Posted 06/22/2016 04:22 am
You have here a very famous piece! Or at least a relative of it...
"Quand je fus fait sans difference
Au prudent Roi ami de Dieu
On obeissoit par tout en France
Fors a Calais qui est fort lieu"
This is, at most, a very minor variation on the motto of the anomalous gold medal of Charles VII (whose crowned initial "k" appears above all), supposed to have been struck about 1455, in commemoration of his conquest of Normandy & Guyenne, and predating by about a century the appearance of medals as such. This piece varies from the original, however, in having the horseman instead of the shield of arms of France in the center of the side with that quatrain. The original moreover has on the reverse a quite different device of a cross and multiple scrolls, with a further quatrain proclaiming it to be of ducat gold.
The verse on the side with the portrait, "Jehanne de par le Roi du Ciel sauve la France" is apparently a modification of a common verse found on religious medals of Joan of Arc.
"Quand je fus fait sans difference
Au prudent Roi ami de Dieu
On obeissoit par tout en France
Fors a Calais qui est fort lieu"
This is, at most, a very minor variation on the motto of the anomalous gold medal of Charles VII (whose crowned initial "k" appears above all), supposed to have been struck about 1455, in commemoration of his conquest of Normandy & Guyenne, and predating by about a century the appearance of medals as such. This piece varies from the original, however, in having the horseman instead of the shield of arms of France in the center of the side with that quatrain. The original moreover has on the reverse a quite different device of a cross and multiple scrolls, with a further quatrain proclaiming it to be of ducat gold.
The verse on the side with the portrait, "Jehanne de par le Roi du Ciel sauve la France" is apparently a modification of a common verse found on religious medals of Joan of Arc.
