By mid-to-late fifteenth-century cheaper armor for arms and legs showed up. However, there are so many types and variations of these that I don't know if they were all called "jack chains" or if there was a distinction between the vertical metal bars, the vertical mail lines in artistic evidence and the more common "jack chains" style of armor we all know, these attached to gamberson and usually composed of articulated chains and bars riveted to elbow and shoulder pieces of armor. So I would like to know if any of you knows something of these. Are jack chains and splints different names for the same armor?

"Jack chains" relates from the fact it was "chains" attached to the padded jack or from the fact that most or the first examples of it displayed "jack chains" pattern of chain wire?

In Portuguese São Vicente de Fora's panels there are examples of noblemen using these to protect arms and legs; that makes me doubt if they were armor for poorer soldiers only.

Some images
https://ru.pinterest.com/pin/501307002249215571/

https://ru.pinterest.com/pin/362821313715374732/

---

 Attachment: 126.19 KB
German men-at-arms with vertical mail bands [ Download ]

It has always been my knowledge that 'jack chains' were the shoulder and elbow armor connected by small, thin bars. 'Splints' ---to me, are the vertical bars attached to cloth or leather backing and worn like bracers, chausses, and greaves. :) ...McM

"Mail strips" (liste di maglia) is another term. In all likelihood there were many different types but they never had specific terms. All of the terms you see in various texts were likely applied arbitrarily to all of the different types of armour. It is only today that we are obsessive about having a unique and specific term for every piece of armour.

In a few Castilian inventories I have seen "Cadenas" as a defensive equipment piece.

They are a light, nice equipment for light armoured men or as "undress" kit for rich men, as shown in that Portuguese painting.

I think that those could have been gilded. Iberian nobility had brigandines with gilded rivets, cloth covered capacetes with gilded ornaments, and anything "gildable", specially if it made a striking contrast over expensive cloth was their taste for sure ;)

Mail stripes, Germany, 1370-1380.

[ Linked Image ]

The Jost Amman image of a mail maker (Pantzermacher) mentions among his offerings , Auch Pantzer Ermel vnd Pantzerstrich,, - Also mail sleeves and mail-strips.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/De_St%C3%A4nde_1568_Amman_083.png

I'm with you on the mail thigh coverings. That's a new one on me....I've never seen that either. :wtf: I think his greaves are probably matching...you just see only the inside of one, the outside of the other. .....McM

Morgan Library MS M.763 fol. 136r
[ Linked Image ]

Durer, Paumgartner Altarpiece
[ Linked Image ]

Solothurner Fechtbuch (Cod.S.554)
[ Linked Image ]

[ Linked Image ]

Are there illustrations of what might be mail strips on the arms? The only contenders we have so far are on the legs.

Mail strips on arms,Tudor England.

http://myArmoury.com/talk/download.php?id=11230

Okay.....I've seen the Durer illustration before. I guess it just never clicked with me that those were strips of mail. I always just saw it as decoration on the hosen. That kinda takes the term--light armor--into a new reality. This may be something I attempt to recreate, just for fun. :) .....McM

[ Linked Image ]
Adoration of the Magi, tapestry woven in Brussels, circa 1476-1488 (Sens Cathedral, France).
Source: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b4/2c/f4/b42cf44bbf84004f0d8612f3ac87dbb1.jpg

His lighter harness apparently has the same cerimonial conotation than São Vicente's panels. The style of the chains are somehow unique: mail stripes for upper arms and horizontal plates for lower ones.

Yep. Looks like a good example. What are the chances of a museum having an extant garment with this kind of protection still intact?