Attributed coat of arms of Gaius Julius Caesar

Alexander © September ANNO DOMINI 2011

       Centuries after the fall of Rome as a Western European power, it was resurrected by Pope Leo II when he conferred unto Charles I the Great, King of the Franks the title of Imperator Romanorum,
or Emperor of the Romans. The symbol of these emperors became, after the prevalence of heraldry in European culture, Or an eagle displayed sable, which was borne by the emperors separately from the personal arms as a mark of their highest seat. By as late as 1401, the imperial coat of arms was altered, replacing the eagle with one of two heads, which was from then on occasionally found haloed. Beginning in 1437 the personal arms of the emperor, which were displayed previously in their own right, began to appear on an inescutcheon on the breast of the imperial eagle.
       So then, it was assumed the heraldic achievement used by the Emperors of the Romans as a mark of their rank and title was also the coat of arms of Gaius Julius Caesar, the man who laid the foundations of the first Roman Empire and whose heir became the first Augustus of Rome.
       The coat of arms are borne upon the breast of another black two-headed eagle, the heads haloed each by a nimbus, symbolic of the unique and curious position Julius Caesar holds within the Holy Roman Catholic Church. For it is by him which, by consolidating all power and establishing precedent which would one day lead to Constantine the Great declaring the Christian faith valid, inadvertently created the earliest foundations from which could be built the Church.