Coat of arms of Connacht

Coat of arms of Connacht
Versions
The banner of arms, which serves as provincial flag
Armiger	Connacht
Shield	Party Per Pale Argent and Azure, in the first an eagle dimidiated and displayed Sable in the second issuant from the partition an arm embowed and vested, the hand holding a sword erect, all Argent

The coat of arms of Connacht displays a vertically dimidiated black eagle and armed hand. The arms are recorded as such on a map of Galway dated 1651,^[1] now in the library of Trinity College Dublin. These arms approximate rather closely to those of the Schottenkloster, or Gaelic monastery, founded in Regensburg, Bavaria in the 11th century.^[2]

The arms of Connacht is blazoned

Party Per Pale Argent and Azure, in the first an eagle dimidiated and displayed Sable in the second issuant from the partition an arm embowed and vested, the hand holding a sword erect, all Argent

These are believed to have been adopted from the arms of the medieval Schottenkloster (Gaelic monastery) in Regensburg, Germany. These arms, which date from at least the 14th century, combined the arms of the Holy Roman Emperor (from whom the abbey received protection) dimidiated with a symbol that may be linked with the crest of the O'Brien dynasty arms (an 11th-century O'Brien is listed as the "fundator" of the abbey). The arms may have been granted to Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, King of Connacht and the last High King of Ireland before the Norman invasion, by the abbey as a gift to return his patronage. The arms were given as the "old tyme arms" of Ireland by the Athlone Pursuivant, Edward Fletcher, c. 1575 and, with slight change of tinctures, became the arms of Connacht in the seventeenth century.^[3]