Postby FrancoisRichli » Tue Oct 25, 2016 3:57 pm
The arms on the left are the Richli's - enobled as the Freiherren (Barons) Reichlin von Meldegg : "In red, a silver bar covered with three red rings; On the helmet with red-silver blankets two red buffalo horns with a silver bandage, on the rings" and as Freidrich III confirmed in 1465.
The Holy Roman Emperor - at the same time and in recognition of the Meister's achievement combatting the Plague - also granted my patrician ancestor, Meister Andreas Richli - Reichlin von Meldegg, the right to bear a golden ducal crown.
These arms were first granted to Joss Richli - Eques et Praefectus Austriacus and Patrician of Constance - in 1400. The first written record of them is dated 1262 A.D., I believe.
I have been proudly wearing my Father's signet rings, bearing these arms, since his unfortunate death, at a very young age, in 1962.
The jardinière is most likely to have belonged to the Roman Catholic, Austrian, junior branch.
The senior branch maintaining the Richli's loyalty to the Abbey of St Gall, and due to the Abbey as its noble feudal vassals for centuries, relinquished their obligations to the Holy Roman Empire, and became Swiss when the Abbey itself joined the Swiss Confederation, in the aftermath of the religious, and most bloody, Thirty Years War.
The senior branch, furthermore, took up the Protestant faith, and the one with hindsight best suited - at the time and following - to an ancient line of Humanists, and of Masters of the Arts & Medicine. The Richli's were always, and are always, Aristocrats of Medicine, not War.