Last modified: 2022-03-11 by ivan sache
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Flag of Loudéac - Image by Ivan Sache, 6 June 2014
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The municipality of Loudéac (9,759 inhabitants in 2011; 8,024 ha) is located in central Brittany, 80 km west of Rennes.
Loudéac was mentioned for the first time, as Locduiac, in a donation made in 1075 by Viscount Josselin de Porhoët to the abbey of Redon. The parish of Lodeiac was listed in 1263. The modern name of Loudéac appeared in 1427.
In the Middle Ages, Loudéac was divided into Loudéac-Porhoët, part of the County of Porhoët, and Loudéac-la-Vicomté, part of the Viscounty of Rohan. Loudéac was reunited in the beginning of the 17th century, as part of the Duchy-Peerage of Rohan, erected in April 1603.
Loudéac is the birth town of the painter and engraver Jeanne Malivel (1895-1926), Professor at the School of Arts in Rennes (1923) and
one of the inspirer of the Breton cultural movement Ar seiz
Breur (The Seven Brothers).
Ivan Sache, 6 June 2014
The flag of Loudéac (photo, photo, photo)is white with the municipal coat of arms, "Azure three spindles argent a chief gules charged with three mascles or".
The spindles recall that Loudéac was once a main center of flax and
hemp industry in Brittany. Flax cultivation was introduced in Brittany
in 1567.
According to P. Rault (Les drapeaux bretons de 1188 à nos jours) [rau98]), the chief recalls the arms of Rohan, "Gules nine mascles or 3, 3 and 3".
In crystallography, a macle (cognate to German Masch, a mesh) is a
complex crystal made by the reunion (by interpenetration of
juxtaposition) of several crystals of the same kind but with different
geometrical orientations; in heraldry, a mascle is a lozenge voided by
a smaller lozenge in the middle. Macled crystals are common in the
Breton forest of Quenecan, which belonged to the family of Rohan until
the Revolution, and might have been the origin of the coat of arms of
the family.
The mascles of Rohan are found in several Breton coat of arms, for
instance the municipal arms of Landivisiau and Crozon.
Ivan Sache, 6 June 2014