The Great Seal of Colorado
Jan. 30, 2008
By Jerry Kopel
Colorado's Great Seal statute, CRS 24-80-901, is
in the news after lying dormant for 131 years. Legislators have barely
noticed the seal during those years, and its mysteries have remained
unanswered.
The bill currently before the legislature, HB 1048, by Rep. Ray Rose,
changes the diameter of the seal by a quarter of an inch reduction.
Because the bill is limited by its title "Concerning the Size of the
State Seal", it unfortunately, cannot address the seal's content. Some
of that content is as fresh as it was in 1861, some of it could use some
work, and one item may have meaning that has been entirely lost to
history.
On Nov. 6, 1861, the first Territorial Assembly of Colorado passed a law
creating Colorado's circular Seal bearing the Latin motto "Nil Sine
Numine" in black letters on a white background.
The language has two possible interpretations according to Colorado
documents. Its meaning could be taken as "Nothing Without Providence" or
as "Nothing Without Deity".
The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary definition of "deity" (regard as a
God) doesn't include "providence", but the definition of "providence"
includes "God".
The creation of a seal gave the new territorial government credibility
and signaled the presence of an orderly government. Although the
Territorial Assembly wanted credibility, it didn't yet want statehood.
Territorial status had one advantage over statehood: The federal
government instead of the local population paid the cost of government.
Fifteen years later, the voters adopted the state constitution as part
of the requirement for federal approval of statehood for Colorado.
Article 4, Section 15 of the constitution read:
"There shall be a seal of the state, which shall be kept by the
secretary of state, and shall be called the 'Great Seal of
Colorado'. The seal of the territory of Colorado as now used, shall
be the seal of the state, until otherwise provided by law."
In 1990, the Great Seal was one of the subjects
of a successful constitutional amendment that I drafted to remove or
repair obsolete provisions of the constitution. A section of the
amendment struck language referring to the "territorial" seal and gave
the legislature authority to change the Great Seal's form. I asked House
Speaker Bev Bledsoe, R-Hugo, to be the chief sponsor of the amendment
and made myself "second banana."
Under the authority of the 1877 statute, the seal's Latin "Sigillum
Territorii Coloradenesis" (meaning "seal of the territory of Colorado")
was changed to English "State of Colorado." The date on the seal "1861"
was changed to "1876" and there was nothing next to the number "1876" at
the bottom of the seal.
In 1861 as in 1877, at the very top of the Great Seal is "the eye of
God" enclosed within golden rays thrusting into the lines of an outer
triangle. On the back of a $1 bill with the portrait of President George
Washington, you will find the same "eye of God" on the left hand side.
This apparently comes from Freemasonry.
Directly below the triangle is the Roman fasces bearing upon a thin
tying band of red, white and blue, the words "Union and Constitution."
Colorado Territory was showing where it stood in the Civil War.
The Roman fasces during the Roman Empire consisted of a bundle of wooden
rods, with an axe head hanging down from the bottom of the bundle. Ours
more resembles a spear entering on the left of the bundle and an axe
head coming out of the right.
The fasces is a visual metaphor for the idea that a stick by itself can
easily be broken, but a bundle of sticks tied together is hard to break.
Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943, chose the fasces
as the emblem and namesake of the Italian Fascists.
You can't blame the Colorado territorial legislators for that. Mussolini
wasn't born until 1883.
Below the fasces is a heraldic shield that is as up-to-date as if it had
been created in 2007 instead of 1861. At the top of the shield are three
snow-capped mountains, even higher than clouds against a red background
of Colorado soil, which shows off the mountains much better than blue
sky would. It's an excellent reminder to tourists of why they visit
Colorado.
Below the clouds, separated by a thin yellow line, are a pickaxe and
sledgehammer of a miner. They lie partly on golden ground and partly on
brown soil. Mining gold, silver and coal offered the potential to make
the territory and young state rich -- just as mining oil, gas, and oil
shale, if equitably taxed, could be the salvation of Colorado's economy
today.
And below the heraldic shield is the state motto "Nil Sine Numine."
Lying atop the red inner circle of the Great Seal as of March 15, 1877,
are the words "State of Colorado" in gold letters.
At the bottom, six stars, three on each side, flank "1876" in gold
numbers. The stars were not in the territorial seal, nor in the Great
Seal, as described in the 1877 statute, now numbered CRS 24-80-901. Nor
can anyone say for certain exactly when, years later, the six stars were
added.
Our statute doesn't mention the six stars. Are they just decoration or
do they have meaning?
In 1958, the Denver Post printed a story about a group of young students
being shown a copy of the seal at the state museum and asking what the
stars stood for.
No one knew what the stars stood for, or where the stars came from, even
after the newspaper did weeks of research. And the stars are still there
in 2008.
Perhaps another bill can be introduced to add the stars to the statute,
since the bill by Rep. Rose cannot be expanded. And for those not versed
in Latin, perhaps the statute can state in parentheses the motto's
meaning in English.
(Jerry Kopel served 22 years in the Colorado House.) |