Posts: 704 Location: Oxford, CT
Fri 30 Oct, 2009 8:25 am
Great thread gents - lots of cool stuff all around.
I agree with Randall's cautions regarding the
Hastings manuscript. We've some compelling evidence to suggest that the arrangement of mail voiders, skirt, and standard is a mid 15th century development. Earlier on, we find the haubergeon of mail still very much in use. I'm inclined to believe this arrangement hung on for quite some time; we really don't know how popular, and at what time, the voider system was. Certainly, it appears, through various depictions, to be the norm by the early 16th century.
There's a really interesting illustration, c. 1440, of an Italian army breaking camp. Among the many things going on in the picture is a man pulling on a short haubergeon. Still more interesting is the fact that he's already got on a mail skirt, which as my old friend and colleague David Counts has suggested, may explain a number of Italian statues and effigies where there's a layered look to the mail at the hips.
Even more interesting to me are two illustrations courtesy of Fechtmeister Hans Talhoffer. In the Vienna copy of his codex made for the Swabian knight Leutold von Königsegg (c. 1450), we see a knight, killed in a judicial duel, having his armour removed. He wears what looks like a late 'cotte'/early doublet; it's spiral-laced up the front and has no trace of voiders or their attachment points or holes. It's a very 'civilian' looking garment.
In the Berlin Talhoffer manuscript, probably from *roughly* the same time period, there is a still more interesting page showing the accoutrements for the armoured judicial duel; a similar page shows the tight-fitting costume for the club/sword and large
shield type of duel. The doublet is short, with a high standing collar, and looks for all the world to be "cut full of holes" per the Hastings description. However, there are again no voiders. Instead, the page depicts a haubergeon with a keyhole neck, surprisingly loose-fitting sleeves, and is equiped with a flap of mail to lace closed, thereby providing protection for the groin.
Such permutations raise the question of armour attachment: were plate arm and shoulder defense laced to the haubergeon? That would seem the most likely, as pointing from the doublet, through the mail, is most inconvenient.
All the best,
Christian