Do Russian Families Have a Coat of Arms

The Kotchoubey coat of arms

…in its Russian Royal form consists of a cerise heart fix with two golden crosses which are in the form of a cantankerous pattée or the St. George'south cross. The heart, of course, symbolises loyalty and the crosses are symbols of religion and both are common plenty motifs in the Poltava province.  This would suggest that the primary utilise of the middle in the Kotchoubey glaze of arms is linked to the family's origins and Poltava in the 17th century. Farther, the centre sits in a field of azure or heaven bluish. On the left side is a lion and the right side a cossack or Ukrainian (Malorussia) warrior which is a device taken straight from the coat of arms of the Zaporizhian Sich state and used today in the state emblem of Ukraine.

The coat of artillery above is described in Russian in the two pages at the outset of this article which and so goes on to summarise the origins of the Kotchoubey family.  It is a summary to exist taken with a a degree of skepticism as it was an exercise in self serving propaganda every bit are all family histories in the context of their past. The coat of arms in question was awarded by the Russian Purple College of Heraldry in the mid Petrine era in the years later the execution of Vassili Leontevitch Kotchoubey in 1708. The family'southward motto, "Elevor Ubi Consumer" is a reference to the execution of Vassili Leontivitch and means "I rise when destroyed." The family's origins had already been written and researched by Vassili Leontievitch as he had received the Gramota which officially recognised the nobility of the Kotchoubey family.

A likely posthumous portrait (institute on the front page of this website) of Vassili Leontievitch carries a glaze of arms that may have been used by him in the belatedly 17th century near likely after the honour of the original Russian Majestic Gramota. It carries the heart with two gold crosses as well as two gold crosses a top a one-half moon and star. Between them a pernatch which was the symbol of power of a Colonel of the Zaporozhian Sech.

Missing on the actual portrait is Vassili Leontievitch with a Judge Full general's baton or staff which was the traditional symbol of justice and it accompanied portraits of many Zaporzhian Estimate Generals.

Ane explanation suggests that the epitome of the crosses on top of the one-half moon and star symbolises the victory of Christianity over Islam. Subsequently all, Kutchuk Bey abandoned his muslim faith and was christened and took the name Andrei in the mid 17th century. Alas, the crosses and the half moon and star are traditional symbols of many Smooth-Lithuanian and Ukrainian family coat of arms as well as those of numerous villages and cities. In fact, on the floors of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, visitors can look at the metal work floor which incorporates a design of  four moons and four stars.

Metal floor panels of Saint Sophia of Kiev cathedral

Metropolitan Piotr Mohyla / Петро Симеонович Могила (1596-1647)  who came from a Moldovan boyar family and was a renowned theologian and Metropolitan of Kiev, had many of the familiar heraldric devices on his coat of arms including the one-half moon and star as well as the balderdash'due south head which would also be constitute on the Sturdza family unit crest.

While the ii crosses above the half moon and star were not used in the official Russian Imperial Coat of Arms of the Kotchoubey family, just they were  introduced back into the Coat of Arms in 1834 when Count Victor Pavlovitch was awarded a princely title past Emperor Nicholas I. Interestingly enough the mode of the crosses changes and they become simple crosses which suggests that these are stylistic choices and are non meant to reverberate any significant.

Kotchoubey Counts & Prince

Victor Pavlovitch Kotchoubey was made a count of the Russian Empire by Paul I in 1799 thus conferring the title on Victor Pavlovitch and his wife Countess then Princess Maria Vassilievna Kotchoubey (née Princess Vassiltchikov) / Княгиня Мария Васильевна Кочубей (урождённая княжна Васильчикова) (1779-1844) and their children. A year before his expiry, Victor Pavlovitch was  made a Prince in 1834 and thus the princely title was carried past his immediate family and all their descendants. the final of the Kotchoubey Princes passed away in the 1950s.

Bezborodko Coat of Arms (as counts and Princes)

The coat of arms adopted by Count Victor Pavlovitch was taken directly from his female parent Juliana Andreevna Kotchoubey (née Bezborodko / Ульяна Андреевна Кочубей (урожд. Безбородко) (1742—1777) and the Kotchoubey coat of arms was imposed on the central shield. The decision to adopt the Bezborodko coat of artillery was not only plumbing equipment as a tribute to his maternal line but information technology was probably in large office a recognition of the fact that his uncle H.S.H Prince Alexander Andreevitch Bezborodko / светлейший князь Александр Андреевич Безбородко (1747-1799) raised him from childhood and launched his diplomatic and government career.  The superimposed Kotchoubey coat of artillery dislodged the banners and the sword with the half moon motifs which appear on the Bezborodko coat of arms and these elements were then moved to the Cossack figure on the right side of the chief shield and the sword with two moons is then held aloft past the lion on the left.  The heraldic devices of the sword and two half moons that is denoted on the Bezborodko shield may come from either the Przegonia clan or the Ostroja association in Poland simply it is not clear how it is connected to the Bezborodko's.

Ostroja Coat of Artillery (modern version)

The origins of the family coat of arms (i.east the crimson heart and two crosses) are non entirely clear just they must certainly borrow from regimental, metropolis and family coats of artillery in the region. For case, Ivan Mazeppa's coat of arms carries a half moon and star equally does the coat of arms of Baturyn, the uppercase of the Hetmanate state and it is probable that the Kotchoubey coat of arms borrows heavily from the city's coat of arms.

On a tour with Natalia Rebrova, the director of the Baturyn Museum complex in Ukraine, she pointed to a number of recurring half moon and stars in utilize in diverse decorative forms. This was especially the case with the imagined interiors of the English Architect, Cameron's palace that he designed for the last Hetman Kyrylo Razumovsky in Baturyn and which was recently restored by the Ukrainian state. While there is no evidence that these elements were original to the interior, she explained to me that these elements are a common motif in Ukrainian heraldry and decoration and they represent the want to obtain the heavans.

Urban center of Baturyn (Tchernigov Province) from 1671

Glaze of Arms of Baturyn

Baturyn was not the only city to carry the heraldic device of a moon and a cross. Farther up norther in the Kaluga region exterior of Moscow, the ancient city of Borovsk was also awarded a heraldic shield in 1771 which carried the now familiar cherry heart and gilded cantankerous surrounded past a wreath. The date of this shield suggests it was awarded a hundred years after it was already in utilise past the Kotchoubey family unit and at that place are no known links between the family and the city. Over again, the symbolic role of the heart for loyalty and the cross for faith become the central guiding elements for the city's glaze of arms.

City of Borovsk (Kaluga Province) from 1771

Glaze of Arms of Borovsk

City of Glinsk (Poltava Province, Royal Russia) 1782

Already in modern day Ukraine, the appearance of the heart and the cross get more common in city and regional heraldry for case, in the Sumy Province where the Kotchoubeys lived for hundreds of years specially with the appointment of the city of Glukhov as the new capital letter of the Cossack State after the destruction of Baturyn in 1709 past the Russian army nether the command of Prince Alexander Menschikoff. These include the village of Kuzmin and Dikanka as well equally

Village of Kuzmin (Sumy Province, Ukraine)

Glaze of Arms of Kuzmin

the little village of Dubovichi, the latter 2 existence among the ancestral villages of the Kotchoubey family unit.  Dikanka was of course ane of the first of the Kotchoubey estates and remnants of the family's edifice endeavors remain including 2 churches and a formal triumphant arch which is featured on the village coat of arms. Dubovitchi was dwelling house to a now missing Miraculous Icon, ii churches of which 1 was the family's church where generations of the family were laid to rest in the crypt. Today, the ravages of the 20th century have destroyed both churches in this village and nothing remains just memorial plaques and a sunken indentation in the ground suggesting that a structure in one case stood on land that is now being over grown with copse.

Hamlet of Dikanka / Диканька  (Poltava Province, Ukraine)

Coat of artillery of Dikanka (Poltava Province)

Village of Dubovichi (Sumy Province, Ukraine)

Coat of artillery of Dubovichi (Sumy Province)

Finally and most importantly, the Province of Poltava in Ukraine has integrated elements of the Kotchoubey family Coat of Arms. On a provincial level the new the glaze of arms has elements of the Tsarist pre-revolutionry heraldic device for Poltava of the stars and the bow & pointer, while in the corners take been added the gold cross pattée on a blueish field used primarily by the Hetman Polubotok.  In another corner is the reddish heart, a now recognisable device which has come to correspond the family.

  Province of Poltava (Ukraine)

Coat of arms Poltava

The coat of arms of the region of Poltava uses the familiar motif of the heart, too but where as the red center is a Kotchoubey symbol, the  gold heart with two piercing crossed arrows, and a cross pattée is the coat of arms of Hetman Pavlo Polubotok. It is in fact, the elements of the Polubotok family unit which are most evident in the Poltava region's artillery.

Coat of Arms of Poltava Region (Poltava Province, Ukraine)

Glaze of Arms of Hetman Pavlo Polubotok (1660-1724)

While the use of the centre is constitute in a number of Tsarist metropolis coat of arms, it is also prevalent in a number of family unit coat of arms and these include two families that produced Hetmans; the Polubotok family and the Loboda family.  In addition, 1 other Malorussian/Ukrainan family has a cherry-red centre in the coat of arms and they are the Markevich family. The Markevitch'southward married into the Kotchoubey family in the 19th century and several family members were laid to residual in the Kotchoubey family catacomb in Dubovichi, located in the Sumy Province of modernistic twenty-four hour period Ukraine. Another noble Malorussian family with armed forces origins in Korsun in the 17th century are the Kostenetskiy / Костенецкий who besides accept a coat of arms that resembles that of the Kotchoubeys. Needless to saym members of both families intermarried among the local landed nobility in the 18th & 19th centuries. Towards the stop of the 17th century, the family move to the Chernigov region and settle near Konotop where among their illustrious members is a hero of the state of war of 1812, Full general Vassily Gregorovitch Kostenetskiy /Василий Григорьевич Костенецкий (1766—1831). It is perhaps then not a surprise that the regional ties produce a coat of arms (see below) which is an azure  blue field with an upside down red centre with three golden knight's crosses upon information technology and three silver arrows eminating upwards.  Finally, the Aksakov family which descended from a Scandanavian prince who settled in Novgorod in the 11th century also had a carmine heart in their family's glaze of artillery.  By the 19th century, the family had settled in Ufa.

Coat of Arms of the Aksakov Family (Novgorod-Ufa)

Coat of Arms of Hetman Gregory Loboda (-1596)

Coat of Arms of Hetman Loboda

Coat of Arms of the Markevitch/Markovitch family unit

Coat of Artillery of the Kostenitskiy (Костенецкие) family

Another coat of arms with a similar motif is that of the Perekrestov-Ossipov (Перекрестов-Осипов), a noble family unit  whose origins go back the the second half of the 17th century and stem from  military origins. The founder of the family was Ivan Ivanovitch Perekrestov, a colonel in  the Akhtyrsky Sloboda Cossack regiment ( Ахтырский слободской казачий полк) near nowadays day Kharkhiv. Their lands and the family settled around Kharkhiv, Poltava, Tchernigov and Kursk. Dissimilar the Kotchoubey heart, the Perekrestov-Ossipov heart is golden on a sky blue background.

Coat of Arms of the Perekrestov-Ossipov (Перекрестов-Осипов) family

The concluding inkling, however far fetched it is, tin be plant in the regimental arms of two cossack regiments that existed briefly in the 17th century. While the Irkliyiv regiment was created in 1648 and then folded into the Kropyvna regiment which itself was later split into ii regiments in 1658, they both carry elements of the Kotchoubey reddish center and in the example of the Kropyvna regiments the cantankerous and a nobleman's crown. However, the regimental arms may have been a more recent invention that stems from the 1771 artillery of the city of Kropyvna, the regimental authoritative center. Based on these regimental banners, could it be that the Kotchoubey centre was borrowed from the Kropyvna regiment /Кропивнянський полк which was somehow tied to Leonti Andreivitch Kotchoubey of whom little is known other than that he was a Buchukowski comrade of Hetamn Bogdan Khemlitski? It is only a wild conjecture for now.

Irkliyiv Regiment (1648) merged with the Kropyvna

Kropyvna Regiment (1649-1658) Cossack Hetmanate

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Source: https://kotchoubey.com/about-this-website/coat-of-arms-origins-and-meaning/

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