The love knot: from the Roman bride's girdle to English jewellery

Knotting and binding are very ancient gestures for expressing a union. In many European languages marriage is still a tie, a bond, a knot: the Latin word coniugium itself recalls the yoke that joins two people, and English says tying the knot for getting married. Behind these expressions lies a concrete history of bridal girdles, embroidery, chivalric collars and jewellery, in which the knot becomes a visible image of a promise that must not be undone.

The Hercules knot

In the Roman world the bride wore a woollen girdle fastened with a particular knot, called the knot of Hercules. According to the grammarian Festus, it was the husband who untied it in the bridal chamber, as a wish for offspring as numerous as those attributed to the hero. The same knot, formed by two cords interlaced symmetrically, appears on Greek and Hellenistic jewellery, where it also had a protective function.

The Hercules knot is one of the best-documented cases of a knot linked to marriage in antiquity. Its closed, sturdy design expressed the idea of a bond hard to undo, and for this reason it was also used as an amulet. In Hellenistic gold jewellery, such as diadems, necklaces and bracelets, the knot often occupies the central position, sometimes enriched with coloured stones and enamel.

The true lover's knot

In late medieval and early modern England the so-called true lover's knot became widespread. It does not denote a single design: the name was given to various forms of interlaced ribbons or cords, often made of two linked loops. It appeared on embroidery, letters, rings and small objects given as tokens, and Elizabethan poetry often used it as an image of mutual fidelity.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the love knot became a much-loved motif in jewellery: bow-shaped brooches, rings with interlaced ribbons, pendants in which two gold cords tighten into a single point. These objects were given for engagements or weddings, and sometimes contained braided locks of hair from the two people. The knotted ribbons that decorated wedding gifts and bouquets took up the same motif, turning it into an everyday good wish within everyone's reach.

Love knots and heraldry

The knot also had a heraldic and chivalric presence. Several noble families adopted knots as emblems, and the House of Savoy made its own famous. The collar of the chivalric order founded by Amadeus VI in the fourteenth century, later known as the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, was decorated with knots called love laces. Here the meaning is more political than sentimental, tied to loyalty to the sovereign, but it confirms the power of the knot as an image of a bond.

From the Roman bride's girdle to the ribbons of nineteenth-century jewellery, the love knot has preserved a simple and powerful idea: two distinct elements intertwining until they form a unity. Its success in everyday language shows how deeply this image has taken root in the European way of thinking about marriage.