[Luis Armando]

Here in Mexico, historians know by its French name "Broigne" but not much about it, I just know they are rings of up to 20mm in diameter that are sewn to a leather vest and sleeves. any of you can tell me more about this armor. please

[Timo Nieminen]

It's an attempt at reconstruction based on art. The real armour would have been mail (as in conventional chainmail). There's a diversity of artistic depictions, sometimes in the same source. For example, mail is depicted in a couple of different ways on the Bayeaux Tapestry, which led to some interpretations that there were 3 or more (depending on the person doing the interpretation) different types of armour shown. Current scholarship is that there is only one type of armour shown - standard 4-in-1 European mail.

This "ring mail" you show (I believe that "ring mail" is the usual Victorian term for this type of reconstruction, but note that "ring mail" was also used to mean conventional mail as well) is one of these. Note that the alternating directions give the appearance of alternate rows in conventional mail.

I don't know the origin of the French term "Broigne", but it looks related to "byrnie". This is still used to mean "ring mail" (as in rings on leather) or other metal things (usually not overlapped) sewn onto leather or some other backing well into the 20th century. As far as I know, this usage comes from (rather uncritically?) making use of older (19th century) sources.

In summary: this is an incorrect reconstruction, based on incorrect speculation from about 100 or so years ago, based on stylised and simplified art.

[Luis Armando]

Well my friend thanks for your valuable opinions ... but I have a book by an author highly regarded here in Mexico and Spain and I do not say anything unless the author who has quite specific, the armor is for the twelfth and thirteenth century. i do not think that is an erroneous reconstruction.
It says so (the book is in Spanish, I have translated) if you want this here.
http://www.maderuelo.com/descargas/Indumentar...8_1220.pdf
Brunia (broigne). Throughout the centuries XII and XIII are still using the old
system Bruni (broigne) with non-interlaced rings or rings, but aligned and
tangents to each other, in successive series in rows, sewn onto a surface
support (large piece of canvas or leather) and it is also usual row layout
of rings strung on a ribbon pin tella strong or leather and then
stitched and backed with green paint used purple or red (García Cuadrado
1999). According to the same author there is another different technique, thanks to the availability of a ring
another and sewn together tangentially each thread through wire
which, in turn, drilling support. Some authors seem to view representations
Bruni in certain sculptures and frescoes where the lorica is represented by alternate rows
rings (usually two) which overlap a lot of tapes of the same material
but could be a mere stylistic convention. Both images below could be
Bruni, but the defensive element is very difficult to recognize in glyptic.

[Chad Arnow]

Luis,
Your description is of a construction called banded mail, where rows of rings have a thong or band through them.

There is simply no historical evidence for it. As Timo said, it is a Victorian-era mistake that has persisted.

Check out our Feature article on mail for more on that subject.

[Werner Stiegler]

The french tried to recreate the same images as round metal disks sewn to a backing of clothes rather than rings.

[James Anderson III]

Luis, I have also seen it called "ring mail" which may help you research. I have not seen any historical evidence of it though. It is similar to some of the Japanese mail that was sewn directly to cloth, but is done with much larger rings.

I have not seen it in any existing European armor.

[Chuck Russell]

i know that picture. that armour is in a time era room in a castle in Germany. its a recreation of what they thought banded mail looked like etc. both of which are way off chain mail hehehe. was a fun room to be in but way off historically i think

[Luis Armando]

thank you very much for your comments, any input that you give me is great, really intrigues me, I want a chaussés and chausses I read that in the twelfth century did so

[Timo Nieminen]

A nice view of the state of armour research/scholarship a century ago can be read in chapter 1 of ffoulkes "Arms and armour". From 1909, and out-of-copyright, and available online at http://www.archive.org/details/armourweapons00ffouuoft .

Another thing one sees in older books (including some new enough so that the author should have known better) is that mail (i.e. chainmail) was unknown in Europe until brought back by Crusaders returning from the Holy Land. While from a modern perspective, with knowledge of Roman and Dark Ages use of mail, this is just wrong, you can see why all sorts of theories were invented to explain what was seen in art - "it can't be (chain)mail, (chain)mail not being used in Europe yet, so what is the artist showing?"

Once printed in book, misconceptions, myths, and other errors can be persistent. Why, I just read this week, in a modern book by an author who should have known better that the average Chinese pudao/kwandao, as used on the battlefield, weighed 20 pounds.

[Quinn W.]

[Dan Howard]

It is definitely a dodgy reconstruction. I tried to outline the problems with "ring mail" and "banded mail" in this brief essay.
http://www.arador.com/articles/chainmail.html

It is an easy theory to test. All you have to do is show a classroom of kids a mail shirt and ask them to draw it. You'll get every variation that you see in the Bayeux Tapestry and other contemporary illustrations.

"Broigne" is just one of many variants of a general term for "armour". Other variants are brnja, bronja, byrnie, etc. Almost invariably it refers to mail since that was by far the most ccommon armour type.

[Matthew Amt]

[Dan Howard]

Yeah, Robin Hood annoyed the hell out of me. Not sure why. I loved Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven, and even 13th Warrior. King Arthur is probably the only "historical" movie that annoyed me more.

[Gottfried P. Doerler]

hm....i just read the mail:unchained article, but i`m still not convinced of the non-existence of the pattern shown above.

first, the words "broigne" or "byrnie" are ethymologicly related to german "brünne" the latter at least rather refering to some sort of scale armour, worn at the age of charlemagne.
and there are some authors of the late 20th cent. arguing for the existence of this type of armour in the 1200`s, being an intermediate form between mail and scale.

second, L. and F. Funcken e.g. in "le Costume, l'armure et les armes au temps de la chevalerie" argue against artistic license, because there are pictorial evidences that show both types in the same picture, disproving the theory, that the artist just wanted to save time by painting "stylised" mail.
and there is a book by F. Buttin "Du costume militaire au moyen age et pendant la renaissance" (1971), which i didn`t read first hand, but it is said, his arguments for broigne are based on studies of literaric contemporary sources, like byzantine Anna Komnena (Alexiad e.g.)

and third, there are only few surviving examples of 12th cent. mail, maybe broignes just did not survive, being held together by leather or cloth. lack of evidence does not mean evidence of lack.

[Dan Howard]

[Werner Stiegler]

[Gottfried P. Doerler]

[Randall Moffett]

Like Dan is saying I do not know of any people who study armour in academics that think this type of armour was used in medieval europe. Just another show of mail armour. It seems to go back to loose/poor interpretations by scholars of the mid to late 19th century. Sadly D and D ran with some of this so it got even further reach...

Sadly terms used simply as armour are fairly common during the medival period and without further info we just have to go with what it seems the words was used for most often in that time.

RPM

[Johann M]

[Nat Lamb]