A saint with a crozier and a Bible walks over the red: Glaris is the only canton whose flag carries a person, and its current version was approved in 1959.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a square field, with a 1:1 ratio, with a plain red ground. On it walks a full-length saint, placed at the centre of the field.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
Glaris joined the Confederation in 1352
The saint first appears on the flag in 1388, at the Battle of Näfels
Until the nineteenth century every maker painted Fridolin in their own way: with a hat or without,…
The government fixed the emblem by law in 1941 and on 25 June 1959 decreed the current stylised…
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Glaris is unusual: instead of an animal or a symbol it carries a man, Saint Fridolin, who walks towards the flagpole looking straight ahead, the only saint on a cantonal flag.
Fridolin was, according to tradition, an Irish missionary who Christianised the region in the sixth century by founding the monastery of Säckingen, distant lord of Glaris. The saint first appears on the flag in 1388, at the Battle of Näfels. Glaris joined the Confederation in 1352.
Until the nineteenth century every maker painted Fridolin in their own way: with a hat or without, with a red or green Bible, and between 1437 and 1578 with an abbot’s crozier instead of the pilgrim’s staff. The government fixed the emblem by law in 1941 and on 25 June 1959 decreed the current stylised version by the graphic designer Ernst Keller.
Saint Fridolin
patron of the canton, its evangeliser according to tradition; his existence is not confirmed.
Crozier and Bible
attributes of the pilgrim and of the abbot.
According to legend, Count Urs bequeathed Glaris to Fridolin’s monastery, and when his brother challenged the will the saint resurrected Urs so that he could confirm it.
From the fourteenth century to 1792 the flag of Glaris carried at the top a white streamer, the Schwenkel.
The chronicle of Schilling, of 1513, painted Saint Fridolin on the wall of Näfels, encouraging the defenders of 1388.
Test what you have read about the flag of Glaris.
Flag image: Autor desconocido, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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