Italy - Order of Constantine - a few questions

[larsb001]

Hello,

I could use a little assistance from some of our Italian members.

The first should be quite easy. I have the following two miniature Orders in my collection, both is Gold and of quite good quality. As I understand things the one to the left is the one issued by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the one to the right is issues by the Duchy of Parma - and the way this can be seen is by the letter "E" on the right arm. Is this correct understood?

[larsb001]

Then recently I have got this group of miniatures.

It would have the Order of Constantine as issued by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Spanish Red Cross Order, the Austrian Red Cross Order, type 1923 and the Imperial Russian badge of honour of the Red Cross, pre 1917.

Thus it seems that this guy have got his decorations around WW1 up to the mid 20ies. But I'm not quite sure how the Order of Constantine was awarded during this period, I can easily understand the concept before the unification of Italy but I'm not so sure how this Order ranked and was awarded during this period around WW1 and how this Order was seen.

Could anybody please help here, and if possible also tell me which kind of person we have here, a doctor, a Red Cross representative of some kind or ...?

Thanks in advance, Lars

[Eric Schena]

Hi Lars:

I can't really help with the dating of those two pieces, but I can say that the letter "E" is actually not an "E". It's an omega: the one on the left is a capital omega (Ω) and the one on the right is the lower-case omega (ω). It's part of the expression "I am the Alpha and the Omega", which appears in the Book of Revelation. You'll see it a lot in old Chi-Rho Christograms.

Just thought I'd share...

Cheers,

Eric