Two Coats of Arms of Bertrand du Guesclin

The article meditates on why, while possessing a family coat of arms, a famous French national hero of the 14th century was visualized by a different coat of arms. Naming Bertrand du Guesclin the Tenth Worthy in addition to the Nine Worthies — exemplary warriors of the Middle Ages — was one of the ideological activities of the French monarch during the Hundred Years' War. Depicting Bertrand du Guesclin not with his own coat of arms, but with the royal arms of France meant that the monarch assessed him as a victor and a hero. At the end of the 14th—15th centuries the arms became the arms of a cult hero, and later — the coat of arms of a French-born knight in the service of the French crown. The decision to bury him in Saint Denis was a further development of his cult. The metaphor of the Nine Worthies was common in medieval society as overly positive. The image of du Guesclin as the Tenth Worthy is clearly connected with the formation of French national identity; it recalls the all-French struggle with the British. Gradually, the medieval metaphor of visualization stopped working and practically disappeared by the turn of the 18th — 19th centuries.