In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the eagle appears with the head raised and the beak closed. The sachsen (bones of the wings) are rolled up at the ends like a snail, and the pinions (like the talons) take a vertical downward direction. The tail, composed of a number of stiff feathers, frequently issues from a knob or ball. Compare Fig. 440 herewith.
With the end of the fourteenth century the head straightens itself, the beak opens and the tongue becomes visible. The rolling up of the wing-bones gradually disappears, and the claws form an acute angle with the direction of the body; and at this period the claws occasionally receive the "hose" covering the upper part of the leg. The feathers of the tail spread out sicklewise (Fig. 441).
Fig. 442.
Fig. 441.
Fig. 440.
The fifteenth century shows the eagle with sachsen forming a half circle, the pinions spread out and radiating therefrom, and the claws more at a right angle (Fig. 442). The sixteenth century draws the eagle in a more ferocious aspect, and depicts it in as ornamental and ornate a manner as possible.
From Konrad Grünenberg's Wappenbuch (Constance, 1483) is reproduced the shield (Fig. 443) with the boldly sketched Adlerflügel mit Schwerthand (eagle's wing with the sword hand), the supposed arms of the Duke of Calabria.
Quite in the same style is the eagle of Tyrol on a corporate flag of the Society of the Schwazer Bergbute (Fig. 444), which belongs to the last quarter of the fifteenth century. This is reproduced from the impression in the Bavarian National Museum given in Hefner-Alteneck's "Book of Costumes."
A modern German eagle drawn by H. G. Ströhl is shown in Fig. 445. The illustration is of the arms of the Prussian province of Brandenburg.
The double eagle has, of course, undergone a somewhat similar development.
The double eagle occurs in the East as well as in the West in very early times. Since about 1335 the double eagle has appeared sporadically as a symbol of the Roman-German Empire, and under the Emperor Sigismund (d. 1447) became the settled armorial device of the Roman Empire. King Sigismund, before his coronation as Emperor, bore the single-headed eagle.
It may perhaps be as well to point out, with the exception of the two
