AgnUs Dei
The often used symbol of two knights riding on one horse was not used in England. Instead the seal of successive Masters of the Knights Templar in England - for example, Richard of Hastings (1160-85), Aymeric (1200 onwards), Robert of Sandford (1241) and William de la More (1304) - all showed the Agnus Dei (Latin for the Lamb of God) - Jesus Christ. This also echoed the belief that Jesus came to Britain as a young boy with his 'uncle', Joseph of Arimathea - as indicated very much later (1804) in William Blake's well-known and well-loved hymn: "Jerusalem":
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!
In heraldry the Agnus Dei is usually blazoned (explained and described) as: "a lamb passant proper, with a halo or charged with a cross gules the dexter forelimb reflexed over a cross staff from which a pennon argent a cross gules (Saint George) is flotant".
The seal depicted on each side of our Aymeric Memorial Medal is derived from one of the Templar seals in the British Museum which displays the Agnus Dei on the front, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the reverse:
In properties associated with the Templars there are often depictions of an Agnus Dei
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