THE MUNICIPAL COAT OF ARMS
The pre-Christian coat of arms of San Ginesio was depicted at the church and, according to Riccomanni, it was dedicated to Giunone whose veneration was very diffuse in the Picen. With the conversion to Christianity the images of Saint Ginesio dressed in cloth were added to the church, with the same bas-relief iconography of the collegiate church (11th C.) and the cross like symbol of the Christian victory over the pagan one. Of the old coat of arms of San Ginesio are conserved three seals. In the first one the central area is circular and surrounded by a curved frieze – around it there’s the inscription "Sigillum Nostrum Vestrum Custodi Sante Genesi" - with a small starred cross inside the arcs and a very small lily in the pendentives . In the second seal it’s revealingly new the introduction of two keys crossed over the standard, symbol of the temporary power of the Holy See. The third seal, around which is the inscription "Ecclesiasticum Oppidum Sanctii Genesi", has centered the interest of the studious mainly. The part is made up of the present coat of arms circumscribed of an oval cornice adorned with four volutes. The ginesians continued using the seals until the end of the 15th Century when Pope Pio II, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, granted them the statutes and even the coat of arms of their own family, consisting of a white cross divided on a red bottom, as a prize for the fidelity to the church. With these iconographical characters is represented the municipal coat of arms that Saint Andrew takes in the hand in support of the ginesians attacked by Fermani in the historical confrontation of 1377 painted by Nicola de Siena (15th c.) and conserved in the civic museum. Allevi (1986), well-known ginesian historian, opposes to the second hypothesis according to which the present reduction of the Cross over the municipal coat of arms must be due to the heresy or to the excommunications given by the Holy House, with another one more probable about the old coat of arms of San Ginesio. It’s represented a great “Gamma” (g) capital letter, white (or silverplated), integrated in a shield that follows all the length of the superior side and that, in the left side, descends until the lower apex of the shield on red bottom. The election of the symbol G, taken from the reproduced one in a encrusted stone (the G represented part of a landmark and therefore it indicated the borders of the territory) as symbol of the capital of province from the first centuries of the late Middle Ages was preferred by the authorities to the same one of the figure of Saint Ginesio gowned. The use of the municipal Coat of arms, to instances of the mayor who had asked in 1543 for its recognition (in which the G was located towards the center) and the inscription in the Herald’s Book of the Moral Entities, was granted in 1951 by the President of the Council of the Ministers and in 1955 the use of a standard according to the present iconography. The present coat of arms includes, in fact, a crown in the vertex as crowning and to both sides two branches of laurel.
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