Posts: 14 Location: Germany
Fri 28 Sep, 2012 3:49 am
i wanted to show an example, that even in the 1370s when in italian countries the Hundsgugel is normal knightly appearance it would be extremly uncommon in northern germany. The closed chausses were just another example, but i meant the normal clothes not mail chausses. closed ones would be even in italy, france etc in the 1370s very fashionable, but wouldnt yet exist in german or especially northern german countries. The point is even if something exists in one part of europe, it doesnt nessecarily mean that it does exist in another. So a Hundsgugel in 1360 worn by a german knight would be by a tiny tiny chance possible, but is far from realistic.
Same thing with your examples with arms and shoulders. a french Knight of the île de france is a bad example to explain the armour kit of a german knight.
The misunderstanding might come from effiges like the one of
Siegfried Bock (1355)
http://effigiesandbrasses.com/monuments/siegfried_bock/
or
Johann von Stein-Kallenfels (1357)
http://effigiesandbrasses.com/monuments/johan...allenfels/
and this gentleman comes from my homeland rhineland-palatinae, left of the rhine and very french influenced by central france through luxemburg.
as you can see they were armor at their arms, but its hard to tell if it is hardened leather, splinted armor or plate armour by the conservatoric state of the effigies. But we can say for sure that thes are early forms with no complete enclosure of the arm like you are wearing.
Sadly its often the way that after buying first parts of armor and realizing that they match not perfectly, that somone is constructing a history around his parts to explain the mixture of styles and times, but thats not the way someone should reconstruct the past
As i said please dont take this as trolling or something like that. It is very pleasing to see someone doing research even if it needs a little bit of recapitulating. And for myself i am very pleased to see more and other reenactors doing the teutonic order in the XIVth century.
If you have a source for the paw-cross in the teutonic order for the XIV century, please share it, i am very interessted, cause even in the XVth the simple cross is the normal case as far as i know and it changes between the end of the XV and second half of XVIth century