Part 4

There is an extremely interesting manuscript in the British Museum called the _Comentario Apocaliptica_, said to have been executed between 1089 and 1109. It is frequently referred to by Hewitt, and throws much light on the armour of the period. We have reason to be grateful for the absurd practice persisted in by ancient illuminators and painters of depicting persons, supposed to have lived in Greek and Roman times, in the costume of their own day. One of the illuminations shows four knights mounted. They wear long coats of mail, reaching below the knees, with sleeves, which, in two cases, reach only to the elbows. In one case the coat of mail is shown as composed of blue scales, with red studs, and here we seem to have an instance of jazerine armour (from the Italian _ghiazerino_). It seems clear that the designer did not mean to represent chain-mail in this way, for when the body of the garment is obviously of mail he has taken care to distinguish a different pattern on the chausses or leg armour. Still in this class of illustration it is always a moot point what kind of armour the artist actually did mean to represent. Possibly a shirt of chain-mail was sometimes worn, with stockings of leather set with scales of metal, as more flexible and allowing greater freedom to the limbs. The shirts of mail are edged with wide borders, which may or may not represent the under tunic or gambeson showing beneath.

On fol. 194, we have the full-length picture of a warrior armed _cap-à-pie_. He wears a long hauberk of mail, chausses or leg-armour of the same material, and a conical helmet, with a “nasal” or nose-protector, exactly the same as that worn by William the Conqueror and his knights. Hewitt calls attention to the knop, or button, surmounting the helmet, as a peculiarity. The knight is armed with sword and spears, and, like the four others just mentioned, carries a circular target. This is a noteworthy detail, as kite-shaped shields were almost universally in vogue at this epoch, over the rest of Europe. That they were to some extent in use in Spain also, is attested by the specimen (O59) in the Armoury.

This is a kite-shaped war shield, probably of cedar wood. On both sides it is covered with parchment, and has strong straps of skin, lined with red velvet, for the grasp of the holder, and part of the strap by which it hung from his neck. Inside it seems to have been painted black; the outer side is slightly convex, and was adorned with stripes and other designs in colour and gilding on a red ground. This description of decoration was common in the twelfth century, but had no heraldic signification, the science of blazonry not being at that time well understood. Nothing definite is known as to the original owner of this shield, but it is not unlikely that it belonged to Don Gonzalo Salvadores, surnamed “Four Hands,” or to Don Nuñez Alvárez, both of whom were buried at the spot where it was found. Ramon Berenguer IV., Count of Barcelona (1131-1162) is represented on an engraved seal, reproduced in M. Auguste Demmin’s work on armour, carrying a kite-shaped shield. He wears the conical helmet with nasal and hauberk of mail, with camail or hood of mail, such as was generally worn, and the absence of which is worthy of remark in the warriors of the _Apocaliptica_. Thus early we are able to distinguish certain differences between the knightly harnesses of Aragon and Leon.

Such armour as is shown in the illuminated codex referred to, was no doubt worn by the redoubtable Cid, Ruy Diez de Bivar, whose stormy career extended from 1029 to 1099. The _Poema del Cid_, which relates his great achievements, was written unfortunately at least one hundred and eight years after his death, and therefore we cannot place absolute reliance upon the few details it contains as to his equipment. The following passages are of special interest to the student of arms and armour:

“With bucklers braced before their breasts, with lances pointing low, With stooping crests, and heads bent down above the saddle bow, All firm of hand and high of heart, they roll upon the foe. And he that in good hour was born, his clarion voice rings out, And clear above the clang of arms is heard his battle-shout: ‘Among them, gentlemen! strike home for the love of Charity! The Champion of Bivar is here--Ruy Diez--I am he!’ Then bearing where Bermuez still maintains unequal fight, Three hundred lances, down they come, their pennons flickering white; Down go three hundred Moors to earth, a man to every blow; And when they wheel, three hundred more, as charging back they go. It was a sight to see the lances rise and fall that day: The shivered shields, the riven mail, to see how thick they lay.”

“Riven mail” in the original is _loriga_, a word obviously derived from the Latin _lorica_; but Mr. Ormsby, whose translation I give, is undoubtedly right in his rendering of the word, as cuirasses, or breastplates, were not worn in Spain for one hundred and fifty years after the date of the poem. Here is another passage of some technical interest:

[The Cid beholds approaching the army of the Count of Barcelona, and encourages his own followers.]

“On with your harness, cavaliers! quick saddle and to horse! Yonder they come--the linen-breeks--all down the mountain side. For saddles they have Moorish pads, with slackened girths they ride: Our saddles are Galician make, our leggings tough and stout: A hundred of us gentlemen, should scatter such a rout.”

I am inclined to think that the linen-breeks, so scornfully alluded to, were the trousers or shalwars worn by Moorish auxiliaries of the Count. The word “leggings” in the original is “huesos” (French _houseaux_), which seems to mean the same things. But they are described as being worn on the chausses or stockings of mail, and may not impossibly have been greaves or defences of plate after the Roman pattern. These would seem to be an anachronism at the end of the eleventh century; but Don V. Carderera y Solano (_Iconografia Española_) says that there are in Spain several bas-reliefs of the twelfth century, which represent knights wearing pieces similar to the Roman ocreas. It is, on the whole, more likely that the _huesos_ that protected the stout legs of the Cid were of the jazerine pattern--of leather faced with metal discs and strips.

The Armoury at Madrid was, till lately, believed to contain many relics of the great national hero, among them the _Colada_, a sword which the Conde de Valencia is satisfied belongs properly to the thirteenth century. The sword blade numbered G180 may, however, be ascribed, in the opinion of the same authority, to the eleventh century. It is double-edged, and ends in a round point. Down the greater part of its length runs a groove, on the sides of which are engraved and inlaid with gold certain letters and hieroglyphics, the meaning of which no one has so far deciphered. This blade was included in the treasury of Ferdinand and Isabel at Segovia, and corresponds closely enough with the description in the inventory of that collection of “a sword called Tizona, which belonged to the Cid.” There is, therefore, a strong probability that the weapon before us is actually that with which Ruy Diez de Bivar carved out a kingdom for himself in fair Valencia.

During the twelfth century the conical helmet with nasal began to fall into disuse, though it was worn in Germany as late as 1195. About the last quarter of the century the flat-topped, cylindrical heaulme, or helm, was generally adopted. It was nearly always cast in one piece, had two horizontal clefts for the vision, and was strengthened by bands crossing each other over the face.

The ruined monastery of Benevivere, in the Province of Palencia, contains the tomb and effigy, reproduced in the _Iconografia Española_, of Don Diego Martinez de Villamayor, sometime Chamberlain to Alfonso III. of Castile, who died in the odour of sanctity in the year 1176. The knight is clothed in a long and ample white tunic; over this is thrown a voluminous red mantle. Thus we cannot very well judge whether or not he wears armour; but as he is girt with a broad baldric, ornamented with studs, and clasps a cross-hilted sword, we may not unreasonably infer that he is in knightly gear, and that his spurs are buckled round leg-armour, which appears to be of plate.

If this assumption is warranted--and it is supported by the evidence of the bas-reliefs mentioned by Carderera--it would seem that the Spaniards had progressed more rapidly in the armourer’s craft than their contemporaries. Greaves, jambs, or leg-armour of plate, were unknown in Northern and Central Europe till the fourteenth century. Hewitt thinks they were of German origin because they are sometimes referred to in documents of that age as _beinberga_, from the German _beinbergen_. He admits that they might have been copied from the examples of classical times with which their wars in Italy would have familiarized the Teutons. “In the South of Europe the greaves were already become of a highly ornamental character, as we may see from the sculpture of Gulielmus de Balmis (1289), from a bas-relief in the Annunziata at Florence.” [The greaves are ornamented with floral devices and _écussons_, and are strapped on to chausses of mail.] But in Spain we get a yet earlier example, even supposing the leg-armour on the Jaca and Benevivere effigies was not of this sort.

Don Bernaldo Guillen de Entenza was major-domo of Aragon, and one of the bravest knights in the train of King Jaime I. the Conqueror. He died a few days after the victory over the Moors at Enesa in 1237, and was buried at the Monastery of Puig, near Valencia. His sculptured figure reveals every detail of his apparel (see plate 2). He wears a hauberk of mail reaching to the middle of the thigh, and to the finger-tips, the fingers of the glove being separated; the face is framed in the hood of mail (camail), and the head protected by a round _chapelle-de-fer_, ornamented with studs, and a strengthening band. Over the hauberk is worn a sleeveless surcoat, embroidered at the breast and reaching below the knee; it is split up at the sides to allow greater freedom to the limbs. Both surcoat and hauberk are bordered with a fringe, except at the neck, where the surcoat seems to be edged with a setting of stones or studs. A baldric encircles the lower body, and supports a short, broad cross-hilted sword on the left hip, and a dagger or misere-corde on the right. The pommel of the dagger is carved into the resemblance of a grotesque human face.

The legs are protected by greaves of plate armour, with ornamental lengths up the middle. The knees appear to be furnished with genouillères or knee-caps of iron. The sollerets, pointed shoes, are of mail.

Here, then, in Aragon, in 1237, we find a knight armed with those defences which did not become common in Europe for another century. The circumstance, though it may not in itself appear to be of much importance, is interesting, as proving how quick was the Spaniard of that day to avail himself of the latest appliances and inventions of the age. Aragon, at least, seems to have kept pace with Italy, which is generally allowed to have set the fashion in military equipment. And we find that the armourer’s craft was sufficiently important at Barcelona to constitute a guild, which was existing in 1257.

In the citadel of Lerida there is a fine sepulchral monument showing us that valiant knight, Don Guillelmo Ramon de Moncada, Seneschal of Catalonia, armed _cap-à-pie_ (see plate 3). He died about the middle of the thirteenth century. Like his brother-in-arms, at Puig, he wears the camail and hauberk. Over the forehead he wears a coronet, with shields and studs and gilt fleurs-de-lys. The surcoat, which shows the hauberk beneath, is tastefully embroidered with pearls, and is charged with eight _écussons_, or shields, each supported by two doves. The garment must have been a beautiful work of art. The Seneschal wears jambs (leg-armour) and cuisses (thigh-armour) of plate, and what are unmistakably genouillères of the shell pattern. His shoes are likewise of plate. The armpits and elbows are protected by pieces new to us--the round plates, called palettes or rondels, elsewhere rarely found before the end of the century. Here again, and in the articulated fingers of the mail glove, we have evidence of the advanced condition of the armourer’s art in Spain. This is also demonstrated by a comparison of this effigy with one of identical date--that of a knight in Haseley Church, Oxfordshire (Hewitt, Vol. I., plate 46.) Here the armour is entirely of mail, neither jambs nor coudes (coudières, elbow-plates) being shown. Nor are there any traces of the rich ornamentation seen on the Aragonese warriors’ surcoats and mantles.

These were the spacious days of Ferdinand of Castile and James of Aragon, when province after province, city after city, were wrested from the Moor, and the defeat of Roderick was wiped out on the very spot where he had endured it five hundred years before. Cordova, Valencia, Murcia, Seville, fell in turn before the Christian arms. The armourer-sergeants, wandering through the bazaars of the captured Moorish cities, and curiously examining the products of their dusky fellow-craftsmen, must doubtless have gleaned many new ideas and scraps of useful knowledge. Ibn-Said, born at Granada in 1214, has left it on record that in his time Murcia was renowned for its coats of mail, its cuirasses, and for every description of iron armour incrusted with gold; it was likewise celebrated for its saddles and harness richly gilt. In fact, continues the Moorish chronicler, for all articles of military equipment, such as bucklers, swords, quivers, arrows, and so forth, the workshops of Andalus surpassed those of any other country. He boasts the beautiful inlaid swords of Seville, which were not inferior to those of the Indies.[B] Cordova, the great centre of industry and refinement in the Peninsula, never achieved fame for its steel manufactures, but its oval leather shields (adargas) were known as early as the tenth century, and used all over Europe, but more particularly in Spain, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Some interesting relics of Saint Ferdinand are enshrined in the Royal Armoury. The remains of the cloak in which the saintly King was buried (N9) are thus described in the Catalogue (see plate 1). “Its texture is of silk and gold, made like an Oriental tapestry, checkered, the first of the squares being crimson and a dirty white, with gold castles, and the second with red lions rampant, like those of the Spanish arms, but turned to the left of the shield. The border is woven in horizontal bands, a wide one in the centre, composed of graceful floral designs, blue and red, on a gold ground; two narrow ones, yellow, on the outer edges of the former, and outside these other two bands of Arab lacework of gold on a crimson ground.”

The _azicates_ (long-necked Moorish spurs) of St. Ferdinand (F189 and 160) are of easily-worked iron. What remains of the incrustation of gold is adorned with little silver castles, similar heraldic devices in gilt being distinguishable on the springs of the straps.

The Conde de Valencia de San Juan endeavours to prove--and, I think, with success--that the sword numbered G21, believed at one time to be the Cid’s famous blade “Colada,” is no other than the “Lobera” of St. Ferdinand. How the name “Lobera” came to be applied to a sword is unknown. The Conde hazards a conjecture that it was named after a gentleman called Guillen Lobera, who is referred to in the memoirs of Jaime I. of Aragon. The word was first used in this connection by the Saint himself, who, on his death-bed, bequeathed to the Infante Manuel for all his inheritance, “his Lobera sword, which was of great virtue, and by means of which God had greatly helped him.”

Not less interesting is the passage in the chronicle of Alfonso XI., referring to the famous battle of Salado: “Then the King sent word to Don Juan, son of the Infante Manuel (grandson of Ferdinand), by a gentleman, to ask why he and those in the front did not pass the river. And an esquire, called Garci Jofre Tenoryo, son of the Admiral killed by the Moors, who was a vassal of the King and in the front, said to Don Juan, that his Lobera sword, which he said had virtue, would do the most work that day.”

The blade (see plate 4) is smooth, double-edged, and round-pointed; on both sides for two-thirds of its length it is grooved, like most swords of that time. Inside both grooves are certain signs or letters, engraved and gilded, which the Conde de Valencia reads as the words--_Si_, _si_, _No_, _non_. This somewhat cryptic inscription, the learned antiquary explains as being part of the motto of St. Ferdinand, which may be roughly translated--“Let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay.” The hilt is of the sixteenth century, and was the work of Salvador de Avila, a swordmaker of Toledo, who died in 1539.

Next to this sword is another of the same era (G22), erroneously attributed to Roland, the famed Paladin of the eighth century. It is not impossible that this also was one of St. Ferdinand’s weapons. It is very long and broad, thin and flexible, double-edged, scallop-pointed, and grooved for two-thirds of its length. The groove is engraved with rings or circles, and ends in an elaborate cruciform device. The guard, of massive silver-gilt, has quillons drooping and curving inward, and bears the arms of Castile on one side and those of Leon on the other. The hilt is of wood, plated with silver; the pommel is of iron, and is plated with silver-gilt. The plates were once covered with filigree work. The scabbard is of wood, sheathed in silver-gilt plate, and covered with lace-work, essentially Morisco in character. Of the seventy-five stones originally set in this filigree, only the half remain, including a large amethyst and three engraved stones of the classical style and period (plate 5).

Shields had not changed much since the preceding century to judge from the specimen numbered D60. Like the twelfth century shield next to it, it is of wood covered with parchment, and has grips of skin. On the obverse may be traced the design of a hood, which has led Don Leocadio Salazar to conclude that the shield was the property of the Conde de Bureba, four hoods being on his coat of arms. The epitaph on that illustrious personage’s tomb declares that “he filled Spain with the fame of his name, as Themistocles did Athens.”

Our last instance of a Spanish suit of armour of the thirteenth century illustrates a curious fashion in military attire that often has occupied the attention of experts. The statue of Don Berenguer de Puigvert, in the suppressed Monastery of Poblet, represents him clothed in a full and richly embroidered surcoat, confined at the waist by a baldric, beneath which he is wearing a complete suit of _banded armour_ of a very elaborate pattern. On the forearm the mail seems to be composed of rings placed end to end vertically instead of horizontally. The gauntlets and leg-armour are composed of alternate horizontal bands, some showing a zig-zag pattern; the others, perhaps rings set vertically. Banded mail of various designs seems to have been fashionable all over Europe at the close of the thirteenth century. Hewitt enumerates four examples in English statuary. He expounds the various theories advanced to explain the nature of this armour, and finally confesses that the riddle is still unsolved. As Aragon seems in all improvements in armour to have kept well ahead of the rest of the world, we need not be surprised to find there an example of what was evidently a fashionable style in Europe generally.

The headpiece universally worn at this time was the heaulme or helm. About the middle of the century the aventail, or hinged opening for the face, was introduced, and accordingly we find St. Ferdinand (represented in the windows of Chartres Cathedral) wearing a casque with an aventail cleft with three vertical slits. The camail was still generally worn under the heaulme, which rested not only on the head but on the shoulders of the wearer, and was secured by a chain. It was too heavy to wear habitually, and was, therefore, carried at the saddle, or by the esquire, to be put on at the approach of an enemy. Steel caps also were often worn underneath; but much must obviously have depended on the degree of strength and foolhardiness possessed by the individual.

“From the collection of mediæval ‘Proverbs,’” remarks the author we have so often quoted, Mr. Hewitt, “we learn that Spain was the favourite mart for the knightly charger. Denmark and Brittany had also a celebrity for their breeds of horses of a different character. The fiat of popular approval is given to the--

“‘Dextriers de Castille, Palefrois Danois, Roussins de Bretagne.’

“Such was the nature of the high-bred dextrarius that, when two knights had dismounted, and were continuing the fight on foot, their horses, left to themselves, instantly commenced a conflict of their own of the most gallant and desperate character.” Bucephalus and Pegasus were inferior steeds in comparison.

NOTE

The representation of armour on tombs and sepulchral effigies was subject, during the Middle Ages, to regulations, which throw light on the rank and the circumstances of the death of the deceased. In Carderera’s _Iconografia_ we find the following ordinances ascribed to the Emperor Charles V. They are probably merely a recapitulation of enactments which had been in force several centuries:--

“If any person during his life shall have accomplished any notable feat of arms, or gained honour in the lists, he shall be shown armed _de pied-en-cap_, helmet on his head, visor raised, and hands joined. His sword shall be at his side, and his spurs on. These shall be of gold if he shall have been an armed knight; otherwise he shall have none.

“If he shall have gained no honours in the lists, he shall have the visor lowered, and his helmet shall be placed beside him.

“If he shall not have distinguished himself in the tourney, but shall have died on the field of battle, contributing to the victory, he shall be represented armed _de pied-en-cap_, visor lowered, naked sword in his hand, the point upwards, and his shield in his left hand. If he shall have been of the vanquished, he shall be represented armed _de pied-en-cap_, his sword in its sheath, visor raised, his hands joined, and his spurs put on. If he shall have been made prisoner and died on the field or in captivity, he shall be represented as in the preceding article, but without spurs and with empty scabbard.

“All these personages may be represented in their surcoats, if they shall have taken part in a pitched battle, at which the Prince in whose pay they shall have been, shall have been present; otherwise, they shall not be thus represented, unless they be of the rank of King, Prince, Duke, Marquis, Count, or Baron.

“No man, howsoever noble, shall be represented in his surcoat unless he be the Lord and Proprietor of the Church or Chapel, or the successor (? descendant) of the Lord and Proprietor.

“If any person shall have followed the wars as a man-at-arms, he may be represented armed, but without surcoat and helmet.

“No one shall be represented with a fringe to his surcoat, unless he be of the rank of Baron.”

It should be said in conclusion, that these rules were not always strictly observed, and cannot be relied upon in the absence of corroborative testimony from other sources.

II

THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES