īy the 14th century, articulated plate armour was commonly used to supplement mail. Eventually with the rise of the lanced cavalry charge, impact warfare, and high-powered crossbows, mail came to be used as a secondary armour to plate for the mounted nobility. The oldest intact mail hauberk still in existence is thought to have been worn by Leopold III, Duke of Austria, who died in 1386 during the Battle of Sempach. As time went on and infrastructure improved, it came to be used by more soldiers. Mail from dead combatants was frequently looted and was used by the new owner or sold for a lucrative price. It was typically an extremely prized commodity, as it was expensive and time-consuming to produce and could mean the difference between life and death in a battle. Eventually the word "mail" came to be synonymous with armour. Note the scene of stripping a mail hauberk from the dead at the bottom.Īfter the fall of the Western Empire, much of the infrastructure needed to create plate armour diminished. Panel from the Bayeux Tapestry showing Norman and Anglo-Saxon soldiers in mail armour. Without more certain evidence, this dispute will continue. Other historians claim instead that the Carolingian byrnie was nothing more than a coat of mail, but longer and perhaps heavier than traditional early medieval mail. It was also quite long, reaching below the hips and covering most of the arms. only on artistic and some literary sources because of the lack of archaeological examples, some believe that it was a heavy leather jacket with metal scales sewn onto it. There is some dispute among historians as to what exactly constituted the Carolingian byrnie. Noting that the byrnie was the "most highly valued piece of armour" to the Carolingian soldier, Bennet, Bradbury, DeVries, Dickie, and Jestice indicate that: A layer (or layers) of mail sandwiched between layers of fabric is called a jazerant.Ī waist-length coat in medieval Europe was called a byrnie, although the exact construction of a byrnie is unclear, including whether it was constructed of mail or other armour types. A shirt made from mail is a hauberk if knee-length and a haubergeon if mid-thigh length. A mail collar hanging from a helmet is a camail or aventail. The standard terms for European mail armour derive from French: leggings are called chausses, a hood is a mail coif, and mittens, mitons. In early medieval Europe "byrn(ie)" was the equivalent of a "coat of mail"Ĭivilizations that used mail invented specific terms for each garment made from it. The first attestations of the word mail are in Old French and Anglo-Norman: maille, maile, or male or other variants, which became mailye, maille, maile, male, or meile in Middle English. The Arabic words "burnus", برنوس, a burnoose a hooded cloak, also a chasuble (worn by Coptic priests) and "barnaza", برنز, to bronze, suggest an Arabic influence for the Carolingian armour known as " byrnie" (see below). In modern French, maille refers to a loop or stitch. Another theory relates the word to the old French maillier, meaning to hammer (related to the modern English word malleable). One theory is that it originally derives from the Latin word macula, meaning spot or opacity (as in macula of retina). The origins of the word mail are not fully known. Mail continues to be used in the 21st century as a component of stab-resistant body armour, cut-resistant gloves for butchers and woodworkers, shark-resistant wetsuits for defense against shark bites, and a number of other applications. Herodotus wrote that the ancient Persians wore scale armour, but mail is also distinctly mentioned in the Avesta, the ancient holy scripture of the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism that was founded by the prophet Zoroaster in the 5th century BC. Mail spread to North Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Tibet, South East Asia, and Japan. Mail may have been inspired by the much earlier scale armour. Its invention is commonly credited to the Celts, but there are examples of Etruscan pattern mail dating from at least the 4th century BC. The earliest examples of surviving mail were found in the Carpathian Basin at a burial in Horný Jatov, Slovakia dated in the 3rd century BC, and in a chieftain's burial located in Ciumești, Romania. Fresco of an ancient Macedonian soldier ( thorakites) wearing mail armour and bearing a thureos shield
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