Question

can someone help me write an essay about the beliefs, weapons, and armor? please actually help me ;-;

Answer 1

Answer: How was armor made in medieval times?

Scale armour made from small overlapping pieces of iron attached to a cloth or leather backing like fish scales were worn but were rare amongst European knights. A variation was 'penny plate' armour which was made up of small disks held together by rivets through the centre of each piece

What was a knight's main weapon?

sword

How did weapons change in the Middle Ages?

The sword, symbol of the chivalric code and his noble status, was above all the knight's most important weapon. With a heavy blade one metre in length, a 'great sword' had to be held with both hands and was remarkably stable in design from the 11th to 15th century CE

As defense mechanisms improved weapons were also improved. Curtain walls, moats, portcullises, towers and drawbridges improved the castle's defense. Castles were used for military purposes and defended troops, nobles and kings. Curtain were the first line of defense for a castle.

Why did knights stop wearing armor?

Armour cuirasses and helmets were still used in the 17th century, but plate armour largely disappeared from infantry use in the 18th century because of its cost, its lowered effectiveness against contemporary weapons, and its weight.

European warriors of the early Middle Ages used both indigenous forms of military equipment and arms and armor derived from late Roman types. One of the most widely used types of helmet was the Spangenhelm. Body armor was usually either a short-sleeved mail shirt (byrnie), made up of interlocking iron rings, or a garment of overlapping scales of iron, bronze, or horn. Shields were oval or round and made of light, tough wood covered with leather. Metallic mountings lined the rims. A hole in the center of each shield was bridged by a hand grip inside and a shield boss outside. Weapons were the spear, sword, ax, and the bow and arrow.

At the height of the Middle Ages, Saint Anselm (ca. 1033–1109) listed the equipment of a knight: his war horse (which by the thirteenth century was protected by mail and fabric), bridle, saddle, spurs, hauberk (a long-sleeved mail shirt, sometimes with a hood, or coif), helmet, shield, lance, and sword. Toward the end of the twelfth century, a new flat-topped type of helmet with side plates, which hid the face of a knight, became popular. To distinguish friend from foe, the knight’s triangular shield was painted with identifying symbols. By 1200, mail for the legs, called chausses, was commonly worn by mounted warriors. Later, boiled leather or steel pieces protected the knees (kneecops), while small squares of the same hard materials covered the vulnerable shoulder joints (ailettes).

By the fourteenth century, the improved crossbow was able to pierce shields and mail armor. To counter this, knights first wore a poncho-like coat with small rectangular plates riveted to it, while articulated plate armor was developed for the legs, arms, and hands. The small, square, convex shield of the time (the targe) was eventually relegated to use in tournaments, since improved body armor made it unnecessary. A new form of helmet joined the all-encompassing great helm and the wide-brimmed chapel-de-fer (war hat). This was the more streamlined, close-fitting bascinet, with a curtain of mail (camail) from chin to shoulders, which frequently had a movable visor. By the late 1300s, solid breastplates first appeared to protect the chest as part of the short, tight-fitting coat of plates called a brigandine, while smaller plates covered the abdomen, hips, and back.

Within a few years, by about 1420, full head-to-toe plate armor was in use, completing the image of the knight in shining armor.

Answer 2

With few exceptions, arms and armor of virtually all periods and from all the world’s cultures were decorated to varying degrees. The desire to embellish objects of everyday and special use was naturally extended to those that served such important purposes as obtaining food, self-defense, and maintaining power. Most cultures valued weapons and armor as signs of rank and status, as traditional symbols of the warrior class, and as diplomatic gifts. However, it was the use and function of the individual weapon or armor that determined why, how, and to what extent an object was decorated.

While the equipment of the common man-at-arms was often plain or the decoration kept to a minimum, it was the arms and armor of the higher levels of society—nobility, military commanders, and elite warriors—that would conspicuously be adorned with costly decoration (2008.638.1). In times when wealth equalled power, this degree of decoration was as much an expression of the wearer’s status and rank as it was indicative of the value placed on such arms and armor by the owner. However, on arms and armor for practical use, on the battlefield or for hunting, care was taken that the decoration did not impede function. Only the equipment and accoutrements for tournaments and especially for ceremonial use were sometimes so lavishly decorated that the importance of the decoration began to supercede the function of the actual object. A somewhat different variety is the symbolic decoration that was meant to empower both the object and its owner with magical and apotropaic qualities, to justify claims to power or to denote religious beliefs, education, and sophistication.

In the Museum’s collection of arms and armor, the diversity of decoration of earlier periods and various cultures is represented with such outstanding examples as a Mesopotamian gold and silver axhead (1982.5) of the late third to early second millennium B.C., and a presentation model of a Colt Percussion revolver (1995.336) of the mid-nineteenth century with elegant gold inlay.

Some of the foremost artists of their time—painters, draftsmen, and goldsmiths—were actively engaged in designing arms, armor, and their decoration, or decorating the objects themselves. Cennino Cennini’s famous handbook on artistic techniques, Il libro dell’arte, written around 1400, describes how to make crests for helmets used in tournaments. Many court painters appear to have also been involved in the embellishment and painting of banners and shields. Artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, and Hans Holbein drew elaborate designs for cannons, sword hilts (2000.27), scabbards, armor, and etched decoration of various parts of armor, while field and tournament armors were etched with designs of exquisite quality by printmakers like Daniel Hopfer (1471–1536). Since the sixteenth century, famous goldsmiths and silversmiths such as Bartolomeo Campi, Étienne Delaune, or Elisaeus Libaerts became involved in the designing and decorating—even the production—of armor, sword hilts (2010.165), and firearms (1972.223).

Decoration itself could take many forms. The simplest was the addition of separate decorative and/or symbolical elements to an otherwise strictly functional object or group of objects, for example, the crests on helmets of the European knight and Japanese samurai. More sophisticated decoration involved the mechanical alteration of an object’s shape, form, and surface, or adorning the latter in a variety of artistic techniques and styles with additional materials such as paint, semi-precious and precious metals and stones, textiles, and fur. In many cases, various materials and different artistic techniques might be combined to decorate one object or group of objects.

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Arms and Armor in Renaissance Europe.” (October 2002)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Famous Makers of Arms and Armors and European Centers of Production.” (October 2002)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Fashion in European Armor, 1000–1300.” (October 2004)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Arms and Armor—Common Misconceptions and Frequently Asked Questions.” (October 2004)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Techniques of Decoration on Arms and Armor.” (October 2003)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Fashion in European Armor, 1400–1500.” (October 2004)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Fashion in European Armor, 1500–1600.” (October 2004)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Fashion in European Armor, 1600–1700.” (October 2004)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “The Decoration of European Armor.” (October 2003)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Fashion in European Armor.” (October 2004)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Fashion in European Armor, 1300–1400.” (October 2004)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “The Function of Armor in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.” (October 2002)

Breiding, Dirk H.. “Horse Armor in Europe.” (March 2010)

Related Essays

Chronology

Keywords

Artist or Maker

Online Features