ROTA (the Pope’s sign). — Leo IX (a. 1048) introduced into the subscription of privileges an innovation that was to be preserved through the centuries and still endures today: instead of the sign of the cross which normally preceded the ancient formula Bene valete (q.v.), now reduced to a monogram, he placed a more complex one, commonly called a *rota* from its shape. It consists of a cross surrounded by two concentric circles forming a circular ring suitable for containing a legend: in the four inner quadrants the name of the pope is written (L-E-O-P.), and in the outer ring a scriptural motto (Misericordia Domini plena est terra). This legend is in the Pope’s own hand, so that the *signum* acquires the value of a subscription.
In the immediate successors of Leo IX the *rota* showed a variety of forms and legends; but from Paschal II (1099) the type became fixed which has lasted to the present: in the upper quadrants are the names of the Apostles SCS PETRUS and SCS PAULUS, in the lower the name of the pope PASCHALIS PP II, and in the ring the scriptural motto, which each pope changes as his personal device, preceded by a small cross. In privileges, which lasted until the fourteenth century, the small cross was always in the Pope’s own hand and sometimes the motto as well; later (from the fifteenth century) the consistorial letters resumed the ancient *signum*, now placed at the centre beneath the text, but the cross and the legend are no longer in the Pope’s own hand.
Following the example of the popes, in the eleventh century the archbishops of Ravenna, Benevento and Trani, and the Norman dukes of Sicily, used the *rota*. In Spain the archbishop of Compostela Diego (a. 1101) also used it, and it inspired the *rueda* or *signo rodado* of the kings of León (from 1158), which has at its centre the emblem of the lion instead of the cross. The *rueda*, in colours after 1252, was used by the kings of León-Castile until Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella (a. 1479).