Inscriptions on Military Flags in Poland: An Attempt at Forming a Typology

The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne 56 (2008), issue 2. This article is an attempt at systematizing the body of inscriptions that accompanied the heraldic and iconographic inscriptions on Polish military flags and standards in the course of past centuries. It presents the suggestion of dividing them into four groups. The first comprises property inscriptions, giving information about who the flag belonged to, who its owner was or who used it. In the second group are inscriptions called ‘funding’ ones; they contain data referring to the funders or makers of those objects. Commemorative inscriptions were included in group three; they commemorated important events connected with the history of the unit or with its tradition. The fourth group consists of inscriptions in the form of sentences, mottos or apostrophes, usually having a lofty and solemn character. In practice, inscriptions belonging to different groups often appear side by side on the same flag. Usually they contain important information and ideological content.