Late Fourteenth Century Arming Garments I: Caps

[Sean M]

"What, if anything, did a late 14th century soldier put on his head before the first helmet?"

I am starting to do the research for a late 14th century outfit to go under a Lombard harness of roughly the 1380s. That means that I need to answer some questions about late 14th century arming clothes to my own satisfaction. I was inspired to start a set of threads asking for sources by the work of Blaz Berlec on MyArmoury (Link) and such excellent projects as Manuscript Miniatures and An Analysis of 1300 Effigies. This thread will be one of a series of two or three focusing on arming garments for different parts of the body (for the others, see II: The Upper Body and III: The Legs).

Many learned and experienced people have given their opinions about and preferences in late 14th century arming garments on this forum. I appreciate those ... other people's trial and error will make my work easier, especially when it comes time to start sewing. But here I would like to focus on the evidence on which our opinions should be based. Maybe these threads will even cause some well-established opinions to shift!

I have a few things already. What evidence do you know about? What places might be good to look? I will continue to edit this post to add evidence as people provide it.

Visual Sources
Pictures showing men putting on their armour are rare in this period. Many are stylized pictures of pilgrims arming in 13th century kit, or scenes when an armed man petitions a priest or king for something and has bared his head out of respect. They therefore cannot tell us whether anything was worn under the helmet.

Karen Larsdottir reminds us that many men wore coifs as nightcaps; several people suggest that coifs were worn by sergeants-at-law and other officials.

Maciejowski Bible (Paris, circa 1250): This is probably the standard visual source for late medieval arming caps. Unfortunately, its a hundred years too early! Link

Holkham Picture Bible BL Additional 47682 (English, circa 1330): The famous scene of the pedites fighting with bows, axes, swords, and bucklers shows many padded and plain coifs worn by soldiers. Unfortunately, it is also too early. Link

"Von dem passione Jhesu Christi," Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda sanctorum aurea, verdeutscht in elsässischer Mundart BSM-HSS Cgm 6 (Alsace, completed in 1362): A soldier sleeping at Jesus' sepulchre has a bare head with a bascinet and aventail at his side. No coif or cap is visible. He wears a quilted upper garment and iron plate legharness. Link

"Von den kindelin," Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda sanctorum aurea, verdeutscht in elsässischer Mundart BSM-HSS Cgm 6 (Alsace, completed in 1362): This and several other scenes show well-dressed men wearing scale or ?quilted? collars over buttoned hoods. Armour is otherwise almost completely absent from the tormentors. Link.

Guiron le Courtois BNF Nouvelle Acquisition Française 5243 (Milan, 1370s) folio 90r: This romance has several armed men sieze a prisoner and behead another. All appear to be bare-headed on the low-resolution scan. Source (small) and Source (large)

Altichiero, Execution of St. George (Pavia, 1380): Several soldiers in kettle hats appear to have nothing under them. Link

"Capture of Don Pedro," La chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin Yates Thompson 35 (Paris, 1380-1392) folio 246r: A sleeping soldier wears a white cloth coif, doublet, and hosen. Is this an arming garment or a nightcap? Link and Link.

Queste del saint Graal BNF Français 343 (Milan, early 1380s): The “naked knight” scene on folio 32r shows a shirt, braes, aketon, and coat-armour but no cap. Then again, it shows no hosen! Link

Missale et Horae ad Usum Fratrum Minorum BNF Latin 757 (Milan, late 1380s): Folio 79 has a crucifixion scene with fashionable soldiers doing the crucifying. Several wear civilian caps or are bare-headed; the ones in iron caps seem to have no cloth coif, mail coif, or aventail underneath. Link (Large) and Link (Small).

Tacuinum Sanitatis BNF Nouvelle acquisition latine 1673 (Milan or Pavia, 1390s): This shows a number of coifed women, but not so many men. Pages 27r and 88v show dyed, unpadded coifs similar to the Maciejowski and Holkham coifs. Interesting images on 2v, 12r, 27r (a clear coloured coif), 49r, 57v, 62r, 88v (another coif). See Mandragore database.

DKB GKS 1377 4º Biblia Pauperum (German, circa 1400): One of the soldiers arresting Jesus wears a yellow hood under his kettle hat. Link

Thomas de Saluces, Livre du Chevalier Errant BNF Français 12559 (Paris, 1404): The camp of the "princes of the west" (France, England, the emperor, and so on) includes a man in harness with a white linen coif on his head. Source (apparently missing from Mandragore but for sale with ISBN 9788895853208)

Textual Sources
Modus Armandi Milites (English, circa 1320s): This short text lists what a man-at-arms should wear for a tournament, for war, and for a joust. Unfortunately, the second two sections are very brief, and the whole document is written concisely in a mix of Latin, French, and English. Moffat's translation goes: "Strip to the shirt. Brush back the hair [and put on various pieces of leg harness] ... Thence aketon and thence a shirt of Chartres and a coif of Chartres, and a basin in which there ought to be a cerveylere to defend the head lest the basin come in contact with the head, ... and helm that is heaume" (Arms & Armour Vol. 7 No. 1 [2010] pp. 5-29). Moffat shows that in the 14th century, a cerveliere was as often a padded cap as a metal cap, and suggests that the shirt of Chartres was a lucky charm: a shirt made to the pattern of, and touched against, a relic at Chartres Cathedral. It is therefore fairly likely that the “coif of Chartres” was cloth. It is also put on before the lorica or hauberk, whereas a mail coif would traditionally go after.

Anonymous formulary from Guyenne (French, 13th or 14th century, written in French) published as "Formalités des duels et combats judiciares en Guyenne dans les XIIIe ou XIIIe siècles," Bulletin trimestriel de la société de Borda Dax (Landes) (1914) Premier Trimestre pp. 73-87 link. I thank Ariella Elema of Toronto for the link and RScivas for help with vocabulary. This intriguing document lists various pieces of kit and clothing which participants in a judicial duel could be required to wear. For this thread, the most important entry is coiffes de toile de chanvre et de soie (p. 82: Coifs of cloth of hemp and silk) surrounded by articles of plate armour. A French sources translates Cosfas, de draps et de cambys (p. 82) as "coiffes de toile de chanvre et de soie" (hemp and silk coifs).

Froissart, Chronicle, Book 4 Chapter 13 Source (French, written before 1404, describes events at St. Inglevert in 1390): Boucicaut is at a joust. "A squire called Lancaster now stepped forth, and sent to touch the shield of sir Boucicaut. He was ready mounted to answer the call, and, having grasped his spear, they met most courageously: they struck their helmets, so as to make the fire fly from them, and it was astonishing they kept them on their heads. No harm being done, each returned to his post, where they made no long stay before they began their second course with great vigour, each hitting on his opponent’s target: the horses swerved, which prevented this from being a handsome or effectual tilt, but this they could not help. At the third lance they met, and the blow was so well placed, that the Englishman was unhelmed, and passed on to his post bareheaded all but the coif, and would not that day tilt more." (tr. T. Johnes corrected by Will McLean: the key phrase is et demoura le chief tout nud à la coiffe.)

Froissart, Chronicle, Source (French, written before 1404, describing events in 1391): The Count d'Armagnac had fought long and hard on a hot summer day. "He had retreated to a small grove of alders, through which ran a little brook; and he no sooner felt his feet in the water, than he thought he was in paradise, and seated himself by the side of the stream. He, with some difficulty, took off his helmet, and remained covered only by the linen scull-cap, and then plunged his face in the water, at the same time, unfortunately, drinking large draughts; for he was thirsty from the heat, and could not quench it. He drank so much, that his blood was chilled, and a numbness of limbs seized him, with a strong inclination to faint." (tr. T. Johnes and Sainte-Palaye: the key phrase is et demoura à nue teste couverte de une coiffe de toille tant seulement. In modern French, toile seems to be as vague as "cloth" in English.)

Practical Considerations
Some sort of coif or arming cap makes it easier and neater to pull on a greasy haubergeon over one's head. A coif which covered the brow would also reduce the amount of sweat dripping into one's eyes (although few coifs that I have seen cover the brow). Gaukler points out that a coif that covers the ears makes it easier to pull on a tight bascinet without catching one's ears.

Published Opinions
Stella Newton Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince makes the interesting suggestion that by the middle of the 14th century cloth coifs were associated with courts and hunts. She has various sources for white cloth coifs being made in the middle of the century, but all in civilian contexts. She cites some paintings of hunters from the 1340s at the Palazo Publico in Siena but I do not know where to find a good set of photos.

Will McLean, Daily Life in Chaucer's England (Greenwood, 1995) p. 140: "The knight preparing for battle .... might also wear a padded coif on his head- this had been common in the thirteenth century, but as the fourteenth century progressed such coifs were less and less used by aristocratic warriors though they were still worn by more ordinary soldiers." I don't see any comment on unpadded coifs.

According to Ernst, a Swedish article on the maille coifs from Wisby argued that they showed traces of a padded lining. The author favours a padded lining stitched to the coif, but a separate cloth coif would have looked much the same. Link

[Gustovic]

Why would you war anything under the bascinet?
You don't have a camail over your head. The padded inlay sewed to the helm should suffice to the pourpose.

[RandallMoffett]

Gus,

Not sure I am following you but here is an answer to what I think you are asking.

Because not all bascinets were likely lined in the way you are thinking. Till sometime in the 2nd quarter of the 14th century most helmets seem to have been worn over a padded coif and mail coif. I am not sure all bascinets were padded even later. There are moves toward what may perhaps be a plate bascinet that is integral with mail aventails but most seem to look like padded coif, mail coif helmet set up. Holkham Bible includes some good illustrations of gents were it is clearly this set up.

RPM

[Mac]

Sean,

It is my impression that by the middle of the 14th C, coifs are getting pretty old-fashioned. By third quarter of the century, I don't think you can even find old Italian guys wearing them. I can not think of any images of men wearing them in the late century.

Mac

[Gustovic]

Gus,

Not sure I am following you but here is an answer to what I think you are asking.

Because not all bascinets were likely lined in the way you are thinking. Till sometime in the 2nd quarter of the 14th century most helmets seem to have been worn over a padded coif and mail coif. I am not sure all bascinets were padded even later. There are moves toward what may perhaps be a plate bascinet that is integral with mail aventails but most seem to look like padded coif, mail coif helmet set up. Holkham Bible includes some good illustrations of gents were it is clearly this set up.

RPM

Wait, what?
Not all of the late XIVth century bascinets had sewed liner? That's REALLY suprising for me (learning every day something new)...

[Mac]

Because not all bascinets were likely lined in the way you are thinking. Till sometime in the 2nd quarter of the 14th century most helmets seem to have been worn over a padded coif and mail coif.

Randall,

The OP in interested specifically in the late 14th C. If we extrapolate from the early 14th C we do not account for the tremendous chances in fashion and armor that have occurred.

I am not sure all bascinets were padded even later.

I am pretty sure that for all intents and purposes, all later basinets were padded. All of the examples that I have seen in person or through pictures either have holes around the edge, or rivets for a lining strip. I hasten to add, that I am helping Doug Strong illustrate his book, and have seen pics of pretty much all of the surviving basinets.

Mac

[gaukler]

I wear a coif/hood under my helmet for two practical reasons:
1 It's easier to clean a coif than a liner.
2 I don't like having my ears folded over by a snug helmet when I'm putting it on.
I would love to have some evidence for late 14C arming caps, just for my own personal convenience:)
mark

[Gustovic]

Because not all bascinets were likely lined in the way you are thinking. Till sometime in the 2nd quarter of the 14th century most helmets seem to have been worn over a padded coif and mail coif.

Randall,

The OP in interested specifically in the late 14th C. If we extrapolate from the early 14th C we do not account for the tremendous chances in fashion and armor that have occurred.

I am not sure all bascinets were padded even later.

I am pretty sure that for all intents and purposes, all later basinets were padded. All of the examples that I have seen in person or through pictures either have holes around the edge, or rivets for a lining strip. I hasten to add, that I am helping Doug Strong illustrate his book, and have seen pics of pretty much all of the surviving basinets.

Mac

Yep, this gallery would like to agree too https://plus.google.com/photos/11596262 ... banner=pwa

[leekellerking]

I wear a coif/hood under my helmet for two practical reasons:
1 It's easier to clean a coif than a liner.
2 I don't like having my ears folded over by a snug helmet when I'm putting it on.

Same reasons I wear a skullcap when I ride a motorcycle. No reason this wouldn't apply in period.

[Ernst]

Sean,

It is my impression that by the middle of the 14th C, coifs are getting pretty old-fashioned. By third quarter of the century, I don't think you can even find old Italian guys wearing them. I can not think of any images of men wearing them in the late century.

Mac

Maybe old guys don't have to worry about their hair being pulled out by the mail.
Mail coifs 1375-1440 (unless some of the ones under kettle hats are internal aventails):

http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/ ... ew=gallery

[Sean M]

Sean,

It is my impression that by the middle of the 14th C, coifs are getting pretty old-fashioned. By third quarter of the century, I don't think you can even find old Italian guys wearing them. I can not think of any images of men wearing them in the late century.

Mac

Here are the two coifs worn as part of peacetime outfits from the BNF Tacuinum Sanitatis (BNF Nouvelle Acquisition Latine 1673). It was illuminated in northern Italy in the 1390s.

Blue coif on a poor man


Green doublet, brown coif, blue hood on a middling man

[Ernst]

(I hate the BNF's image quality.) Concerning the guy nailing Christ's feet to the cross: Is this simply a red hat, or is that a mail coif hanging down his back?

http://manuscriptminiatures.com/latin-757/2268/

[Gerhard von Liebau]

Yeah, if Sean's interested in wearing a mail coif, it makes sense that a garment would lay between the head and the mail, as prior tradition shows us. If the idea is the wear a padded coif right under a bascinet, this might be overkill on the padding department, but still can't be considered folly. Evidence like that just provided by Ernst suggests that mail coifs remained popular - probably also under helmets from time to time - so why wouldn't the padding as well?

Sean, when is the document from that you provided those two illustrations in your previous post? If the the linen coif hadn't changed much in some 200 years, you're probably looking to do the same thing as far as the shape is concerned... Here are two examples that pre-date your study by a few decades, but may be relevant given the limited information available. Both images were nicked from thearma.org, and are used in an essay on sword and buckler fighting.

A bit of a fresco from the castle of Sabbionara in Trento showing two infantrymen fighting with coifs on, c. 1340.



And I can't find the attribution for this one, but the URL says "Italian 1327" in it. The fellows on the right wear something that looks peculiarly like padding under their helmets.

[Ernst]

Your second example is the previously mentioned Holkham Picture Bible (English, not Italian).
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/holkham ... 47682/165/

I think the salient point is that not everyone wore a bascinet, where attached padding was the norm. A few guys are still seen in kettle hats or helms, and they're likely the ones who still relied on some sort of arming cap.

[Sean M]

(I hate the BNF's image quality.) Concerning the guy nailing Christ's feet to the cross: Is this simply a red hat, or is that a mail coif hanging down his back?

http://manuscriptminiatures.com/latin-757/2268/

My weak eyes can't tell. Its a wonderful scene! I think that man and the dicer in pink may be wearing their hair in a braid! I have never seen that before.

[RandallMoffett]

Mac,

That might be true for the helmets we have remaining but I have seen MS from the late 14th that seem to show a mail coif under a bascinet, at least at the front of the helmet at the brow you can see a line of mail drawn in. Now that said I cannot find it after looking through a few hundred images but I'll keep looking. That said I am sure I have seen some in the past that makes me think the transition was not 100% and likely was drawn among social/economic lines largely for continued use.

In the Pistoia Altarpiece there are a number of bascinets with mail seeming to come from under the rim of the bascinet with the standard bands you see on the outside which makes me thing they are likely not aventails but coifs. If they all were aventails it'd be odd for the artist to only draw this rather important feature on some of them but not on others. Further the coif looks tight to the face almost rather than attached to the helmet. That said the majority seem to have a aventail set up on their bascinets. AS well we do see continued use of coifs in some rather odd places even after the bascinet has been replaced largely. Attached is a 2nd half of the 15th illustration of a Kettlehelmet with one over it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/91027866@N ... hotostream

I would be very hesitant to say coifs under any helmet were discarded, in particular among the non-nobles at war.

Now that said I agree with your time table more or less for the moving on of the mail coif. I think you are right that, by the 3rd quarter of the 14th they are seeming to become outdated, especially among the knightly class and higher. My guess is the last few decades of the century few knights did not have a padded liner on their bascinet with a aventail. But I still think there is enough nagging evidence to contrary to pass its use for the lower classes.

[Sean M]

For the purpose of this thread, lets treat a mail coif as a kind of helmet. I am interested in anything put on before the first helmet.

Both padded and unpadded coifs are attested early in the century. It seems to me that an unpadded arming cap would have been useful under a bascinet with liner and aventail. But can we find any evidence for what, if anything, was actually worn underneath?

[Signo]

Randall, the idea that someone wore a maille coif under a bascinet doesn't dismiss the bascinet from having a liner. Especially if we are talking about common soldier, that had equipment of lower making that the stuff we se usually in museums, then I can see how it could be comfortable to have the bascinet with his liner over a padded maille coif, this will keep the bascinet much more stable and cushioned especially if it's not made on measure but it's a piece of equipment that was used by several people (like that of a town armoury).

[Galleron]

The armored figure at center front of the 1404 Princes of the West illumination seems to be wearing a coif. Click to embiggen.

http://willscommonplacebook.blogspot.co ... -1404.html

[RandallMoffett]

Signo,

That is fine. I do not think any helmet was used without some type of suspension/liner. I'd think it unlikely to be padded if they already had a padded coif but could be.

[Ernst]

There is evidence of fabric beneath the mail coifs excavated at Wisby. Whether this was an internal lining as suggested in this paper, or a separate cloth coif is debatable in my opinion. Fabric beneath the square front and back lappets or "mantle" could be from an integral lining or from the tunic.
http://www.djurfeldt.com/patrik/cupps_i.html

I doubt that wearing a mail coif under the typical helmet suspension system would cause many problems, but I suspect the rivet points would eat through a tight-fitting bascinet liner.

On the issue of kettle hats, we see them worn over a bare head, over the liripiped hood, and over mail. The few images I've seen showing "loose" kettle hats, seem to have all the surrounding troops still wearing them, so it's hard to determine what's worn beneath.
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/decades ... s777/4609/

[Mac]

Sean,

So, as I make it, we have some evidence for the continued wearing of fabric coifs by men in the late 14th C.

This pic is pretty unambiguous. Although the text of the tecuina are quite conservative, the clothing depicted in the various manuscripts tends to be up to date. This guy is not a fashionable young buck, but neither is he an old goat still clinging to the fashion of his youth. He is just a middle aged man of modest means.


I am not at all convinced about the dude in green. He might be wearing a brown coif.... but I am inclined to think that we are just looking at his hair-do. I think he has it slicked back, and curled at the bottom. That's one of the common ways for guys in the late 14th and early 15th C to wear it.


The man at arms in the middle foreground of this pic which G links to above is certainly wearing a coif. The image is small, but the coif is clear enough.


Here is another man wearing a coif from a bit later than you are looking for. That poor folks might still be wearing them in the early 1400s suggests a continuity; if only in lower status clothing.


Mac

[Mac]

Randall, Ernst, Signo, Gerhard, et al,

Shall we take the discussion of mail coifs and helmets etc. to another thread, so as not to derail Sean's?

Mac

[RandallMoffett]

I think excluding the second to last one there we can safely say that it seems very much your last comment on fabric coifs seem a lower class thing. I found some others in a book I have that show similar use of them all on what look to be men digging and farming. All seem dated to the 15th and are from froissart MSs.

I do wonder about the soldier in the one picture though. That is a coif and seems to be late 14th or early 15th. It is interesting. Since it is more common to have the helmet on for these gents it seems hard to know how common or uncommon it would be.

Still the fact we see them so little on people in general makes me think they had declined in use by this period.

RPM

[Klaus the Red]

Since he is attending the king, the armored fellow in the large camp picture might also represent a sergeant-at-law or some sort of court official, a class of whom continued to wear the coif as a badge of office after it had fallen from everyday fashion (per Newton, p. 110). In fact, the king of France is even depicted wearing one, so fine as to be all but transparent, in the dedication page of the 1371 Bible Historiale of Jean de Vaudetar (François Avril, Manuscript Painting at the Court of France- The Fourteenth Century, plate 36). By the way, Mac, it gives the king's hairdo the same slicked-down look as the green-coated guy in the Tacuinum picture, which I interpret as a coif myself.

In other words, be careful of interpreting an isolated image as anything more than symbolic.

K

[RandallMoffett]

Klaus,

A good point. You do see clerks and such in them. Still I think the farmers in the MS likely are not fit into this catagory but it might go far in explaining why the otherwise odd coif is still being used this late by some one of large means.

RPM

[Mac]

Here's another fabric coif in a military context. I have to admit, it is not at all clear to me that the guy on the left ever had a helmet.




Mac

[Tailoress]

Here is another man wearing a coif from a bit later than you are looking for. That poor folks might still be wearing them in the early 1400s suggests a continuity; if only in lower status clothing.


Mac

That image -- or at least parts of it -- from the Rich Hours is/are dated to the mid-15thc, due to the style of the facial features and tell-tale signs of men wearing mid-century fashion in the far background. I don't have my sources handy at the moment to give further detail, but I do recall that much from memory. Note the guy's face -- looks a lot like the style used by the illuminator of Rene's Book of Love, n'est-ce pas?

I don't wish to derail -- just to give another data point. Peasants were probably wearing coifs in fields in the mid-15thc. I am not terribly interested in equating peacable showings of men in coifs with their use in martial context. I think any image that shows them outside of a martial context is at best a weak argument for their use in martial context. Galleron's image, however, is a home run.

-Tasha

[RScivias]

(I hate the BNF's image quality.) Concerning the guy nailing Christ's feet to the cross: Is this simply a red hat, or is that a mail coif hanging down his back?

http://manuscriptminiatures.com/latin-757/2268/

you will find a better picture here :
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8 ... 757.langFR (page 79r)

[Klaus the Red]

Wow, so many interesting things going on in that painting! The guy in the red hat appears to have his hair in a pony tail- as is the chap standing middle left in the red cuirass and the pink/green "ball cap." Then there's the braided pigtail (!) on the man playing dice in the lower right, and the apparently splinted vambraces combined with shell-articulated elbows (which I thought was purely SCAdian), and the "anime cuisses"... all of which are off-topic, but I wanted to point them out just for fun.

[Sean M]

The armored figure at center front of the 1404 Princes of the West illumination seems to be wearing a coif. Click to embiggen.

http://willscommonplacebook.blogspot.co ... -1404.html

That gives us one! There are a few scenes where men in kettle hats seem to have nothing else on their heads, but more pictures of someone in harness with their bascinet off would be helpful.

I think that we have enough evidence to justify a simple linen coif, but I would still like to see whether we can tell whether this was common. As Klaus says, one picture is hard to interpret.

[Tibbie Croser]

http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminated ... llID=56648

This is a link to the British Library catalog of illuminated manuscripts. This picture is from the Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin, late 1300s. The man sleeping in the tent at the back of the picture is not wearing armor, but he is wearing a coif. I don't know whether he's supposed to be a soldier or a servant.

[Sean M]

Could we use this picture to argue for a bare head (http://manuscriptminiatures.com/queste-del-saint-graal-tristan-de-leonois-francais/105/? Our Arthurian hero has his bascinet on the floor in front of him, and wears full harness. But then again, he is in church taking an oath.

See also http://manuscriptminiatures.com/bible-h ... -158/2110/ and http://manuscriptminiatures.com/grandes ... 2606/2372/ and http://manuscriptminiatures.com/chroniq ... c-vii/846/ which have bare-headed men in harness address a king. It seems to me that people are often showed bare-headed in solemn or humble contexts (like http://manuscriptminiatures.com/fleurs- ... s677/4070/ ) and if a fine hood would be inappropriate a greasy cap certainly would.

This one is interesting too, but faded http://manuscriptminiatures.com/guiron- ... aise/1360/

[Mac]

....

[Mac]

you will find a better picture here :
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8 ... 757.langFR (page 79r)

Thanks for finding that link, RS. That throws a lot of light on it.

Mac