Prus I is a Polish coat of arms. It was used by a number of szlachta (noble) families under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
History
According to genealogist Łukasz Ćwikła from the University of Łódź, the Prus were a heraldic clan that, alongside Prus II and Prus III, were old Prussian refugees fleeing the Teutonic conquest of Prussia. These refugees clung to Old Prussian traditions, and, unlike other Polish clans, had stratified nobiles and ignobiles tiers to nobility. The Old Prussians as a whole settled in Mazovia, with a significant final refugee movement following the Prussian uprisings in the 1260s and 1270s as the Teutonic order eradicated the Old Prussians and resettled the land with Germans.
Two Old Prussian nobiles princes are tied to the three Prus coat of arms, Windyka and Obizor, who fled to Mazovia around 1270. On October 1, 1345, Mazovian co-dukes Siemowit III and Casimir I issued a privilege to specifically named legitimate successors of Windyka and Obizor to answer only to the duke, and no ordinary provincial officials. This marked the legal recognition of pre-existing old Prussian nobility into the Polish clan and later the nobility system.
For Prus I, the first written mention comes in 1389 when the two respective princes' families were officially proclaimed as a clan alongside the Turzyna. Like the Turzyna, the Prus I also prominently featured a curvatura on their coat of arms. The Turzyna quickly disappeared from record, leading to Ćwikła to conclude they were likely absorbed into the Prus I. Two early Prus I proclamations were the Waga and Wiskała, with Wiskała being a corruption of the old-Prussian word viskalla, "moss", while Waga is a Jatvingian personal name. A third proclamation includes the Słubice, who were also claimed by Prus II.
By the 15th century the family quickly fragmented, with Prus II being declared in 1405, and Prus III in 1413. At their peak the combined Prus families owned 5.7% of noble landed holdings in Mazovia.
Blazon The Prus blazon is:
The Prus coat of arms prominently features a one-and-a-half cross, a distinctly old-Prussian symbol. By the time of the old-Prussian uprisings, many of the old-Prussians had become Christian. The one-and-a-half cross was used by Christian old-Prussians to distinguish themselves from pagan old-Prussians.
At one point the arms also included a curvatura, another distinctly old-Prussian symbol that was later misinterpreted by the family in the late medieval period as the crozier of St Stanislaus, which the family tried to claim as an ancestor, even though the old Prussian immigration postdates him. The curvatura is a depiction of a kriwula, a staff of religious authority among the pagan old-Prussians and primarily associated with the Turzyna.
Notable bearers Notable bearers of this coat of arms have included:
Bolesław Prus (Aleksander Głowacki) Eligiusz Niewiadomski Waclaw Szybalski Stanislaw Klicki
External links Prus Coat of Arms and bearers
See also Heraldry List of Polish nobility coats of arms
Sources Dynastic Genealogy Ornatowski.com Wittyg, Wiktor: Nieznana szlachta polska i jej herby
References