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Craywick (Municipality, Nord, France)

Flag of Craywick, two versions - Images by Olivier Touzeau, 21 November 2020

Presentation of Craywick
Flag of Craywick

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Presentation of Craywick

The municipality of Craywick (676 inhabitants in 2018; 773 ha) is located south-east of Gravelines.

Ivan Sache, 15 November 2020

Flag of Craywick

The flag used in the village of Craywick (photo) is white with the municipal coat of arms, "Gules, an escarbuncle pommy and flory or the branch in pale ending in a crozier or a bordure compony argent and sable". The flag used on the seafront of Malo-les-Bains (photo) has the name of the municipality added beneath the shield.
The arms were assigned by Th. Leuridan (Armorial des communes du département du Nord, 1909) as the arms of the St. Bertinus abbey in Saint-Omer, which perceived the tithe in Craywick until the French Revolution. The arms of the abbey are given without the bordure in the Armorial Général (image).

The arms of the St. Bertinus abbey are shown on the manuscript of the Chronicon Sancti Bertini / Chronicon Sithiense, composed of 143 parchment folios, completed in 1437 by Friar Jacques Annesart, who signed "Hunc Librum scripsit frater Jacobus Anesart monachus Sancti Bertini Anno Domini MCCCCXXXVII" (Latin, This book was written by Friar Jacques Annesart, monk at St. Bertin, AD 1437. The manuscript is a copy of the original Yperius Chronicle, composed 32 years earlier by Jean le Long d'Ypres (Yperius).
The miniature featured on folio 9v.-10 represents abbot Jean d'Ypres and the monks praying in front of the Virgin holding Baby Jesus and surrounded by Sts. Peter and Paul. The arms of the abbey are painted beneath the scene as "Gules an escarbuncle pommety and fleurdelisé or except the middle branch ending by a crozier or charged in the center with a cog wheel argent. A bordure compony argent and sable."
[CAPSO Digital Library]

The arms of the abbey ware seldomly used on seals. Most seals rather portray St. Bertinus holding an abbot's crozier.
As an exception, the counter-seal of the privy seal used in 1707 features the arms inscribed in a disc, with the bordure compony, ensigned by another crozier.
The seal of the Provostship of Arques, used several times between 1663 and 1681, features two shields side by side, dexter, the arms of the St. Bertinus abbey, surmounted by a miter and a crozier, sinister, the arms of the county of Arques.
The seal of the court of justice of the abbey, as used in 1684, features the arms of the abbey surmounted by the crozier. Quite small and without inscription, the seal might have been difficult to identify, which probably prompted the monks to design a better one, used in 1710; that seal is charged in the center with the arms of the abbey, surmounted by the miter and the crozier, surrounded dexter by the arms of the county of Arques and sinister by the arms of the provosthip of Poperinghes. A seal similar to the first seal of the court, but bigger in size, was used in 1639 by the administrators of the abbey's temporal.
[A. Hermand & L. Deschamps de Pas Histoire sigillaire de la ville de Saint-Omer. 1860]

The arms of the abbey are given without the bordure in the Armorial Général (image).

Olivier Touzeau & Ivan Sache, 1 May 2021