It is in Thionville, above the passage which connects the city center to the former castle of the Counts of Luxembourg, that this astonishing bas-relief presented below can be found. He shows us a castle, flanked by two curious X’s. Saltires, as they say in heraldry. Or the crosses of Saint Andrew, this apostle having been martyred in the Iis century AD, according to tradition, on a cross which had the shape of a capital X.
These symbols are not trivial. They have a story. Saint André is, with Saint George, the patron saint of the former Duchy of Burgundy. However, we know that on the death of the Bold, in Nancy, in 1477, part of his States will pass to the House of Habsburg, a powerful family which reigned, among other things, over Austria, part of Alsace , Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg, Franche-Comté, etc. At the end of the fifteenthth century, Thionville therefore comes under a State described, on old geographical maps, as the “Spanish Netherlands”.
These Spanish Netherlands do not forget where they come from and take the cross of Saint Andrew as their emblem. It is a saltire striped gules on a silver field. A cross in X, adorned with red “knots”, on a white background. Inaugurated during the reign of the Duke of Burgundy Philippe le Beau, this “Cross of Burgundy” remained the emblem of the House of Spain until 2014, when King Felipe VI decided to abandon it.
Its presence on a wall in Thionville reminds us of the turbulent history of the Moselle city. Luxembourgish, then Burgundian, then Spanish, then FrenchGerman, again annexed to Germany, become French again, the city is today at the heart of a Country of Three Borders which wants to be, in a way, the heart of Europe!
–
