In heraldry

Heraldry

Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...

, purpure is a tincture

Tincture (heraldry)

In heraldry, tinctures are the colours used to emblazon a coat of arms. These can be divided into several categories including light tinctures called metals, dark tinctures called colours, nonstandard colours called stains, furs, and "proper". A charge tinctured proper is coloured as it would be...

, more or less the equivalent of the colour "purple

Purple

Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue, and is classified as a secondary color as the colors are required to create the shade....

", and is one of the five main or most usually used colours (as opposed to metals). It may be portrayed in engraving

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

s by a series of parallel lines at a 45-degree angle running from upper right to lower left from the point of view of an observer, or else indicated by the abbreviation purp.

Purpure has existed since the earliest periods, for example in the purpure lion of the arms of León

Kingdom of León

The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León...

; at that time, it was painted in a greyer shade. However, it has never been as common as the other colours, and this has led to some controversy as to whether it should be counted among the five common colours. In French heraldry, the colour is usually excluded from the common colours as well as considered "ambiguous" (could be either colour or metal), and Finnish heraldry restricts its use to certain additaments.

There is at least one instance of it being blazoned as "Imperial Purple".http://cilialacorte.com/dictionary/Sperver.htm

Purpure is said to represent the following:

• Of jewels, the amethyst
  Amethyst
  Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz often used in jewelry. The name comes from the Ancient Greek ἀ a- and μέθυστος methustos , a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness; the ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst and made drinking vessels of it in the belief...
  
  
• Of heavenly bodies, Mercury
  Mercury (planet)
  Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...
  
  
  • (The planet Mercury is further associated with the element mercury or "quicksilver" in traditional alchemical/occultistic lore
    Classical planets in western alchemy
    Alchemy in the Western World and other locations where it was widely practiced was allied and intertwined with traditional Babylonian-Greek style astrology; in numerous ways they were built to complement each other in the search for hidden knowledge...
    
    )

External links

• Heraldica.org: Purpure, discussion based on Michel Pastoureau
  Michel Pastoureau
  Michel Pastoureau is a French specialist in medieval history, who was born in Paris on 17 June 1947. He studied at the École Nationale des Chartes, a college for prospective archivists and librarians...
  
  , Traité d'Héraldique.
• Red vs. Purple Lions