Joinville's gambesons

[Ernst]

Sir Jean de Joinville, 'Histoire de Saint Louis', c. 1309

Or avint ainsi que je trouvai un gamboison d'estoupes à un Sarrazin. Je tournai le fendu devers moy, et fis escu du gamboison, qui m'ot grant mestier;

(So it was that I found a gambeson of tow from a Saracen. I turned the cleft to myself, and made a shield of the gambeson, which gave me a great service;)

Does this point to the inside of the gambeson being smooth, and the outside having 'fendu' - fissures, furrows, clefts, etc.?

p.75
https://archive.org/details/memoiresdejeans01parigoog

[Jehan de Pelham]

He turned it inside out because Saracen sweat.

[bsrlee]

Hmmmm. If the gambeson was smooth on the inside, this would also be a quick way of resizing it.

[Dan Howard]

He never put it on; he never had time. He held it in front of him as an arrow curtain. It was only partially successful - it apparently reduced the arrows' power enough to only cause minor injuries.

[Sean M]

Ernst, you might love this: in trecento Italian, a front-opening armour is a corazza fenduta dinanzi. So Joinville turned the opening (le fendu, "the split") towards himself and the back towards the enemy. Its not the French grammar that I learned in school, but Joinville was living a bit closer to sacré Charlemagne than we are.

I expect that the gambeson was soft enough that he could wind it about his left arm like a cloak. Or maybe he put one side of the split over his shoulder, bent his arm and grabbed it near the opposite armhole.

"Cleft" is a good translation for fenduta/le fendu, but when I hear it I think of anatomy.

[Mac]

That's a pretty convincing interpretation, Sean.

Mac