The Armour Archive

Did this knight have a time-machine?
http://effigiesandbrasses.com/monuments/hugues_de_boulai/image/2109/large/

No, you merely are not aware of how early certain advances date to. The Amyer de Valance memorial is exactly contemporary to this, and shows cased greaves and cuisse in one of the series of side panels, being worn by said lord. In others, he wears demi-greaves over mail chausses, etc.

All this shows is that this fellow was likely very rich, and thus could afford the most up to date defences circa the date.

I can't tell if the knees are articulated, or it just looks that way.
I'm just amazed how gothic his legs look, in comparision to his otherwise conventional gear.

Though there is a detail at the knees that is very not fifteenth century: the presence of fans on the inside of the knee, as well as the cop being quite small. Such knee cops appear in mid-fourteenth memorial art, so de Boulai's 1346 death date falls right in there -- same year as Crécy.

They quickly found that fans on the inside of the knee were neither convenient nor necessary -- and enough fan in there can tangle together when you walk. Its edges did the saddle no favors, I dare say.

They dumped the medial-side fan, keeping the distal, or outer, one. Knee cops grew larger with time, until we arrive at rather large cops and fans around the end of the first third of the fifteenth.

Konstantin the Red wrote:... Such knee cops appear in mid-fourteenth memorial art, so de Boulai's 1346 death date falls right in there -- same year as Crécy.

But the effigy is dated to 1326 not 1346. It's only 20 years, but in my mind it seems early for fully articulated knees with cased legs. But if they did start that early, then it's good stuff. (I have friends in the SCA that say they do 1320's european, and wear fully articulated knees.)
Good catch Jojo!
-Cian

Cian of Storvik wrote:But the effigy is dated to 1326 not 1346.

Is that the date of the knights death or is that the date his effigy was made, sometimes there is a large difference in those dates.

Death date.

Cian of Storvik wrote:

Konstantin the Red wrote:... Such knee cops appear in mid-fourteenth memorial art, so de Boulai's 1346 death date falls right in there -- same year as Crécy.

But the effigy is dated to 1326 not 1346. It's only 20 years, but in my mind it seems early for fully articulated knees with cased legs. But if they did start that early, then it's good stuff. (I have friends in the SCA that say they do 1320's european, and wear fully articulated knees.)
Good catch Jojo!
-Cian

Again, the Aymer de Valence memorial is mid 1320's, and shows the same - and that is in the backwater of England, not the forefront of development of the day, France and Italy.

James B. wrote:Is that the date of the knights death or is that the date his effigy was made, sometimes there is a large difference in those dates.

This, most thisly. The artist working on the original effigy is not working from a photograph of the deceased, and may be working well after the fact. (Plus, this is what, a 19th or 20th century redraw? So there's that confusing things a bit, too.)

Drawn in the 17th century based on the original tomb.

chef de chambre wrote:Again, the Aymer de Valence memorial is mid 1320's, and shows the same - and that is in the backwater of England, not the forefront of development of the day, France and Italy.

I don't know. I must be looking at another Aymer de Valence, because his armor looks strictly like floating 'soupcan' knees to me. Possibly even a simple cop with leathers. And no view of the cuisses.
But that 'de boulai' has central creases, fans on the cop, and even the thigh looks cased, with multiple lames at the cop, which screams fixed articulation and almost gothic.
I think without corroburating proof of the original Aymer de valence effigy, there's too much probability that it was done at a much later date, or misinterpreted in the 17th century drawing.
-Cian

Mullet cyclas for the win!!!

This type of image though kind of illustrates the issues that we encounter when using monumental effigies as a source (which I am shamelessly guilty of).

Was the image created at the time of the knights death or earlier?
Do we still have access to the original image or just a redrawing of the original?
If we just have a redrawn image, what kind of shape was the original in and did the artist "fudge" details?
etc. etc. etc.

These kind of questions and more demonstrate why effigies, though a wonderful resource, should only be classified as a secondary source.

In a case like this one, I would start looking at other effigies from the same time period and note what else the knights of the time period and region wore. I believe Talbot has done a lot of that heavy lifting already and compiled a lot of the info. Sadly, I don't have a link to it.

I miscounted the X's -- but for the small detail, then, what is that character between the CCC and the XXVI portions of the date at the lower righthand corner? I figure it for a blackletter X with crossbar, admittedly different in form from the other two. What else might it be, if not an X?

The inscription is in French. From what I can make out of it, it gives a date of "le xxviiir de lan MCCC(X?)XXVI" written out in full, not abbreviated, on the lower right. What went immediately before it I don't understand; I'm not seeing anything that looks like it refers to his death -- for a bit I was reading that "allement" as some form of "allemagne" and thought Germany figured into it somehow. The beginning of the inscription identifies him as "mesire que de boulay chfr (unless that's another S, as long S with its descender trimmed off can look a lot like a blackletter lowercase R) lequel à la de (none too legible)allement" etc. After his feet and greyhound, it takes up much more clearly "si prions a nostre seigneur quil ait mercy de lame de luy Amen." ("Let us pray to Our Lord that he have mercy on his soul, amen.") Modern French would cast that as "qu'il ait merci [pitié] de l'ame de lui," but they seem to have been much less meticulous about the apostrophes at that time.

Cian of Storvik wrote:

chef de chambre wrote:Again, the Aymer de Valence memorial is mid 1320's, and shows the same - and that is in the backwater of England, not the forefront of development of the day, France and Italy.

I don't know. I must be looking at another Aymer de Valence, because his armor looks strictly like floating 'soupcan' knees to me. Possibly even a simple cop with leathers. And no view of the cuisses.
But that 'de boulai' has central creases, fans on the cop, and even the thigh looks cased, with multiple lames at the cop, which screams fixed articulation and almost gothic.
I think without corroburating proof of the original Aymer de valence effigy, there's too much probability that it was done at a much later date, or misinterpreted in the 17th century drawing.
-Cian

You are looking only at the effigy itself. There are a series of bas relief carvings depicting Aymer in a number of variations of armour, around the circumference of the side of the monument. IN one, he wears a weird-assed kettlehat, in the one I am thinking of, an early visored bascinet a la 'the romance of Alexander'.

Most effigies had a lot of additional sculpture around them as a paert of them, some sadly damaged over the centuries

Welcome to the slippery slope that is medieval effigies.

One of the primary reasons why I avoid dating armour by artwork but especially effigies.

By the 1310s, maybe 1320s at the latest, you see every plate armour you could ever need in use for the most part in medieval art. Plate defences for the entire body had been clearly present in text since the last quarter of the 13th. Less clear references are even earlier.

I think it does look a bit earlier than I'd have expected but nothing to make me think wormholes of flux-capacitors were needed.

RPM

Konstantin the Red wrote:I miscounted the X's -- but for the small detail, then, what is that character between the CCC and the XXVI portions of the date at the lower righthand corner? I figure it for a blackletter X with crossbar, admittedly different in form from the other two. What else might it be, if not an X?

I'm wondering if that symbol could possibly have been an early "plus" sign? We know that a symbol similar to a plus sign was used as an abbreviation for et later in the century.