Although Phrygian caps did not originally function as liberty caps, they came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty first in the
American Revolution and then in the
French Revolution,[2] particularly as a symbol of
jacobinism (in which context it has been also called a jacobin cap). The original cap of liberty was the Roman pileus, the felt cap of emancipated slaves of ancient Rome, which was an attribute of
Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. In the 16th century, the Roman iconography of liberty was revived in emblem books and numismatic handbooks where the figure of Libertas is usually depicted with a pileus.[3] The most extensive use of headgear as a symbol of freedom in the first two centuries after the revival of the Roman iconography was made in the Netherlands, where the cap of liberty was adopted in the form of a contemporary hat.[4] In the 18th century, the traditional liberty cap was widely used in English prints, and from 1789 also in French prints; by the early 1790s, it was regularly used in the Phrygian form.
It is used in the coat of arms of certain republics or of republican state institutions in the place where otherwise a crown would be used (in the heraldry of monarchies). It thus came to be identified as a symbol of republican government. A number of national personifications, in particular France's
Marianne, are commonly depicted wearing the Phrygian cap. Scientists pointed to the cultural and historical relationship of the Phrygian cap with the
kurkhars—the national female headdress of the
Ingush people.[5]
What came to be labelled as the Phrygian cap was originally used by several Iranian peoples, including the
Scythians, the
Medes, and the
Persians. From the reports of the ancient Greeks, it appears that the Iranian variant also was a soft headdress and called a tiara. The Greeks identified one variant with their eastern neighbors and labeled it the "Phrygian cap", although it was actually worn by nearly all Iranian tribes, from the
Cappadocians (
Old PersianKatpatuka) in the west to the
Sakas (OPers. Sakā) in the northeast. This and other variants can be observed in the reliefs at Persepolis. All seem to have been made of soft material with long flaps over the ears and the neck, but the form of the top varies. The famous "upright (orthē) tiara" was worn by the king. Members of the Median upper class wore high, crested tiaras.[6]
In the early Hellenistic world
By the 4th century BC (early
Hellenistic period), the Phrygian cap was associated with
PhrygianAttis, the consort of
Cybele, the cult of which had by then become graecified. At around the same time, the cap appears in depictions of the legendary king
Midas and other Phrygians in Greek
vase-paintings and sculpture.[7] Such images predate the earliest surviving literary references to the cap.[citation needed]
By extension, the Phrygian cap also came to be applied to several other non-Greek-speaking peoples ("
barbarians" in the classical sense). Most notable of these extended senses of "Phrygian" were the
Trojans and other western
Anatolian peoples, who in Greek perception were synonymous with the Phrygians, and whose heroes
Paris,
Aeneas, and
Ganymede were all regularly depicted with a Phrygian cap. Other Greek earthenware of antiquity also depict
Amazons and so-called "Scythian" archers with Phrygian caps. Although these are military depictions, the headgear is distinguished from "
Phrygian helmets" by long ear flaps, and the figures are also identified as "barbarians" by their trousers. The headgear also appears in 2nd-century BC
BoeotianTanagra figurines of an effeminate
Eros, and in various 1st-century BC statuary of the
Commagene, in eastern Anatolia. Greek representations of
Thracians also regularly appear with Phrygian caps, most notably
Bendis, the Thracian goddess of the Moon and the hunt, and
Orpheus, a legendary Thracian poet and musician.[citation needed]
While the Phrygian cap was of wool or soft leather, in pre-Hellenistic times the Greeks had already developed a military helmet that had a similarly characteristic flipped-over tip. These so-called "
Phrygian helmets" (named in modern times after the cap) were usually of bronze and in prominent use in Thrace, Dacia, Magna Graecia, and the rest of the Hellenistic world from the 5th century BC up to Roman times. Due to their superficial similarity, the cap and helmet are often difficult to distinguish in Greek art (especially in
black-figure or
red-figure earthenware) unless the headgear is identified as a soft flexible cap by long earflaps or a long neck flap. Also confusingly similar are the depictions of the helmets used by cavalry and light infantry (cf.Peltasts of Thrace and
Paeonia), whose headgear – aside from the traditional alopekis caps of fox skin – also included stiff leather helmets in imitation of the bronze ones.[citation needed]
In the Roman world
The Greek concept passed to the Romans in its extended sense, and thus encompassed not only to Phrygians or Trojans (which the Romans also generally associated with the term "Phrygian"), but also the other near-neighbours of the Greeks. On
Trajan's Column, which commemorated
Trajan's epic wars with the
Dacians (101–102 and 105–106 AD), the Phrygian cap adorns the heads of Dacian warriors. The prisoner, accompanying Trajan in the monumental, three meter tall statue of Trajan in the ancient city of
Laodicea, is wearing a Phrygian cap. Parthians appear with Phrygian caps in the 2nd-century
Arch of Septimius Severus, which commemorates Roman victories over the
Parthian Empire. Likewise with Phrygians caps, but for
Gauls, appear in 2nd-century friezes built into the 4th-century
Arch of Constantine.[citation needed]
The Phrygian cap reappears in figures related to the first to fourth century religion of
Mithraism. This
astrology-centric
Roman mystery cult (
cultus) projected itself with
pseudo-Oriental trappings (known as perserie in scholarship) in order to distinguish itself from both traditional Roman religion and from the other mystery cults. In the artwork of the cult (e.g. in the so-called "
tauroctony"
cult images), the figures of the god Mithras as well as those of his helpers
Cautes and Cautopates are routinely depicted with a Phrygian cap. The function of the Phrygian cap in the cult are unknown, but it is conventionally identified as an accessory of its perserie.[citation needed]
Paris of Troy wearing a Phrygian cap. Marble, Roman artwork from the
Hadrianic period (117–138 AD).
The "
three wise men" with Phrygian caps to identify them as "orientals". 6th-century, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy.
Roman Imperial Attis, the consort of Phrygian goddess
Cybele wearing a Phrygian cap and performing a cult dance.
As a symbol of liberty
From Phrygian to liberty cap
In late
Republican Rome, a soft felt cap called the pileus served as a symbol of freemen (i.e. non-slaves) and was symbolically given to slaves upon
manumission, thereby granting them not only their personal liberty, but also libertas – freedom as citizens, with the right to vote (if male). Following the
assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE,
Brutus and his co-conspirators instrumentalized this symbolism of the pileus to signify the end of Caesar's
dictatorship and a return to the (Roman) republican system.[8]
These Roman associations of the pileus with liberty and
republicanism were carried forward to the 18th century, until when the pileus was confused with the Phrygian cap, then becoming a symbol of those values in the wake of Medieval Italian uses of the Phrygian cap, most notably in
Venice.[9]
In Venice, the Phrygian cap was used by the
Doge instead of a crown as a symbol of Republican liberty,from the Middle Ages until 1797. The symbol of Libertas as a female figure holding the Phrygian cap upon a spear appeared in the 1500’s in the Apotheosis of Venice, a major painting by Paolo Veronese in the Ducal palace, iconography that would later be reused in French and American art and coinage.
In 1675, the anti-tax and anti-nobility
Stamp-Paper revolt erupted in
Brittany and north-western France, where it became known as the bonnets rouges uprising after the blue or red caps worn by the insurgents. Although the insurgents are not known to have preferred any particular style of cap, the name and color stuck as a symbol of revolt against the nobility and establishment.
Robespierre would later object to the color, but was ignored.
The use of a Phrygian-style cap as a symbol of
revolutionary France is first documented in May 1790, at a festival in
Troyes adorning a statue representing the nation, and at
Lyon, on a lance carried by the goddess
Libertas.[11] To this day the national allegory of France,
Marianne, is shown wearing a red Phrygian cap.[12]
By wearing the bonnet rouge and sans-culottes ("without silk breeches"), the Parisian working class made their revolutionary ardor and plebeian solidarity immediately recognizable. By mid-1791, these mocking fashion statements included the bonnet rouge as Parisian hairstyle, proclaimed by the Marquis de Villette (12 July 1791) as "the civic crown of the free man and French regeneration." On 15 July 1792, seeking to suppress the frivolity,
François Christophe Kellermann, 1st Duc de Valmy, published an essay in which the Duke sought to establish the bonnet rouge as a sacred symbol that could only be worn by those with merit. The symbolic hairstyle became a rallying point and a way to mock the elaborate wigs of the aristocrats and the red caps of the bishops. On 6 November 1793, the
Paris city council declared it the official hairstyle of all its members.
The bonnet rouge on a spear was proposed as a component of the national seal on 22 September 1792 during the third session of the
National Convention. Following a suggestion by Gaan Coulon, the Convention decreed that convicts would not be permitted to wear the red cap, as it was consecrated as the badge of citizenship and freedom. In 1792, when
Louis XVI was induced to sign a constitution, popular prints of the king were doctored to show him wearing the bonnet rouge.[13] The bust of
Voltaire was crowned with the red bonnet of liberty after a performance of his Brutus at the
Comédie-Française in March 1792.
During the period of the
Reign of Terror (September 1793 – July 1794), the cap was adopted defensively even by those who might be denounced as moderates or aristocrats and were especially keen to advertise their adherence to the new regime. The caps were often knitted by women known as tricoteuses, who sat beside the
guillotine during public executions in Paris and supposedly continued knitting in between executions.[14][failed verification] The spire of
Strasbourg Cathedral was crowned with a bonnet rouge in order to prevent it from being torn down in 1794.
The symbols resurfaced again during the
July Revolution of 1830, after which they were reinstated by the liberal
July Monarchy of
Louis Philippe I, and the revolutionary symbols—anthem, holiday, and bonnet rouge—became "constituent parts of a national heritage consecrated by the state and embraced by the public."[15]
In modern France
The republican associations with the bonnet rouge were adopted as the
name and emblem of a French satirical republican and anarchist periodical published between 1913 and 1922 by
Miguel Almereyda that targeted the
Action française, a royalist, counter-revolutionary movement on the extreme right.
The anti-tax associations with the bonnet rouge were revived in October 2013, when a French tax-protest movement called the Bonnets Rouges used the red revolution-era Phrygian cap as a protest symbol. By means of large demonstrations and direct action, which included the destruction of many highway tax portals, the movement successfully forced the French government to rescind the tax.
In Revolutionary America
In the years just prior to the
Revolutionary War, Americans copied or emulated some of those prints in an attempt to visually defend their "
rights as Englishmen".[16] Later, the symbol of republicanism and anti-monarchical sentiment appeared in the United States as the headgear of
Columbia,[17] who in turn was visualized as a goddess-like female national personification of the United States and of
Liberty herself. The cap reappears in association with Columbia in the early years of the republic, for example, on the obverse of the 1785 Immune Columbia pattern coin, which shows the goddess with a helmet seated on a globe holding in a right hand a furled U.S. flag topped by the liberty cap.[17]
Starting in 1793, U.S. coinage frequently showed Columbia/Liberty wearing the cap. The anti-federalist movement likewise instrumentalized the figure, as in a cartoon from 1796 in which Columbia is overwhelmed by a huge American eagle holding a
Liberty Pole under its wings.[17] The cap's last appearance on circulating coinage was the
Walking Liberty Half Dollar, which was minted through 1947 (and reused on the current
bullionAmerican Silver Eagle).
In 1854, when sculptor
Thomas Crawford was preparing models for sculpture for the
United States Capitol, then-Secretary of War
Jefferson Davis insisted that a Phrygian cap not be included on a Statue of Freedom, on the grounds that "American liberty is original and not the liberty of the freed slave". The cap was not included in the final bronze version that is now in the building.[20]
In the United Kingdom
In the 18th century, the cap was often used in English political prints as an attribute of
Liberty.[16] In Blackburn, England, on 5 July 1819, female reformers such as
Alice Kitchen attended their first reform meeting and presented the chair John Knight with a "most beautiful Cap of Liberty, made of scarlet silk or satin, lined with green, with a serpentined gold lace, terminating with a rich gold tassel.[21]
The cap had also been displayed on certain Mexican coins (most notably the old 8-
reales coin) through the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. Today, it is featured on the
coats of arms or
national flags of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Paraguay.
The Phrygian cap in Latin American and Haitian coats of arms and flags
The
coat of arms of Argentina includes a Phrygian cap atop a
pike being held by two clasping hands, as a symbol of national unity and the willingness to fight for freedom.
In the
Byzantine Empire, Phrygia lay in
Anatolia to the east of
Constantinople, however, in this late 6th-century mosaic from the
Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo,
Ravenna, Italy, which was erected by the Ostrogothic king
Theodoric the Great as his palace chapel, during the first quarter of the 6th century (as attested to in the Liber Pontificalis). This Arian church was originally dedicated in 504 AD to "Christ the Redeemer"(which was part of the Eastern Empire at that time), the
Three Magi wear Phrygian caps as their
Getic forefathers did, in order to identify them as generic "
Zoroastrians".
The god
Mithras being born from the rock, naked but for the Phrygian cap on his head (Marble, 180-192 AD. From the area of S. Stefano Rotondo,
Rome).
Allegory of the Spanish Republic wearing the Phrygian cap, 1873
The
Seal of Iowa showing a red liberty cap at the top of the soldier's flagstaff. The 1847 written description did not specify that the soldier has to wear the cap; thus he is commonly depicted with a
Civil War-era cavalry hat.
The
Seal of Hawaii showing goddess Liberty wears a red liberty cap.
Liberty cap – a species of fungus in the family Hymenogastraceae, native to Europe the cap of which bears a close resemblance to the Phrygian cap and from which it takes its name.
^Lynn E. Roller, "The Legend of Midas", Classical Antiquity,2.2 (October 1983:299–313) p. 305.
^Cf. Appian, Civil Wars 2:119: "The murderers wished to make a speech in the Senate, but as nobody remained there they wrapped their togas around their left arms to serve as shields, and, with swords still reeking with blood, ran, crying out that they had slain a king and tyrant. One of them bore a cap on the end of a spear as a symbol of freedom, and exhorted the people to restore the government of their fathers and recall the memory of the elder Brutus and of those who took the oath together against ancient kings."
^Korshak, Yvonne (1987), "The Liberty Cap as a Revolutionary Symbol in America and France", Smithsonian Studies in American Art, 1 (2): 52–69,
doi:
10.1086/424051.
^Albert Mathiez, Les Origines des cultures révolutionnaires, 1789–1792 (Paris 1904:34).
^Richard Wrigley, "Transformations of a revolutionary emblem: The Liberty Cap in the French Revolution, French History11(2) 1997:131–169.
^Jennifer Harris, "The Red Cap of Liberty: A Study of Dress Worn by French Revolutionary Partisans 1789-94" Eighteenth-Century Studies14.3 (Spring 1981:283–312), fig. 1. Most of the details that follow are drawn from here.
^Harden, J. David (1995), "Liberty caps and liberty trees", Past and Present, 146 (1): 66–102,
doi:
10.1093/past/146.1.66.
^Philip G. Nord (1995). The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France. President & Fellows of Harvard College.
^
abcMcClung Fleming, E. (1968), "Symbols of the United States: From Indian Queen to Uncle Sam", Frontiers of American Culture, Purdue Research Foundation, pp. 1–25, at pp. 12, 15–16.
^"Seal of Idaho". State Symbols USA. 12 September 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
Although Phrygian caps did not originally function as liberty caps, they came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty first in the
American Revolution and then in the
French Revolution,[2] particularly as a symbol of
jacobinism (in which context it has been also called a jacobin cap). The original cap of liberty was the Roman pileus, the felt cap of emancipated slaves of ancient Rome, which was an attribute of
Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. In the 16th century, the Roman iconography of liberty was revived in emblem books and numismatic handbooks where the figure of Libertas is usually depicted with a pileus.[3] The most extensive use of headgear as a symbol of freedom in the first two centuries after the revival of the Roman iconography was made in the Netherlands, where the cap of liberty was adopted in the form of a contemporary hat.[4] In the 18th century, the traditional liberty cap was widely used in English prints, and from 1789 also in French prints; by the early 1790s, it was regularly used in the Phrygian form.
It is used in the coat of arms of certain republics or of republican state institutions in the place where otherwise a crown would be used (in the heraldry of monarchies). It thus came to be identified as a symbol of republican government. A number of national personifications, in particular France's
Marianne, are commonly depicted wearing the Phrygian cap. Scientists pointed to the cultural and historical relationship of the Phrygian cap with the
kurkhars—the national female headdress of the
Ingush people.[5]
What came to be labelled as the Phrygian cap was originally used by several Iranian peoples, including the
Scythians, the
Medes, and the
Persians. From the reports of the ancient Greeks, it appears that the Iranian variant also was a soft headdress and called a tiara. The Greeks identified one variant with their eastern neighbors and labeled it the "Phrygian cap", although it was actually worn by nearly all Iranian tribes, from the
Cappadocians (
Old PersianKatpatuka) in the west to the
Sakas (OPers. Sakā) in the northeast. This and other variants can be observed in the reliefs at Persepolis. All seem to have been made of soft material with long flaps over the ears and the neck, but the form of the top varies. The famous "upright (orthē) tiara" was worn by the king. Members of the Median upper class wore high, crested tiaras.[6]
In the early Hellenistic world
By the 4th century BC (early
Hellenistic period), the Phrygian cap was associated with
PhrygianAttis, the consort of
Cybele, the cult of which had by then become graecified. At around the same time, the cap appears in depictions of the legendary king
Midas and other Phrygians in Greek
vase-paintings and sculpture.[7] Such images predate the earliest surviving literary references to the cap.[citation needed]
By extension, the Phrygian cap also came to be applied to several other non-Greek-speaking peoples ("
barbarians" in the classical sense). Most notable of these extended senses of "Phrygian" were the
Trojans and other western
Anatolian peoples, who in Greek perception were synonymous with the Phrygians, and whose heroes
Paris,
Aeneas, and
Ganymede were all regularly depicted with a Phrygian cap. Other Greek earthenware of antiquity also depict
Amazons and so-called "Scythian" archers with Phrygian caps. Although these are military depictions, the headgear is distinguished from "
Phrygian helmets" by long ear flaps, and the figures are also identified as "barbarians" by their trousers. The headgear also appears in 2nd-century BC
BoeotianTanagra figurines of an effeminate
Eros, and in various 1st-century BC statuary of the
Commagene, in eastern Anatolia. Greek representations of
Thracians also regularly appear with Phrygian caps, most notably
Bendis, the Thracian goddess of the Moon and the hunt, and
Orpheus, a legendary Thracian poet and musician.[citation needed]
While the Phrygian cap was of wool or soft leather, in pre-Hellenistic times the Greeks had already developed a military helmet that had a similarly characteristic flipped-over tip. These so-called "
Phrygian helmets" (named in modern times after the cap) were usually of bronze and in prominent use in Thrace, Dacia, Magna Graecia, and the rest of the Hellenistic world from the 5th century BC up to Roman times. Due to their superficial similarity, the cap and helmet are often difficult to distinguish in Greek art (especially in
black-figure or
red-figure earthenware) unless the headgear is identified as a soft flexible cap by long earflaps or a long neck flap. Also confusingly similar are the depictions of the helmets used by cavalry and light infantry (cf.Peltasts of Thrace and
Paeonia), whose headgear – aside from the traditional alopekis caps of fox skin – also included stiff leather helmets in imitation of the bronze ones.[citation needed]
In the Roman world
The Greek concept passed to the Romans in its extended sense, and thus encompassed not only to Phrygians or Trojans (which the Romans also generally associated with the term "Phrygian"), but also the other near-neighbours of the Greeks. On
Trajan's Column, which commemorated
Trajan's epic wars with the
Dacians (101–102 and 105–106 AD), the Phrygian cap adorns the heads of Dacian warriors. The prisoner, accompanying Trajan in the monumental, three meter tall statue of Trajan in the ancient city of
Laodicea, is wearing a Phrygian cap. Parthians appear with Phrygian caps in the 2nd-century
Arch of Septimius Severus, which commemorates Roman victories over the
Parthian Empire. Likewise with Phrygians caps, but for
Gauls, appear in 2nd-century friezes built into the 4th-century
Arch of Constantine.[citation needed]
The Phrygian cap reappears in figures related to the first to fourth century religion of
Mithraism. This
astrology-centric
Roman mystery cult (
cultus) projected itself with
pseudo-Oriental trappings (known as perserie in scholarship) in order to distinguish itself from both traditional Roman religion and from the other mystery cults. In the artwork of the cult (e.g. in the so-called "
tauroctony"
cult images), the figures of the god Mithras as well as those of his helpers
Cautes and Cautopates are routinely depicted with a Phrygian cap. The function of the Phrygian cap in the cult are unknown, but it is conventionally identified as an accessory of its perserie.[citation needed]
Paris of Troy wearing a Phrygian cap. Marble, Roman artwork from the
Hadrianic period (117–138 AD).
The "
three wise men" with Phrygian caps to identify them as "orientals". 6th-century, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy.
Roman Imperial Attis, the consort of Phrygian goddess
Cybele wearing a Phrygian cap and performing a cult dance.
As a symbol of liberty
From Phrygian to liberty cap
In late
Republican Rome, a soft felt cap called the pileus served as a symbol of freemen (i.e. non-slaves) and was symbolically given to slaves upon
manumission, thereby granting them not only their personal liberty, but also libertas – freedom as citizens, with the right to vote (if male). Following the
assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE,
Brutus and his co-conspirators instrumentalized this symbolism of the pileus to signify the end of Caesar's
dictatorship and a return to the (Roman) republican system.[8]
These Roman associations of the pileus with liberty and
republicanism were carried forward to the 18th century, until when the pileus was confused with the Phrygian cap, then becoming a symbol of those values in the wake of Medieval Italian uses of the Phrygian cap, most notably in
Venice.[9]
In Venice, the Phrygian cap was used by the
Doge instead of a crown as a symbol of Republican liberty,from the Middle Ages until 1797. The symbol of Libertas as a female figure holding the Phrygian cap upon a spear appeared in the 1500’s in the Apotheosis of Venice, a major painting by Paolo Veronese in the Ducal palace, iconography that would later be reused in French and American art and coinage.
In 1675, the anti-tax and anti-nobility
Stamp-Paper revolt erupted in
Brittany and north-western France, where it became known as the bonnets rouges uprising after the blue or red caps worn by the insurgents. Although the insurgents are not known to have preferred any particular style of cap, the name and color stuck as a symbol of revolt against the nobility and establishment.
Robespierre would later object to the color, but was ignored.
The use of a Phrygian-style cap as a symbol of
revolutionary France is first documented in May 1790, at a festival in
Troyes adorning a statue representing the nation, and at
Lyon, on a lance carried by the goddess
Libertas.[11] To this day the national allegory of France,
Marianne, is shown wearing a red Phrygian cap.[12]
By wearing the bonnet rouge and sans-culottes ("without silk breeches"), the Parisian working class made their revolutionary ardor and plebeian solidarity immediately recognizable. By mid-1791, these mocking fashion statements included the bonnet rouge as Parisian hairstyle, proclaimed by the Marquis de Villette (12 July 1791) as "the civic crown of the free man and French regeneration." On 15 July 1792, seeking to suppress the frivolity,
François Christophe Kellermann, 1st Duc de Valmy, published an essay in which the Duke sought to establish the bonnet rouge as a sacred symbol that could only be worn by those with merit. The symbolic hairstyle became a rallying point and a way to mock the elaborate wigs of the aristocrats and the red caps of the bishops. On 6 November 1793, the
Paris city council declared it the official hairstyle of all its members.
The bonnet rouge on a spear was proposed as a component of the national seal on 22 September 1792 during the third session of the
National Convention. Following a suggestion by Gaan Coulon, the Convention decreed that convicts would not be permitted to wear the red cap, as it was consecrated as the badge of citizenship and freedom. In 1792, when
Louis XVI was induced to sign a constitution, popular prints of the king were doctored to show him wearing the bonnet rouge.[13] The bust of
Voltaire was crowned with the red bonnet of liberty after a performance of his Brutus at the
Comédie-Française in March 1792.
During the period of the
Reign of Terror (September 1793 – July 1794), the cap was adopted defensively even by those who might be denounced as moderates or aristocrats and were especially keen to advertise their adherence to the new regime. The caps were often knitted by women known as tricoteuses, who sat beside the
guillotine during public executions in Paris and supposedly continued knitting in between executions.[14][failed verification] The spire of
Strasbourg Cathedral was crowned with a bonnet rouge in order to prevent it from being torn down in 1794.
The symbols resurfaced again during the
July Revolution of 1830, after which they were reinstated by the liberal
July Monarchy of
Louis Philippe I, and the revolutionary symbols—anthem, holiday, and bonnet rouge—became "constituent parts of a national heritage consecrated by the state and embraced by the public."[15]
In modern France
The republican associations with the bonnet rouge were adopted as the
name and emblem of a French satirical republican and anarchist periodical published between 1913 and 1922 by
Miguel Almereyda that targeted the
Action française, a royalist, counter-revolutionary movement on the extreme right.
The anti-tax associations with the bonnet rouge were revived in October 2013, when a French tax-protest movement called the Bonnets Rouges used the red revolution-era Phrygian cap as a protest symbol. By means of large demonstrations and direct action, which included the destruction of many highway tax portals, the movement successfully forced the French government to rescind the tax.
In Revolutionary America
In the years just prior to the
Revolutionary War, Americans copied or emulated some of those prints in an attempt to visually defend their "
rights as Englishmen".[16] Later, the symbol of republicanism and anti-monarchical sentiment appeared in the United States as the headgear of
Columbia,[17] who in turn was visualized as a goddess-like female national personification of the United States and of
Liberty herself. The cap reappears in association with Columbia in the early years of the republic, for example, on the obverse of the 1785 Immune Columbia pattern coin, which shows the goddess with a helmet seated on a globe holding in a right hand a furled U.S. flag topped by the liberty cap.[17]
Starting in 1793, U.S. coinage frequently showed Columbia/Liberty wearing the cap. The anti-federalist movement likewise instrumentalized the figure, as in a cartoon from 1796 in which Columbia is overwhelmed by a huge American eagle holding a
Liberty Pole under its wings.[17] The cap's last appearance on circulating coinage was the
Walking Liberty Half Dollar, which was minted through 1947 (and reused on the current
bullionAmerican Silver Eagle).
In 1854, when sculptor
Thomas Crawford was preparing models for sculpture for the
United States Capitol, then-Secretary of War
Jefferson Davis insisted that a Phrygian cap not be included on a Statue of Freedom, on the grounds that "American liberty is original and not the liberty of the freed slave". The cap was not included in the final bronze version that is now in the building.[20]
In the United Kingdom
In the 18th century, the cap was often used in English political prints as an attribute of
Liberty.[16] In Blackburn, England, on 5 July 1819, female reformers such as
Alice Kitchen attended their first reform meeting and presented the chair John Knight with a "most beautiful Cap of Liberty, made of scarlet silk or satin, lined with green, with a serpentined gold lace, terminating with a rich gold tassel.[21]
The cap had also been displayed on certain Mexican coins (most notably the old 8-
reales coin) through the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. Today, it is featured on the
coats of arms or
national flags of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Paraguay.
The Phrygian cap in Latin American and Haitian coats of arms and flags
The
coat of arms of Argentina includes a Phrygian cap atop a
pike being held by two clasping hands, as a symbol of national unity and the willingness to fight for freedom.
In the
Byzantine Empire, Phrygia lay in
Anatolia to the east of
Constantinople, however, in this late 6th-century mosaic from the
Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo,
Ravenna, Italy, which was erected by the Ostrogothic king
Theodoric the Great as his palace chapel, during the first quarter of the 6th century (as attested to in the Liber Pontificalis). This Arian church was originally dedicated in 504 AD to "Christ the Redeemer"(which was part of the Eastern Empire at that time), the
Three Magi wear Phrygian caps as their
Getic forefathers did, in order to identify them as generic "
Zoroastrians".
The god
Mithras being born from the rock, naked but for the Phrygian cap on his head (Marble, 180-192 AD. From the area of S. Stefano Rotondo,
Rome).
Allegory of the Spanish Republic wearing the Phrygian cap, 1873
The
Seal of Iowa showing a red liberty cap at the top of the soldier's flagstaff. The 1847 written description did not specify that the soldier has to wear the cap; thus he is commonly depicted with a
Civil War-era cavalry hat.
The
Seal of Hawaii showing goddess Liberty wears a red liberty cap.
Liberty cap – a species of fungus in the family Hymenogastraceae, native to Europe the cap of which bears a close resemblance to the Phrygian cap and from which it takes its name.
^Lynn E. Roller, "The Legend of Midas", Classical Antiquity,2.2 (October 1983:299–313) p. 305.
^Cf. Appian, Civil Wars 2:119: "The murderers wished to make a speech in the Senate, but as nobody remained there they wrapped their togas around their left arms to serve as shields, and, with swords still reeking with blood, ran, crying out that they had slain a king and tyrant. One of them bore a cap on the end of a spear as a symbol of freedom, and exhorted the people to restore the government of their fathers and recall the memory of the elder Brutus and of those who took the oath together against ancient kings."
^Korshak, Yvonne (1987), "The Liberty Cap as a Revolutionary Symbol in America and France", Smithsonian Studies in American Art, 1 (2): 52–69,
doi:
10.1086/424051.
^Albert Mathiez, Les Origines des cultures révolutionnaires, 1789–1792 (Paris 1904:34).
^Richard Wrigley, "Transformations of a revolutionary emblem: The Liberty Cap in the French Revolution, French History11(2) 1997:131–169.
^Jennifer Harris, "The Red Cap of Liberty: A Study of Dress Worn by French Revolutionary Partisans 1789-94" Eighteenth-Century Studies14.3 (Spring 1981:283–312), fig. 1. Most of the details that follow are drawn from here.
^Harden, J. David (1995), "Liberty caps and liberty trees", Past and Present, 146 (1): 66–102,
doi:
10.1093/past/146.1.66.
^Philip G. Nord (1995). The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France. President & Fellows of Harvard College.
^
abcMcClung Fleming, E. (1968), "Symbols of the United States: From Indian Queen to Uncle Sam", Frontiers of American Culture, Purdue Research Foundation, pp. 1–25, at pp. 12, 15–16.
^"Seal of Idaho". State Symbols USA. 12 September 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2020.