunately it leaves unclear exactly what distinction Blöte is making in his footnote about the origin of the Arkel coat of arms. The lords of Leerdam (Lede) were a male-line offshoot of the Arkels, and the two coats of arms appear to be essentially the same. Blöte appears to be saying that Leerdam was named after the two ladders in the Arkel coat of arms (“Leder" = "Ladder”), and that the theme of the two bloody ladders derives from a much earlier time. In any case, he's saying that the two horizontal zig-zag patterns on the Arkel coat of arms represent the ladders the Arkels used to storm walls, and that their color is red to represent the Arkel blood that was spilled on them. In my opinion this is a believable interpretation of the zig-zags, because fearlessness and skill in battle was exactly how the Arkels advanced over time from being common knights to holding great power in Holland that rivalled that of the Count of Holland himself.

However, I question Blöte's etymology of the name “Lederdam,” which he appears to be saying came from the coat of arms. This might be true, but it is hardly proven just by the similarity of the word “ladder” and the partial name “Leder-.” The early name for the place appears to be “Lede,” not “Leder-” My guess is that the name changed from “Lede” to “Lederdam” only after a dam was placed there on the Linge, and that the “r” sound was only added to give it the meaning “the dam at Lede” or “the town of Lede that has a dam.” Thus, the name “Lederdam” would derive from “Lede,” not “Leder” or “ladder.”

If we're playing word games, my own preference is that the name came from the swan symbol that the Arkels adopted because of the supposed Swan Knight story involving the Jan who had to flee Pierrepont because he'd murdered Brancio. In Dutch, the terminal “e” in the word “Lede” is pronounced, so that it sounds such that in English we would write it “Leda” to indicate that the terminal “e” is not silent. The Arkels claimed to be Trojans, meaning Greeks, and in Greek mythology Leda was the mother of Helen of Troy by Zeus after he'd taken the form of a swan. The act leading to this pregnancy was of course bizarre behavior on the part of both parties, but in any case it produced Helen of Troy, who hatched from an egg (which is illogical because it wasn't Leda who was the swan, but Zeus, so how did a human lay an egg?). In any case, Leda was certainly associated with a swan, and was also the mother of Helen of Troy, whose kidnapping by the Trojans was the spark that ignited the Trojan War that the first Arkel was supposed to have fought in.  of course was the the Arkels would see as and so the Arkel who named the town would naturally think of this myth because it was a swan that led Jan to Arkel.

It would have been more appropriate to name the town “Zeus” rather than “Lede,” since Zeus was the swan in the Greek myth, but perhaps this would have led to theological difficulties for for everyone involved. The Catholic church was battling “pagans” on several fronts, and might very well see such a thing as dangerously close to backsliding into Roman paganism. Although Pauw in his Kronijke remarks constantly on how devout the Arkels were in their Christianity, we really can't know how true that was. They appear to have been quite devout in killing non-Christian Saxons, Slavs and Muslims, and no doubt they would have paid lip-service to their piety but it appears that they might have still retained some fondness for the Greek mythology of their forefathers, even if they didn't actually worship the gods.

Another Arkel origin story Blöte mentions is that of the name “Arkel” itself. He wrote (translated):

The legendary origin of the Arkel line...They come from Hercules Alemannus, who lived 200 years before the destruction of Troy, hence the name Arkel or Arculei, ie. Herculei [Footnote: Another interpretation is that the name came from “castra Herculana", a name that is said to come from Hercules Alemannus].

This is similar to the story of Arkel being named after the the name “Hercules” on the ruins of a Roman temple on the site of Arkel. However, in the temple story the name of the town would have thus existed first, with the name of the lineage being named after it. Contrarily, the story that the name Arkel came from “Hercules Alemannus” would imply that the lineage had the name Arkel long before the town was named Arkel. I prefer the theory that I mentioned in an early post, that the name came from the name of the very popular Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Heraclius, who was famed for having recovered from the Persians the so-called “True Cross” that Jesus had supposedly been crucified on. Heraclius was emperor when the Land of Arkel supposedly first came under Arkel ownership when the land was granted to Jan by King Dagobert I, who was an ally of Heraclius. Thus, by naming his villa after Heraclius, this Jan of Arkel was honoring his God, his king, the Byzantine emperor and his Greek ancestors all with one act.

I can think of one other possible origin for the name "Lede." I've noticed that many locations in southern Holland have the same name as locations in Belgium, and it is possible if not probable that this is because Holland was populated by Franks later than was the region now called Belgium, and that some locations in the new area were named after locations in the older area (just as many locations in New England were named after locations in England, and many locations throughout America were named after locations in New England). There are two different Ledes in Belgium, one of which is located just 21 miles north of Leuze-en-Hainaut  and the other which is located another 21 miles east-north-east of that Lede. As I've mentioned previously, one of the early Arkels had an estate in Leuze, so it is possible that one of the Arkels simply named Lede in Holland after one of the Ledes in Belgium. The first Lede in Belgium is also located near the Zwalm river, which is a tributary of the Scheldt; there is also a Zwalm in Germany near the Netherlands border which I mentioned in my first post in connection of "Swaim van der Swalme." However, once again, in order to establish a cause-and-effect relationship for the origin of naming some place, we really need stronger evidence than mere word games.

In the end, we'll probably never know for certain the true origin of the name "Leerdam." This is true also for the name "Arkel," although with this name I think we do have stronger historical evidence to support its origin as having come from the name "Heraclius."