Knight Armor Styles
Many professions are associated with particular types of clothing. Business executives wear three-piece suits. Doctors wear scrubs and white lab coats. Police officers have their blue uniforms and caps. A knight's profession was war, and his work clothes consisted of a suit of armor. However, like a business suit, armor often changed styles as fashion dictated.
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Armor Development
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Knights of the ninth to 12th centuries wore mail armor made of linked metal rings. Thirteenth-century knights began augmenting their mail with steel plates. By 1400, they were almost completely encased. A cuirasse consisting of a breastplate, backplate and metal skirts called tassets protected the torso.Their thighs were protected by cuisses. Knees were protected by poleyns and lower legs were protected by greaves. Pauldrons protected the shoulders. Elbow guards called cowters and metal sleeves called vambraces protected the arms. Metal gloves called gauntlets protected the hands and metal shoes called sabatons protected the feet. Plate armor weighed 44 to 55 pounds, but the weight was so evenly distributed that a knight could lie down, run and mount his horse without any assistance.
Gothic Armor
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Gothic armor developed in the mid-1400s. Italian Gothic armor featured elegant curves and smooth round shapes. Italian sabatons were made from mail rather than plate armor. German Gothic armor featured slender proportions, pointed features and an elongated waist. Sections were decorated with raised lines called flutes. The sabatons featured long pointed toes styled after fashionable shoes of the day. The points could be removed when the knight wasn't riding his horse.
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Maximilian Armor
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Developed in Germany in the late 15th century, Maximilian style armor was named for the German Emperor Maximilian I. However, according to historian Christopher Gravett, he didn't necessarily wear this style of armor. It combined the rounded shapes developed by Italian armorers with the decorative flutes invented by the Germans. Unlike earlier Gothic armor, Maximilian flutes covered the entire suit except the greaves.The flutes imitated the pleats used in stylish clothing of the day. Maximilian armor went out of fashion around 1530.
Greenwich Armor
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Greenwich armor was an English style created in the 16th century at the armor workshop established in Greenwich, England, by King Henry VIII. Like Maximilian armor, its design followed civilian clothing of the day. The breast plate came to a narrow waist in a shape called a "peascod" and the wide hips allowed the knight to wear the popular style of padded hose called trunk-hose underneath. Greenwich armor featured gauntlets, pauldrons and poleyns made of several small plates for extra articulation.
Jousting Armor
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A joust was a sporting event involving mounted knights charging each other with their lances. Jousters aimed at their opponent's left side, so jousting armor featured extra plates over the left arm, the neck and left-half of the torso. A special helmet with sloping sides deflected the lance from the face and eyes. A jousting shield with a curve that forced the lance to slide away from the torso was attached to the breastplate. A lance rest near the armpit supported the weight of the lance and prevented it from being rammed through the armpit on impact.
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References
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