File talk:Coat of arms of Macedonia 1614.jpg

Source verification needed

Can anyone provide a verifiable source for this image? A source which an independent researcher can access. Thank you.Politis (talk) 15:14, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

No source that I could help you with, but FWIIW, there is a bit more background info at Coat of arms of Bulgaria#History (which is, of course, essentially the same coat of arms, even though our Macedonian friends may not like to hear that.) It was apparently used in medieval Bulgaria at some point. The fun thing is that this CoA kept being recorded in heraldic compendia in western and central Europe even at a time when the Balkans were solidly in Ottoman hands and there wasn't any entity left that could possibly have a CoA. Why and in what contexts these compendia substituted the historicizing archaic term Macedonia for that of the kingdom of Bulgaria I have no idea. It seems pretty obvious that it could never have been an actual CoA "of" Macedonia in any real sense. Coats of arms were essentially a western European, medieval invention, and during all the centuries coats of arms existed as political symbols, there never was a political entity called like that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:41, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The yellow lion on a red shield is an originally Macedonian symbol. It's true that Bulgaria uses (and used) that symbol in the center of its coat of arms, but that does not mean that it is Bulgarian or was Bulgarian since it appeared in the 16th century. It just symbolizes the region of Macedonia (which they claim as Bulgarian territory), just like the other two lions left and right of the red shield symbolize Thrace (because of the same reason) and the core of Bulgaria. Cukiger (talk) 15:19, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Source? You do realise that this whole story is inherently unlikely since there was no political entity of Macedonia, right? Coats of arms weren't normally used just loosely as symbols of areas. They stood for actual people, rulers, states. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

There's some funny stuff about these arms here [1] (but careful, the webpage loads something huge, I don't know what it is.) According to that text, the arms were concocted in the 15th century by a forger who wanted to construct a noble line of descent for himself. Fun. :-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

lol. First of all.. you're right, Macedonia was not a pol. entity within the Ottoman Empire.. so what? it is/was an important historical region that was known and called as such in that time, no matter if there existed a number of Turkish "villayets" across the region of Macedonia, which had nothing in common with its 'borders'. So, that is no explanation why Macedonia should not have had a coat of arms..

http://www.bulgarianlondon.com/en_lon/uk/about_bulgaria/coat_of_arm.php

this source says:

According to the Bulgarian Coat-of-Arms Act, Article 2, Paragraph 1:

"The Coat of Arms of the Republic of Bulgaria shall depict a crowned gold lion rampant on a dark gules shield. Above the shield there shall be a large crown whose archetype shall be the crowns of the rulers of the Second Bulgarian Empire, with five crosses and another cross on top of the crown. The shield shall be held by two crowned gold lions rampant, standing on two crossed oak branches with acorns. [The three lions represent the three parts of Bulgaria: Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia.] Under the shield there shall be a white band, lined with the national colors, containing the text 'Saedinenieto pravi silata' ['Union Produces Strength']."

http://www.promacedonia.org/en/pk/pkoled.html:

The traditional and popu1ar division of Bulgarian lands was retained even after mediaeval Bulgaria ceased to exist. The tradition was preserved also in the coat of arms in its last dynasty, that of the Shishmans: three lions, placed one above the other, as symbols of every part of Bulgaria's domains. Subsequently, in designing the coats of arms of the three main Bulgarian regions: Moesia or Bulgaria, Thrace and Macedonia, the three lions were separated, each forming a basic element, in accordance with the common practices of heraldry. Again three similar symbols – greyhounds – also appeared in the coat of arms of Bulgaria in a heraldic inventory of Hungary in 1766.

here the explanation:

http://www.ioi2009.org/aboutBG.htm

The Third Bulgarian Kingdom

The Third Bulgarian State had its start with the San-Stefano peace agreement signed on March 3rd, 1878. As a result of that agreement Bulgaria was restored on the territory of the three historical and ethnic Bulgarian regions – namely Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia.

Well, I hope now you know why there's the Macedonian lion in Bulgaria's coat of arms. Cukiger (talk) 01:50, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. The Koledarov article states that medieval Bulgarians thought of Bulgaria as being composed of three main parts. And it may make sense to think of the three lions in some of the medieval Bulgarian arms as symbolising those three parts. But none of the three parts was called Macedonia at the time. Byzantine Macedonia was somewhere else. The name of Macedonia was only reintroduced to what we think of today as Macedonia by people influenced by western renaissance ideas after 1500. It was only in that context that somebody in Dubrovnik invented some coats of arms for a set of fictitious geographical entities, in order to give himself a fake noble pedigree, and did so on the basis of the ancient regional names to make it sound more posh. There's no evidence that I can see that these arms were ever used, at any time before the 19th century, by anybody in Macedonia itself, as a symbol specifically of Macedonia. The very fact that the medieval Bulgarian arms consisted of three identical lions, presumably to signify the three parts of the kingdom, makes it clear that the lion wasn't specifically a symbol of any particular one of them, no matter what it was called.

That the modern Bulgarian arms are interpreted by some people in the way they are is of course an entirely different matter. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:08, 16 October 2008 (UTC)