Posts: 1,220 Location: Cork, Ireland
Sat 18 Mar, 2017 4:02 am
Good point Randall. Even though the joust I mentioned, had two guys wearing only tunics under mail, perhaps the two jouster only struck each other's
shields. In fact the more I think about it the more this makes sense.
The Chronicon Colmariense just about sneaks in prior to 1300. It only made it into this thread by 2 years. Well looking back at my OP I did say about 1300, so technically we're both right ;) Joking aside, thanks Mart this is a solid reference for an
aketon in 1298.
I'll be honest, I didn't originally intend to include the bit about no aketons prior to 1300 in this thread. I put that in at the last minute, when I realized that the description of the panzari in the King's Mirror say nothing of stuffing or quilting, only soft linen, and that the hoes were made of the same material as these panzari. To me this explains why we don't see aketons in the Maciejowski Bible.
We see padded arming caps, and padded collars, worn under mail in the Mac Bible, but no aketons, why? I think that it's because the tunics (which had at least two layers, possibly more) were made of stout enough material (perhaps something like buckram) and were thick enough to serve the same function as an
aketon.
As for Diu Crône (great reference btw, thanks for sharing). The first reference does say that a wambeis of white buckram was worn under a hauberk. As you say it doesn't mention anything about stuffing or quilting. This could just as easily be a stout buckram tunic, rather an
aketon, but It could be either.
The second reference in Diu Crône mentions that over the hauberk you could wear either a wambeis or silk surcoat. I see two possibilities for this
1. Some people preferred the extra protection of a wambeis (sleeveless gambeson) over their hauberks, while others preferred lighter armour and instead wore a silk surcoat.
2. The wambeis (sleeveless buckram tunic) and the silk surcoat (essentially a sleeveless silk tunic) were not that different, and so the decision was between a hard-waring material (buckram) or a stylish material (silk).
I hope I'm not coming across as argumentative. I'm only challenging these ideas because, as I see it, the visual evidence we have (effigies, illuminated manuscripts etc.) contradicts the literary evidence. We have literally evidence for garments called things like wambeis or panzar worn under hauberks, but these words also show up in the context of garments worn over armour, or as stand-alone textile armours. In the visual evidence we have prior to about 1300, there are plenty of quilted textile armours worn over mail, or on their own, but when we can see under the hauberk, we see an un-quilted garment. This contradiction between literary and visual evidence disappears if we say that words such as wambeis and panzar could include un-quilted, but stout, tunics intended to be worn under a hauberk.