Mention has already been made of the consecrated flags which it was customary for the Pope to present to the leaders of expeditions which had the approbation of the Church. The flag entrusted to the Bishop of Puy, the Papal Legate present at the First Crusade, was of this nature. It is referred to in 1098 as the _signum magni papae_. In 1104 when Paschal sent Bohemond into France to gather support for him against the Emperor, he entrusted him with another of these flags, to which the name _vexillum Sancti Petri_ is applied. This change of name would appear to indicate a difference in the device on the flag. That difference was probably the introduction of the two Keys of St Peter beside the cross, a point of some interest to us as it might affect the question of the identity of the gonfanon on the Bayeux Tapestry already discussed, and incidentally the date of that work. We have, however, no certain knowledge of the presence of these keys before the year 1203. In March of that year Innocent III sent to Calojohannes, King of the Bulgars and Wends, one of these flags, together with a letter in which he explained its symbolism at some length. This flag contained a cross and the two keys symbolic of the powers entrusted to Peter according to the tradition of the Church[48]. From the tenor of this letter it may be inferred that the device was not a new one in 1203, so that this was no doubt the device upon the _vexillum S. Petri_ met with during the Third Crusade in 1199 and 1201. An interesting instance of the use of a flag to convey authority occurs in 1216, when Rupen, nephew of Leo of Armenia, was formally seised of the lordship of Antioch by the patriarch of that city handing him a flag in the church of St Peter. Thus far we are still without evidence of the existence of any flag that could be described as "national," and we shall therefore turn our attention to the birthplace of so much that was great in art and literature, the Italian city-states, and since we are primarily seeking evidence as to the early use of the flag at sea (though hitherto without much success) we shall turn first to the maritime states of Genoa and Pisa. Of these two, Pisa was the first to rise as an important maritime city, and in 980 she was supplying vessels to transport the troops of the Emperor Otho II. By the end of the eleventh century a system of government by Consuls had been firmly established, and the city can be looked upon as an independent state. Shortly after this (in 1114) the Pisans proceeded to capture the Balearic Isles from the Saracens. A contemporary metrical account[49] of this struggle gives an indication of the flags then in use in the following words: Tunc vexilla gerens Pisanae signifer urbis Valandus cuneos in campum ducit apertum. Hinc Ildebrandus sanctae vexilla Mariae Consul habens dextra saevos incurrit in hostes, Sedis Apostolicae vexillum detulit Atho.