Why were lions popular in heraldry, and wolves not?

Wolves are just as ferocious as lions, and were more familiar to medieval Europeans, but they were rare in heraldry. Why is this?
 
Wolves are just as ferocious as lions, and were more familiar to medieval Europeans, but they were rare in heraldry. Why is this?

Most likely exactly for that reason, Lions had a distant, noble air about them, almost like legendary creatures, since very few medieval Europeans ever laid eyes upon a living Lion. The Wolf, on the other hand, was all to familiar to Europeans, they preyed on their livestock and were the bane of farmers, Wolves were viewed as evil vermin, not noble beasts like the Lion.
 
Yeah, if direwolves had been a thing, it might be different. :D
But traditionally the lions were the kings of the animals, and wolves were little more than dangerous vermin.
Also there are cases where the name of a certain region/city corrupts into something that invites the use of the lion as heraldic symbol, for example León in Spain (name that comes from a roman militar settlement: Legio VII) or Lyon in France (from the celtic god Lugoves).

In any case, wolves were popular in heraldry. They just took a secondary place to lions.
Think of the germanic names include -wulf (-olf in English).
Probably lions were seen more as a symbol of majesty and uncontested power, while wolves were of being strong and aggressive. The monarch and the "jobber".
 
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I wonder if in other areas of the world, where wolves might have been scarcer then, if those people who'd heard but not seen a live wolf might, but might have seen an animal like a lion, would have been the reverse of that.

With the wolf number one, the lion number two?
 
I wonder if in other areas of the world, where wolves might have been scarcer then, if those people who'd heard but not seen a live wolf might, but might have seen an animal like a lion, would have been the reverse of that.

With the wolf number one, the lion number two?

You'll still have an uphill fight against the literary tradition going back to Greece that casts the lion as "king of the beasts", but it is conceivable. Of course wolves are pretty ubiquitous, so this would need to be a heraldic tradition emerging in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, if you are looking for the king of the European forests, you would probably pick the bear, not some kind of overgrown punk dog.
 
Zuvarq said:
Wolves are just as ferocious as lions, and were more familiar to medieval Europeans, but they were rare in heraldry. Why is this?
Medieval Nobility were more Lannisters than Starks? [Sorry, had to make this joke...]
jotabe1789 said:
In any case, wolves were popular in heraldry. They just took a secondary place to lions.
I always thought it was Dragons that held the secondary place in heralry... Failing that, I would have said the Bear.
 
I always thought it was Dragons that held the secondary place in heralry... Failing that, I would have said the Bear.

Don't forget the leopard, which looked more or less identical to the lion in heraldry but was nonetheless considered to be pretty similar.

But, yes. People in medieval Europe considered the wolf to be dangerous, evil vermin. Considering the damage wolves could and would do to flocks of livestock in a world of subsistence agriculture, one can hardly blame them for doing so. Thank goodness we're now in a world where humans and Europe's big predators can start to co-exist!
 
Medieval Nobility were more Lannisters than Starks? [Sorry, had to make this joke...]
I always thought it was Dragons that held the secondary place in heralry... Failing that, I would have said the Bear.

LOL

And, at least in Spain, i see a few wolves, but not really dragons, nor bears. Then again in Spain we have brooms, which has to be the most baddass thing ever in a heraldry XD
 
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