An exploration into colour symbolism as used by - National Centre ...

willingness to die for his faith. The Pope himself is always to be seen in white, and when the
new Pope is elected white smoke is sent up from the Vatican, which in our Western culture
raises connotations with purity and goodness (Anon Wikipedia 5/3/06).
As mentioned in the previous section, it was during the Crusades that the use of heraldic
colours (tinctures) first became popular. At first the leaders of the Crusades used a wide range
of tinctures, but gradually the impact of the associations made with one particular
combination began to stand out. The result was that early Christian emperors generally took
gold and blue as their colours, because these colours had come to be symbols of the power,
dignity and rank of whoever bore them. Their influential significance has since spread beyond
the bounds of Christianity and into everyday life, and can easily be seen even today (Brusatin
1991).
Although the Christian religion has many variants, they have all generally followed the lead
set by the Catholic Church. However, in latter years there has begun to be more deviation
from the long-established traditions. Since the Second World War the old symbolisms that
have been passed down from the Middle Ages have begun to be discarded, and greater colour
variation has started to be seen in vestments and church decorations (Feisner 2000).
Colour in other religions
In my research I discovered that the use of colour in religions was most documented for
Christianity, perhaps because the texts on other world religions were not available in English.
However the information that I did manage to find is presented below.
©Laura Dilloway, NCCA 2006 15