My review of Ralph Moffat's Medieval Arms and Armour (from the Medieval Review)

Ralph Moffat, Curator of European Arms and Armour at Glasgow Museums and editor of this sourcebook, states that it is “born of a lifelong passion for medieval arms and armour.” This is clearly the case. And many other scholars are going to find this reference work a delight.

When I say “scholars” in this context, I mean anyone interested in understanding the military tools that held a central place in the lives of medieval rulers and their followers. Scholars of medieval arms and armour include academics trained in military, literary, art and gender history, but also (as the Boydell Press blurb says) crafters, martial artists, and living history practitioners. Members of the latter groups rarely if ever come out of specialized programs in academic institutions. Yet they have an intimate knowledge of materials and techniques that, historians working in material science apart, few more conventional academics have the opportunity to acquire. Similarly, those who have studied arms and armour in a living historical context sometimes have very limited training in traditional academic disciplines.

So, scholars working on arms and armour constitute at best a scattered community using a variety of approaches to deal with what is really a vast field. Moffat’s project is to create “a working vocabulary” or more than one since this book is only volume one of a greater project. (Unfortunately, there is no hint how many volumes there will be.) 

... The book is organized into four sections, plus a bibliography and index. >First, there are thirty-three pages of prefatory material--lists of illustrations and documents, the preface proper, acknowledgements, “Using the Sourcebook” (how various problems in the history of armour can be approached), “English Pronunciation” (a guide to users unfamiliar with fourteenth-century English), and “Towards a Working Vocabulary” (see below) Secondly, Part I alsp includes the introduction to the Sources, including both textual and material sources. It discusses the characteristics of the various sources, such as documents, armour, and weapons.

Part II includes transcriptions and translations of many documents and excerpts of documents in which the arms are mentioned, such as wills, inventories, and challenges to single combat.

Finally, the volume has an illustrated glossary.

This list of lists may seem to be disorganized, but there is a clear logic to Moffat’s work. The section titled “Towards a Working Vocabulary” in the prefatory material could be the title of the whole book. He recognizes that the simplest and perhaps the most common use of the book will be to look up individual terms in the illustrated glossary. But many other uses are possible. Moffat has written this book to make it easy to connect terms to the different types of evidence for their appearance and the context in which they appear.

Thus if a reseacher runs across the obscure term “gadelings,” Moffat not only cites theChronicle of Geoffrey le Baker where “gadelings” occurs in an account of a duel (rendered in the original Latin and in translation) and to figure 5, the effigy of the Black Prince, which shows spikes on his gauntlet.

The inclusion of both original texts and translations in the Documents section makes the book far more valuable than if the source material had been presented only in one language. Some of the most difficult documents are inventories and similar lists. Without Moffat’s translations, or without the source material in the original languages, these documents might remain a closed book to many. Moffat’s presentation will open up this challenging material to a much wider audience.

The vast bibliography--reaching back to the nineteenth century--and the well-organized index make this sourcebook more useful than if the editor had not been so thorough. Moffat wants to reach as many arms and armour scholars as he can. One expects that many individual researchers will find this book a necessity, but also that many academic and public libraries will find it a valuable addition to their reference collections.

Armor and horse terminology

I am currently translating a 15^th century treatise by Sicily Herald on the proper running of tournaments and jousts.  It discusses armor and horse harness.  Various pieces of "harness" (for people and horses both) are named.  I can guess what most of these terms mean, and I can find most of them in good dictionaries.  However, it would be nice to have a scholarly treatment (reference work) on this terminology in hand.  Despite the fact that I know a fair number of scholars specializing in military history and a good number of serious re-enactors (including some brilliant armorers) I don't know a good, practical reference work that would help me get the terminology right, and allow me to easily compare Sicily Herald's usage to "standard" terminology.

I know that other people have faced this problem.  Does anyone have a solution?

Armor

The mystique that surrounds armor, then and now, is masterfully evoked in this BBC 4 documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FzoZ-wVWUY

More beauty in iron

An SCA-safe helmet "made by Master Ugo and Master Sigmund for Master Bane's knighting."

Effigies and the development of English armor

Will McLean connects us to a webpage where Doug Strong analyzes funeral effigies of armored men in 14th- and 15th-century English churches. Having examined a lot of them in person back in 1972, I am quite convinced that people who commissioned these monuments were paying for the very best they could afford, and were very fashion conscious.

Viking shield discovered in Denmark

Reenactors and re-creationists of all sorts will be happy to hear this news: a Viking era shield found in Denmark, reported here from Yahoo news.

It will be some time before such data as original weight and construction will be available. The reason the shield is still around, long after all the others have been beaten to flinders, is that it was found waterlogged in wet soil. Much effort will have to be put into removing and preserving it.

Pay and equipment for French "mail-shirts," ordinance of 1351

A reader of this post on the "mail-shirts" asked how much vallets (the group I think were also called "mail-shirts") were paid and what equipment they were expected to have. That reader has answered his own question, but I thought others might be interested. I've used the translation of equipment terminology from the 1973 source collection Society at War, edited by C.T. Allmand:

Banneret 40 sols Tournois a day.

Chevalier 20 sols Tournois a day.

Escuyer "bearing his own arms," 10 sols Turnois.

Vallet "accompanying him and armed with a [short] coat of mail [haubergeon (SM)], bascinet with mail [camail (SM)] gorget, gauntlet, and a tunic above the coat of mail," 5 sols Tournois.

And as a bonus, here's what crossbowmen were supposed to have in the way of armor (from the ordinance, no translation):

armé de plates, de crevelliere, de gorgerette, d'espée, de coustel & de harnais de bras de fer & de cuir [wages of 3 sols]

And an extra special bonus, the gear and wages of a shieldman (pavisier):

armé de plates ou de haubergeon, de bascinet a camial, de gorgerette, de harnais, de bras, de gantellez, d'espée, de coustel, de lance; de pavais ou d'autre armeure, de quoi il se porra ou saura miex aidier [wages of 2 1/2 sols].

Beowulf: A new verse translation, by Seamus Heaney

I've been taking my own advice and polishing up my knowledge of Beowulf the poem in anticipation of Beowulf the movie. And as I began to read it I realized I probably have read no more than excerpts since I was an undergraduate taking a course in "Medieval Epic" (B and Roland in 10 weeks.)

This time I read Seamus Heaney's much-ballyhooed verse translation from 1999. And I find it no wonder that it was ballyhooed, it is wonderful.

One example to lure you to pick it up (NU's library has it, or will once I return it): Heaney, a Nobel Prize-winning poet, explains that he needed a way to "tune" his translation, and turned to "a familiar local voice," one which belonged to relatives he once called "big voiced Scullions," Irishmen who had weighty way of speaking that gave dignity to the simplest statements. Heaney used their speech as a model, beginning at the beginning, with the Old English word Hwaet!

Conventional renderings of hwaet, the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with "lo" and "hark" and "behold" and "attend" and -- more colloquially -- "listen" being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullionspeak, the particle "so" came naturally to the rescue, because in that idiom "so" operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention.

I've heard that usage, too. With that insight, Heaney produced this:

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns.

There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes ,
a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on
as his powers waxed and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts
beyond the whale-road had to yield to him
and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

Wow! "That was one good king." I can almost hear one of my country neighbors saying that!

Here's Heaney's version of lines 2177-2189:

Thus Beowulf bore himself with valour;
he was formidable in battle yet behaved with honour
and took no advantage; never cut down
a comrade who was drunk, kept his temper
and warrior that he was, watched and controlled
his God-sent strength and his outstanding
natural powers. He had been poorly regarded
for a long time, was taken by the Geats
for less than he was worth: and their lord too
had never much esteemed him in the mead-hall.
They firmly believed that he lacked force,
that the prince was a weakling; but presently
every affront to his deserving was reversed.

Fresh yet redolent of legendary antiquity. Fabulous, fabulous mastery of the English language. Out of Ireland -- again -- of course.

Image: A plate from a Swedish helmet showing warriors wearing boar-helmets, often mentioned in Beowulf. Look closely and you can see the last visible dog... From Beowulf in Cyberspace.

The new black

The site ThinkGeek is advertising costume chain mail shirts, made of butted aluminum mail (thus my calling it "costume" chain mail), for wearing around the office.

According to the site, "chain mail is the new black." Thank heavens something is the new black. I was awfully tired of the old black.

There are innumerable sites selling mail or offering to teach you how to make it yourself. Remember the real stuff was made by riveting each link closed with a tiny rivet. This takes real skill, not to mention patience. If you only want butted links, you can do it while watching bad TV programs. Then, it still takes patience.