Posts: 3,641 Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 5:17 am
Joonas Pessi wrote: |
i certainly dont think that a gambeson would have been worth the amount of money equivalent to 100000 $ in modern currency, because in the assize of arms of 1181 all burgesses and freemen were required to own a gambeson. |
These men were in the top 15% of the population. What is the wealth level of the top 15% today? In the US that would give you an income of around $100,00 per year.
Last edited by Dan Howard on Tue 28 Nov, 2017 5:30 am; edited 1 time in total
Posts: 1,220 Location: Cork, Ireland
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 5:28 am
Craig Peters wrote: |
There were certainly soldiers in the 13th century who were not able to afford a helmet but might be able to afford a gambeson and padded coif, so that doesn't seem out of place. I take it you're objecting to Dan's statement that could imply you either have a metal helmet or no armour whatsoever. Perhaps Dan's statement might be revised to "Of all the parts of armour made of metal, the helmet would be the first priority assuming one could afford it." |
According to the documentary evidence gambesons and aketons actually cost about the same as helmets. Check out these figures taken from Randall Storey's PHD Thesis:
Aketon
lowest = 12d
highest = 160d
average = 67d
sample size = 60
Basinet
lowest = 12d
highest = 120d
average = 43d
sample size = 47
So it seems that anyone who could have afforded to buy a gambeson could have bought a helmet instead. And from what I've seen of laws dealing with what arms and armour a population was required to own, helmets were always required before gambesons.
Posts: 76 Location: Finland
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 5:40 am
Stephen Curtin wrote: |
Craig Peters wrote: | There were certainly soldiers in the 13th century who were not able to afford a helmet but might be able to afford a gambeson and padded coif, so that doesn't seem out of place. I take it you're objecting to Dan's statement that could imply you either have a metal helmet or no armour whatsoever. Perhaps Dan's statement might be revised to "Of all the parts of armour made of metal, the helmet would be the first priority assuming one could afford it." |
According to the documentary evidence gambesons and aketons actually cost about the same as helmets. Check out these figures taken from Randall Storey's PHD Thesis:
Aketon
lowest = 12d
highest = 160d
average = 67d
sample size = 60
Basinet
lowest = 12d
highest = 120d
average = 43d
sample size = 47
So it seems that anyone who could have afforded to buy a gambeson could have bought a helmet instead. And from what I've seen of laws dealing with what arms and armour a population was required to own, helmets were always required before gambesons. |
Thanks for the numbers, i was wondering about the cost of these things in relation to each other :)
From what i have read, iron was quite a bit more expensive earlier in the middle ages and thus helmets would have been quite a bit more expensive too. I wonder how much difference would be in the cost of these items relative to each other earlier in the middle ages?
Posts: 1,220 Location: Cork, Ireland
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 6:27 am
Yes iron was more expensive earlier in the middle ages, but so was probably everything else, including the materials needed to make a gambeson. How much more expensive these things were in earlier times, unfortunately I don't know.
Posts: 1,525 Location: Sydney, Australia
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 6:38 am
including the gambesons stuffed with just about everything from rags to hair?? i remain skeptical they would be nearly as expensive as one made of layer upon layer of linen
though not all of those in the same garment, though you get the idea
Posts: 3,641 Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 6:48 am
William P wrote: |
including the gambesons stuffed with just about everything from rags to hair?? i remain skeptical they would be nearly as expensive as one made of layer upon layer of linen
though not all of those in the same garment, though you get the idea |
There was no such thing as a gambeson stuffed with "just about anything from rags to hair". They were made to a standard by registered guild members and faced inspection at every muster. If your gambeson didn't meet a minimum standard, you'd be fined and sent home. Randall Storey's work proves this. The cheapest gambeson cost the same as the cheapest helmet. The average gambeson cost considerably more than the average helmet.
There was no such thing as "cheap" armour. It never existed. Poor people were either completely unarmoured or, more often, they were not permitted to fight.
Posts: 76 Location: Finland
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 8:39 am
So the discussion has got a bit sidetracked and i feel that some of the questions have been left unanswered. So what do you think would explain the difference in colour and pattern to the depiction of mail in the same manuscript, and what would it be depicting then?
Posts: 3,641 Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 2:12 pm
It is simple artistic licence. If you show a mail shirt to a class full of people and ask them to draw it, every single one of them will render it differently. How do you tell whether any of them drew it accurately if you don't have the original item?
Posts: 1,303 Location: Jackson, MS, USA
Tue 28 Nov, 2017 9:25 pm
The same artist may have chosen various styles on different figures to help distinguish them, or to save time -- the late Angus McBride once noted that he wondered which took longer, making mail, or painting it. Also keep in mind the small scale of these figures, or the distance from which they would be seen.
https://myArmoury.com/feature_mail.html
Dan Howard wrote: |
The other major problem with mail terminology came from initial attempts to interpret contemporary illustrations. Samuel Rush Meyrick, writing early in the 19th century attempted a very "literal" interpretation of the armour depicted in contemporary effigies and illustrations (such as the Bayeux Tapestry) and invented a variety of constructions to resemble them closely5. These constructions included banded mail, tegulated mail, mascled mail, rustred mail, and trellised mail. Most of Meyrick's proposals have since been demonstrated to be either impractical or could not be physically reconstructed to resemble contemporary representations. Doubts about Meyrick's work began to be expressed later in that century by scholars, such as Hewitt, Laking, and ffoulkes. However, some writers, such as Ashdown6 and Viollet-le-duc7, perpetuated Meyrick's inaccuracies into the 20th century, which were picked up and used by many modern writers, including the authors of fantasy role-playing games. The final word on this subject is attributed to Claude Blaire in the middle of the 20th century8, and since that time, no armour scholar has seriously considered Meyrick's theories to be valid. The general consensus today is that the difficulties involved in realistically illustrating medieval mail led to a variety of stylistic conventions and that all of the contemporary illustrations and effigies are depicting nothing more elaborate than typical 4-in-1 mail. Blair quoted from F. M. Kelly, who wrote:
And at the start let me define plainly what I mean by "mail". I hold that in the Middle Ages and, indeed, as long as armour continued...the term applied properly, nay, exclusively, to that type of defence composed...of interlinked rings. Only through a late poetical licence did it come to be extended to armour in general. "Chain-mail" is a mere piece of modern pleonasm; "scale-mail" and still more "plate-mail" stark nonsense. As for Meyrick's proposed classification of mail—"ringed, "single", double-chain, "mascled", "rustred", "trelliced", etc.—it may be dismissed without further ado. His categories, in so far as they were not pure invention, rested wholly on a misinterpretation of the evidence; the passages he cites to support his theories...all refer to what he calls "chain" mail; otherwise MAIL pure and simple.9 |
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Posts: 76 Location: Finland
Wed 29 Nov, 2017 4:40 am
Dan Howard wrote: |
Joonas Pessi wrote: | i certainly dont think that a gambeson would have been worth the amount of money equivalent to 100000 $ in modern currency, because in the assize of arms of 1181 all burgesses and freemen were required to own a gambeson. |
These men were in the top 15% of the population. What is the wealth level of the top 15% today? In the US that would give you an income of around $100,00 per year. |
That assertion is just flatout wrong, a freeman was basically anyone who wasn't a serf, and a burgess would be an inhabitant of a town or borough with full rights of citizenship. In the assize of arms these people had the lowest requirement of equipment. So no, these wouldnt be the top 15%.
Posts: 1,220 Location: Cork, Ireland
Wed 29 Nov, 2017 4:56 am
Many modern artists seem to love the idea of diamond patterned stitching on aketons and gambesons but to my knowledge this was rarely done historically. Think about it, why would someone choose to stitch in a diamond or square pattern when stitching in straight lines would accomplish the same result with less thread used and less work?
Posts: 3,641 Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Wed 29 Nov, 2017 5:47 am
Joonas Pessi wrote: |
Dan Howard wrote: | Joonas Pessi wrote: | i certainly dont think that a gambeson would have been worth the amount of money equivalent to 100000 $ in modern currency, because in the assize of arms of 1181 all burgesses and freemen were required to own a gambeson. |
These men were in the top 15% of the population. What is the wealth level of the top 15% today? In the US that would give you an income of around $100,00 per year. |
That assertion is just flatout wrong, a freeman was basically anyone who wasn't a serf, and a burgess would be an inhabitant of a town or borough with full rights of citizenship. In the assize of arms these people had the lowest requirement of equipment. So no, these wouldnt be the top 15%. |
15-16% of men were freemen (called "sokemen") at the time and they owned around 20% of the land. Keep in mind that this only included the males in society so the real percentage of freemen was closer to 8% of the total population..
Around 40% of men were villani, also called "serfs" or "nativi", who were tied to the land.
8-9% were slaves.
Posts: 76 Location: Finland
Wed 29 Nov, 2017 6:26 am
Dan Howard wrote: |
Joonas Pessi wrote: | Dan Howard wrote: | Joonas Pessi wrote: | i certainly dont think that a gambeson would have been worth the amount of money equivalent to 100000 $ in modern currency, because in the assize of arms of 1181 all burgesses and freemen were required to own a gambeson. |
These men were in the top 15% of the population. What is the wealth level of the top 15% today? In the US that would give you an income of around $100,00 per year. |
That assertion is just flatout wrong, a freeman was basically anyone who wasn't a serf, and a burgess would be an inhabitant of a town or borough with full rights of citizenship. In the assize of arms these people had the lowest requirement of equipment. So no, these wouldnt be the top 15%. |
15-16% of men were freemen (called "sokemen") at the time and they owned around 20% of the land. Keep in mind that this only included the males in society so the real percentage of freemen was closer to 8% of the total population..
Around 40% of men were villani, also called "serfs" or "nativi", who were tied to the land.
8-9% were slaves. |
But my point still stands, the freemen were neither in the lowest or highest strata, because freeholders and nobles were above them, but they were the lowest strata wich was required to have military equipment as described in the assize of arms.
Posts: 3,641 Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Wed 29 Nov, 2017 7:43 am
Joonas Pessi wrote: |
Dan Howard wrote: | Joonas Pessi wrote: | Dan Howard wrote: | Joonas Pessi wrote: | i certainly dont think that a gambeson would have been worth the amount of money equivalent to 100000 $ in modern currency, because in the assize of arms of 1181 all burgesses and freemen were required to own a gambeson. |
These men were in the top 15% of the population. What is the wealth level of the top 15% today? In the US that would give you an income of around $100,00 per year. |
That assertion is just flatout wrong, a freeman was basically anyone who wasn't a serf, and a burgess would be an inhabitant of a town or borough with full rights of citizenship. In the assize of arms these people had the lowest requirement of equipment. So no, these wouldnt be the top 15%. |
15-16% of men were freemen (called "sokemen") at the time and they owned around 20% of the land. Keep in mind that this only included the males in society so the real percentage of freemen was closer to 8% of the total population..
Around 40% of men were villani, also called "serfs" or "nativi", who were tied to the land.
8-9% were slaves. |
But my point still stands, the freemen were neither in the lowest or highest strata, because freeholders and nobles were above them, but they were the lowest strata wich was required to have military equipment as described in the assize of arms. |
Freemen were in the top 15th percentile of the population. They were wealthy men. These people in the US today have incomes of at least $100,000 pa and a net worth in excess of a million dollars. It requires men of this sort of means to be able to afford body armour. It has already been demonstrated that gambesons were not cheap. They were inaccessable to the vast majority of the population.
Posts: 76 Location: Finland
Thu 30 Nov, 2017 12:40 am
The lowest price of aketon mentioned in the thesis is 12 pence, and the yearly wage of a kitchen servant in the 14th century would have been 2-4 shillings (1 shilling=12 pence), so about half of the lowest yearly wage for a kitchen servant. Not cheap i know, but not as expensive as you suppose.
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
Posts: 76 Location: Finland
Thu 30 Nov, 2017 12:45 am
I think there is no conclusive evidence to either completely reject or accept the idea that gambesons were used in 12th century before its last quarter. Personally i think they might have been used a bit earlier than the assizement of arms, perhaps brought to western europe by the returning crusaders from byzantine? Just my thoughts though :)
Posts: 3,641 Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Thu 30 Nov, 2017 1:46 am
The name "aketon" implies that the earliest ones in Europe were made from cotton. Cotton was brought to Sicily by the Moors but it never spread to the rest of Europe until the Norman conquest of Sicily in the 12th century. So there couldn't have been any in Europe before this time.
Last edited by Dan Howard on Thu 30 Nov, 2017 2:06 am; edited 2 times in total
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