Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe: From the Iron Period of the Northern Nations to the End of the Thirteenth CenturyHewitt, John
History
Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe: From the Iron Period of the Northern Nations to the End of the Thirteenth Century
Hewitt, John
Armor; Weapons
The Louterell Psalter has a good specimen,
copied in Carter's work named above, and in the _Vetusta Monumenta_.
French monumental examples, we learn from M. Allou, are very scarce:
"L'accessoire qui nous occupe est fort rare dans les monuments
français. Nous en trouvons des exemples dans les dessins qui nous ont
été communiqués par M. Achille Deville, des pierres sépulchrales de
Robert Duplessis, 1322, de Robert d'Estouteville, 1331, et de Jean de
Lorraine, Duc de Brabant, 1341[339]."
[Illustration: No. 60.]
[Illustration: No. 61.]
The forms of the ailette are various: the most frequent is the
quadrangular, as in the Ash Church effigy given above, and in this
example from Add. MS. 10,293, fol. 58; a book _dated_ in 1316. The
round form occurs on the ivory casket engraved in vol. 4 of the
Journal of the Archæological Association, and in Plates CXIII. and
CXIV. of Carter's Sculpture and Painting. The pentagonal is seen in
an illumination of Sloane MS. 3,983, engraved as the frontispiece to
Strutt's Dress and Habits; the cruciform, in the figure of a knight
from Roy. MS., 2, A. XXII. fol. 219 (our woodcut, No. 62). And on
folio 94^{vo}. of Roy. MS., 14, E. iij. is an example, the only one
ever observed by the writer, of a lozenge-formed ailette. It is
clear, from the Cross on the shield having the same position as the
other, that the ailette is not a square one worn awry.
The size of this appendage differs greatly in different monuments. In
the round example of the ivory casket, cited above, it is scarcely
larger than the palm of the hand: while, in an illumination of Roy.
MS., 20, D. 1, fol. 18^{vo}, it is little less than the ordinary
shield of the period. Its position is generally behind the shoulder,
or at the side of it: sometimes it appears in front: but too strict an
interpretation must not be given to the rude memorials of these times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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