1369 The first coat of arms given to a townPrvý erb udelený mestu

In 1369 Louis I issued Košice an armorial letter — a charter granting the town its own coat of arms — at his castle of Diósgyőr. Until then coats of arms belonged to noble families; a community did not have one. This is why the document matters so much and why it is usually described as the first coat of arms granted by a sovereign to a town anywhere in Europe. Košice went on collecting: by 1502 it had four heraldic warrants from four monarchs, and the arms that grew out of them — the angel, the lilies and the bars — are still the city's today. The original charter is one of the most valuable documents in Slovakia, and it is worth remembering what it really records: a king agreeing that a town full of merchants and craftsmen was an honourable body in its own right.V roku 1369 vydal Ľudovít I. na svojom hrade Diósgyőr pre Košice erbovú listinu — listinu, ktorou mesto dostalo vlastný erb. Dovtedy patrili erby šľachtickým rodom; obec ho jednoducho nemala. Práve preto je táto listina taká dôležitá a preto sa o nej zvyčajne hovorí ako o prvom erbe, ktorý panovník udelil mestu kdekoľvek v Európe. Košice v zbieraní pokračovali: do roku 1502 mali štyri erbové listiny od štyroch panovníkov a erb, ktorý z nich vyrástol — anjel, ľalie a brvná — používa mesto dodnes. Pôvodná listina patrí k najcennejším dokumentom na Slovensku a oplatí sa pamätať, čo vlastne zaznamenáva: kráľ uznal, že mesto plné kupcov a remeselníkov je samo osebe ctihodným spoločenstvom.