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Randall Moffett




Location: Northern Utah
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PostPosted: Mon 26 Dec, 2011 8:42 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Joseph,

I am not sure the best word here is doublet as I cannot see the original as the link does not go anywhere once in Google books. It is not all that common of a word that early on but is often translated in this way ( incorrectly to what most think of as a doublet). Since for the previous half century they use aketon in these statutes I'd go back to the original. Since the link brings nothing up for me I cannot say if I have read the original document before. We have hard and fast evidence of use of fabric armour in this capacity for these times and we have very little evidence of aketon or gambeson with leather being any more than a facing.

I found coat a great deal in translated works as well and the word is often more or less ok to the latin word (better than doublet at least....)but the fact they often are paired with mail and other armour likely means it is something like an aketon but unless we have indication of leather in this usage it is not going to provide you the evidence you are looking for. The problem is you need something clear to demonstrate the use of this and for the most part the evidence is indirect. The artwork and such could be a type of pairs of plates for example.

Ralph de Nesle has some interesting leather items listed that are armour but no torso armour to what we can tell.

RPM
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Bartek Strojek




Location: Poland
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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 4:29 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

James Barker wrote:
Little more fuel to the fire; a 13th century effigy with a side buckling item under his surcote that looks much like the Maj bible image:



I'm not really sure it it looks like Maciejowski bible image though, substantial, easily visible buckles are AFAIR mostly interpreted as early coat of plates - as visible on a lot of art from the period:

http://www.freha.pl/index.php?showtopic=22876

The same effigy from other angles too.

Of course, it's hard to really tell for sure, but some of those effigies outright show the outline of particular plates, and a lot of solid buckles seem indeed necessary to support that weight in place.
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James Barker




Location: Ashburn VA
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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 5:01 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

No doubt it could be a early form of CoP but it would be really early and there are no rivets depicted in the effigy I posted. Not saying it is one thing or the other just pointing to the possibilities.
James Barker
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Matthew Amt




Location: Laurel, MD, USA
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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 5:58 am    Post subject: Re: coeur & cuir         Reply with quote

Jean-Carle Hudon wrote:
I don't know how the word cuirasse came into existence, but it surely doesn't come from '' coeur''. The oeu sound in french is way too removed from the ui sound. Think of how the words break down : cuir will come out in two distinct sounds whereas coeur is indivisible. Cu - ir versus Keur. Not even close.


Aha, thanks! That's what I was looking for. Now all I have to do is try to REMEMBER it...


Joseph Jennings wrote:
Well, he is certainly wearing something over the mail and under the jupon.


RIght, this is exactly the effigy I was thinking of. (Thanks, James!) As James points out, with no visible rivets or other details besides the buckles, we don't have much to go on. To me, it seems to come down to either solid iron or solid leather, and it really seems way too early for a solid iron cuirass! SO that leaves leather, in my mind (or rawhide).

Quote:
It seems reasonable that a knight on a budget (and some were) that was trying to improve his kit beyond just an aketon and a hauberk might add a leather doublet (be it laminated, or cuir bouilli, or some other techinque).


Why "on a budget"? Most knights of this era were wearing only mail, so additional torso protection is well beyond the usual protection and expense. Not to mention that a less wealthy family is probably less likely to end up with a sumptuous tomb memorial, I would think.

One of the things that keeps cropping up in discussions of leather armor is that the documentable instances of it are NOT cheap! We see it worn by stinking rich nobles, or hear of it used by kings. Surviving bits and pieces are ornate and never "make-shift" or thrown together cheaply.

Matthew
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Chad Arnow
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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 5:59 am    Post subject: Re: coeur & cuir         Reply with quote

Jean-Carle Hudon wrote:
I don't know how the word cuirasse came into existence, but it surely doesn't come from '' coeur''. The oeu sound in french is way too removed from the ui sound. Think of how the words break down : cuir will come out in two distinct sounds whereas coeur is indivisible. Cu - ir versus Keur. Not even close.


You may indeed be correct; I'm no speaker of French and will defer to those who are. Happy Is it possible, though, that pronunciation has changed over the years? For example, a regional dialect like Occitan had some very different pronunciations. The Black Prince wrote his father about the victory at Poitiers and spelled the word something like "Peyters" reflecting a different sound to "oi" than modern French would give. Perhaps this point is irrelevant as Occitan has died out and may have been separate enough not to influence the French language proper.

Happy

ChadA

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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 6:55 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mathew, I'm not sure I would call this time way too early for a solid iron cuirass, there are literary references in the King's mirror and of a joust of a young King Richard the lionheart. Also armourers had been beating large plates of iron into comical helms for a long time before this.
Éirinn go Brách
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Matthew Amt




Location: Laurel, MD, USA
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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 7:13 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stephen Curtin wrote:
Mathew, I'm not sure I would call this time way too early for a solid iron cuirass, there are literary references in the King's mirror and of a joust of a young King Richard the lionheart. Also armourers had been beating large plates of iron into comical helms for a long time before this.


Oh, I'm usually the first to point out that a solid plate cuirass was not a *technical* problem! But as I recall the references are to "plates of iron", which don't necessarily mean a complete shaped cuirass enclosing the torso. This effigy and one or two other depictions are all we have in terms of artwork, and I'm not sure we can use them as proof of a fully-formed metal plate cuirass. Don't take my word for it, though! I haven't done enough research on the subject to argue with the general-knowledge theory of a full iron breastplate showing up only after a few decades of plate-lined surcoats, early coats of plates, etc.

Maybe all we're seeing is a rubber life vest, ha!

Matthew
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Jean-Carle Hudon




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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 7:23 am    Post subject: langue d'Oc, langue d'Oïl         Reply with quote

Hi Chad, Merry Xmas.
Before the French Revolution, the southern tongue still held sway in Provence and Languedoc, though with much less influence than in the days of Richard, the southern duke who also was, on the books at least, king of England...
Some of the intonations of langue d'Oc, which is still studied in the South ( though not by all), can be heard in the Catalan tongue. For the Catalan for squirrel is escurol and the french is écureuil, so maybe in that case the squirrel is not from the anglo-saxon but rather from the french ( langue d'oïl) or even the Langue d'Oc of the south...
In some places in Provence you have bilingual signs French and Provençal, just like in Wales (Welsh and English) and some regions of Canada.
Now pronunciation has evolved, and the written form sometimes demands an effort to understand what was being written, but the problem with the words cuir and coeur has to do with the basic phonetics, The only thing they have in common are the consonnants at the beginning and end of the words, The central sound given by the syllables, however they may be written, are so dissimilar that they could not morph into one another.
The cu-i-rasse would have ended up sounding more like a co-euh-rasse.
By the way, where does the english ''Ok'' come from ? It's quite clear that the sailor's ''Aye'' is not far removed from the old northern french ''Oïl'' , which was the word for ''Yes'', whereas the southern ''Yes'' was ''Oc'', much closer to Ok than Yes will ever be..so did Oc morph into Ok.. or are there germanic roots I don't know about...

Bon coeur et bon bras
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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 9:29 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mathew, I just had a quick look over Oakeshott's AOW and an online translation of the King's mirror, and to me neither imply weather the iron chest defences were made of plates or were of a single piece, but if plates were intended, then this could refer to a coat of plates type of defence or it could refer to the breastplate and backplate. Either way, like you I haven't done enough research in this area to debate it seriously. As for the above effigy, without documentation it's impossible to say what material the cuirass was made from, so there's no point in speculating.
Éirinn go Brách
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Len Parker





Joined: 15 Apr 2011

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PostPosted: Tue 27 Dec, 2011 10:27 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I posted this once before, here's a couple of posts here (in english scroll down) about a leather cuirass three layers thick, sewn together with leather thongs like the sole of a shoe. http://www.13c.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=141&a...p;start=45
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Wed 28 Dec, 2011 4:07 am    Post subject: Re: langue d'Oc, langue d'Oïl         Reply with quote

Jean-Carle Hudon wrote:
By the way, where does the english ''Ok'' come from ? It's quite clear that the sailor's ''Aye'' is not far removed from the old northern french ''Oïl'' , which was the word for ''Yes'', whereas the southern ''Yes'' was ''Oc'', much closer to Ok than Yes will ever be..so did Oc morph into Ok.. or are there germanic roots I don't know about...


It's probably far too late to have had much influence from the Southern French tongues--I don't think even the fanciest etymologies suggest any origin older than the late 18th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.K.
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Jean-Carle Hudon




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PostPosted: Wed 28 Dec, 2011 6:59 am    Post subject: okeh         Reply with quote

Thanks for that Lafayette, interesting article. Strange that he makes no mention at all of oc, but as he starts his article on the premisse that the first known references to ok are late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, I suppose that the author had no use for older similitudes. Maybe our Choctaw indians are descendants of southern french sailors who went adrift ( kidding!!!).
This language stuff is always great fun.
In Quebec, where English vs French still has some resonance in certain quarters, I remember a University language professor who would go on television to show how original our french-canadian idiom really was, as it had assimilated so many Abenaki, Huron and Montagnais words.
He loved the expression '' Bonhomme sept heures'' ( our local Boggy Man, Mamas would warn unruly children that the Bonhomme Sept Heures would get them if they didn't behave..) He would explain how it came from an old indian legend..
He was mortified when it turned out to be the english expression Bone Setter gone awry. It turns out that people would hear howling and expressions of pain from the neighbour's homes whenever the Bone Setter , a kind of rural rplacement for inexistant doctors, came by to set a broken bone. Hence the warning to naughty children, behave or we'll leave you for the Bone Setter, morphed into Bonhomme Sept-Heures.

Bon coeur et bon bras
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Philip G.




Location: Nordrhein-Westfahlen, Germany
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PostPosted: Wed 28 Dec, 2011 8:55 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Regarding the "Cuir/Cuirasse"-issue:

French wiktionary says the following:
"De l’ancien provençal coirassa ou à l’italien corazza ou à l’ancien aragonais cuyraça, tous les trois issus du latin coriacea (« vêtement de cuir ») dérivé de corium"

So the leather hypothesis seems to be the most plausible one.
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