The Zamoyski Coat-of-Arms – a Testimony of the Genealogical Memory of the Family

Abstract

The paper analyses the successive Zamoyski coat-of-arms. It mainly functioned in the cultural area of Zamość – the family town of the Zamoyskis. The seventeenth century coat-ofarms with a four-field shield: the Jan Zamoyski coat-of-arms, the chancellor and great crown hetman from the chapel of the Transfiguration in the Zamość cathedral; the Tomasz Zamoyski coat-of-arms cartouche, son of Jan, the second heir in tail over the middle staircase arcade in the Zamość ratusz (the original is in the Museum Arsenal in Zamość); the colourful coat-ofarms of Tomasz from the pommel of the sceptre of Zamość Akademia of ca. 1619 (the deposit in the Zamość Museum); the coat-of-arms on the elevation of the building at the Great Square in Zamość, called Wilczkowska, that belonged to Stanisław Koniecpolski, son of Joanna Barbara nee Zamoyska, Tomasz’s grandchild. The coat-of-arms of Jan Zamoyski’s niece, Jadwiga nee Włodkowie Firlej from the tombstone placed in the Franciscan church in Krosno.

An attempt is made to interpret the five-filed Jan Zamoyski coat-of-arms, the third entailer, called Sobiepan, with a fairly untypical structure of family coat-of-arms cast in 1662. It is placed on one of the largest bells in Poland, named “Jan” after its founder and hanged in belfry at the Zamość Cathedral.

The eighteenth-century two-field coat-of-arms have been presented (a set of silver candlesticks, the Sacral Museum in Zamość, an antique book published by the printing press of Zamość Academy on the occasion of Stanisław Potocki’s wedding with Helena Zamoyska, daughter of the fourth entailer – the Zamość Museum, the facade of St. Nepomucen baroque church on water in Zwierzyniec founded by Tomasz Antoni Zamoyski, the fourth entailer and his wife Teresa nee Michowska).