Purpure troubles me quite a bit. It doesn’t really matter but I’ve had some fun pondering this.
We all know the list: Gules, Azure, Vert, Sable… and purpure. These are the so-called traditional colors of heraldry, so say some modern heraldic authorities — with some exceptions, e.g., Finland does not recognize purpure — and they are elevated to this status of legitimacy over, say, orange.
But purpure appears to have been used… hardly ever in the medieval and renaissance periods, across pretty much everywhere in Europe.
I have noticed the same two examples of it over and over the years: The coat of arms of Leon, and the De Lacy family in England.
So, I took it upon myself to deliberately search for examples of purpure prior to the year 1700. It is extremely difficult.. in fact I’m not sure I have found even _one_ because the sources I’m looking at are a bit unclear.
So it begs the question: Does it really deserve its lofty status just based on one or two usages? It seems more accurate to say, “Leon had an odd emblem and coat of arms that used a color pretty much nobody else did” rather than jumping to “purpure was one of the historical colors of heraldry.” It, as far as I can tell, demonstrably wasn’t.
In fact we can find many more examples of or on argent (and vice versa) than we can of purpure. But do we say, “Or on argent is a traditional scheme in heraldry?” No, we don’t. We say it’s a violation of the rule of tincture. The Vatican’s usage of it as a unique color scheme is just that: It’s a scheme that is unique to the Vatican, an exception to the rule, but it still does not change the overall _tradition_ that is heraldry.
Anyway, what other purpure arms are out there?
I suppose none of this really “matters” in a sense. A list is just a list, it doesn’t really change historical heraldic reality, no matter what the authorities include on it. But the inclusion of purpure seems particularly funny to me. It’s gotten so popular in modern designs, like we see in this sub, and I am sure at least part of that is because people see “it’s on the list” and think of it as a traditional choice, when it’s anything but. In fact, every time I see a purpure coat of arms I think immediately “That’s a modern design.”