The trinacria is perhaps the symbol of Sicily par excellence, but what not everyone knows is that this figure does not only appear on our regional flag, but also on that of another country – or rather, another island. I am referring to the Isle of Man, between England and Ireland, where the trinacria appears in an “armored” version, with three legs in white and yellow armour. But what is the origin of this flag? And is there a connection with the Sicilian one?
As also reported by an article in Cambridge Archaeological Journalit is suggested that the Isle of Man adopted trinacria in 1266, when its control (as well as that of the Hebrides in Scotland) passed from the Kingdom of Norway to Alexander III of Scotland. The motivation behind this choice is still unknown today: one of the most accredited hypotheses is that the sovereign became aware of the symbol – already in use in Sicily – through his father-in-law Henry III of England, whose son Edmund Plantagenet obtained the title of “King of Sicily” by Pope Innocent IV.
The Sicilian trinacria, in turn, has a very ancient and not entirely known origin, even if the first evidence of the symbol dates back to the 7th century BC, well before the arrival of the Normans.
In any case, the island’s flag as we know it today is actually much more recent and dates back to 1932. The problem is that the symbol was never represented in the same way: in some flags the legs were arranged clockwise, in others counterclockwise, and even the angle of rotation was not always constant. For this reason, a standard version was created in 1968, imposing a clockwise arrangement of the legs, with a single leg in the lower part and two in the upper part.
