Armour in Texts
One of the pleasures of studying old arms and armour is the opportunity to combine different types of evidence. Texts, images, archaeological remains, reconstruction, experiment, and comparison with other cultures can all help to understand how these objects were made and used. Of these, texts tend to be the most neglected. Scraps of evidence are usually scattered across collections of documents and libraries of literature, and many of these texts are difficult to obtain. Digitalisation projects often concentrate on literature, or trim out technical details to save space. And since armour scholars are often amateurs, they sometimes feel uncomfortable finding and using texts in old languages. I cannot remove these difficulties and discomforts, but I would like to do something to make them less.
This page is a directory of texts describing armour from around the world. In keeping with my own interests, it focuses on textiles, the construction of armour, and the wearing of armour. I am not familiar enough with the sources to contribute much outside of the ancient Near East, the classical Mediterranean, and later medieval Europe, so I welcome suggestions from other lands and cultures.
I intend to focus on texts in their original language, providing a parallel translation where one is available or I can write one. Because life is short and this is a work of world history, I may sometimes resort to posting a translation alone, but only in extremis. Studying old armour is as good an excuse to learn old languages as any other, and understanding many texts requires an understanding of the original terms and their meaning at a particular place and time.
Is there a text on armour which you have always wanted to see but which is not available in your local library? Is there a text on your site or blog which should be linked from here? Can you translate a text which is only available in the original? Then contact me.
Note on Organization
Sources on this page are organized roughly chronologically and marked with the part of the world which they describe. To save space and typing, centuries are abbreviated as Roman numerals with a – for BCE and a + for CE. For example, -VI is the sixth century BCE (circa 600-501 BCE).
Because the sources in this project span a period of 4000 years, they have been sub-divided into five eras:
- ancient (origins of writing to 6th century BCE)
- classical (5th century BCE to 5th century CE)
- early medieval (6th century CE to 10th century CE)
- late medieval (11th through 15th centuries CE)
- modern (16th century CE to present day)
I will record changes to this page after March 2017 under What’s New.
Ancient (origins of writing to -VI)

- Sumerian lists of signs from the Early Dynastic period (3rd millennium BCE) contain words like e-mè “leather implements for battle (armor)” (ePSD me [BATTLE]) and e.zi-es “a leather piece of armor” (ePSD ziš [ARMOR]). Miguel Civil, “Of Bows and Arrows,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 55 (2003) pp. 49-54 https://doi.org/10.2307/3515953
- Lists of Materials from the Akkadian Empire (Southern Mesopotamia, before 2000 BCE): Cuneiform texts from the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin list the amount and types of copper, silver, skins, and wool required to make different kinds of helmets. See the entry “Helm A. Philologisch” in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie (RlA is now open access). One of these is from Susa, RT 35, 28 = MDP 14 Nr. 86 and mentions bronze caps (SAG̃ŠU.ZABAR) each of which contained 1 2/3 minas of bronze (ZABAR) and caps of oxhide (SAG̃ŠU.KUŠ.GUD) made of oxhide, goatskin (KUŠ.MAŠ2), and 1/3 mina of wool (SIKI).
- Various, Amarna Letters (Egypt, Levant, Syria, -XIIII): This cuneiform archive from Egypt includes descriptions of gifts including arms and armour. I don’t have time to create a page for these yet, but see a transcription of the cuneiform here and the printed translation into English by William L. Moran here.
- Nuzi Texts (Iraq, Late Bronze Age): Tablets from the city of Nuzi north of the Tigris describe the materials used to make scale armour and helmets for men and horses in great detail. They can be compared to the surviving armour in Tutankhamun’s tomb, paintings from other Egyptian tombs, and loose scales from various sites. They are translated in a PhD thesis by Timothy Kendall which is not yet available online, Warfare and Military Matters in the Nuzi Tablets (PhD Thesis, Ann Arbour, 1974) and summarized in another by Thomas Hulit which also describes the intact scale armour found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
- Chou Li (State Handbook of the Chou Dynasty: China, early 1st millennium BCE): This handbook describes the leather armour which courtiers were to wear. See Berthold Laufer, Chinese Clay Figurines (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1914), pp. 175 ff (link) or Robinson’s Oriental Armour (reprinted by Dover Publications).
- Tell Halaf No. 48, Military Equipment for Ten Men (Iraq, -VIII): A tablet in the archive of an Assyrian governor describes equipment for ten soldiers, six equids, and a chariot. Link.
- Homer, Iliad (Aegean, -VII): Until I have time to collect and read and translate the right passages, here is a good book which discusses the main passages (link to publisher’s website).
- Alcaeus fragment 140 Voigt (Aegean, -VI): Sometime around 600 BCE, a Greek aristocrat sang about the arms and armour which he and his friends had gathered and which would be useful for “some work” which he left delicately un-named. Link
- Salamis Decree, IG I3 1 (Athens, -VI): A few years before 500 BCE, the demos of Athens decreed a law governing their military colonists (klerochoi) on Salamis. It contains the first example that I know of where equipment or horses are described in terms of their minimum value. Similar practices continued as long as soldiers were responsible for providing their own horses, weapons, and armour; some of the French and Burgundian military ordinances from the 15th century CE describe horses in this way, for example. Skidmore College Classics Department has a transcription and translation; you can also find a translation in Meiggs & Lewis’s book on Greek historical inscriptions and a Greek text in the Packard Humanities Index under the region Attica as number IG I3 1 (link).
That is my most recent ancient source. To return to the top of the page click here ↑
Classical (-V to +V)

- Herodotus 7.61-100 (Southwest Asia, -V): A description of the ethnic arms of nations from Greece to India. Link (Greek text is available in an expanding sidebar).
- Gadal-Iama letter (Babylonia, -V): A contact between two tenants specifying the equipment, horse, and cash which one must provide when the other goes to a muster in Uruk. Link.
- Temple inventories from Delos (Aegean, -V to -I): Some Greek temples carved lists of the treasures which had been dedicated to them into stone (it must have made sense at the time). These treasures often included fine or captured arms and armour. Some from Delos were published as inscription ID 104 “… knife (machaira) 1 breastplates of skin (thorakia skutina) 4 linen 1 spoladion” (so there seem to be leather and linen breatplates and a spoladion) ←
- Xen. An. (Greece, -IV): …
- Xen. Hippik. §12 (Greece, -IV): A lifelong horseman and soldier has a good rant about the best kind of equipment for a horseman. Link (I have not read the original recently, so I can’t vouch for the translation).
- Aeneas Tacticus, Poliorketika §10, 29, 30 (Greece, -IV): A thoughtful observer and reader suggests how a small city can best defend itself from enemies within and without. One of the issues is how to ensure that the right people, but only the right people, have access to arms. Link (I have not looked at the original either).
- Inventories from Attica (Greece, -IV): The Athenians also got into the habit of recording all kinds of ephemera on stone, including property of the city and the gods. An inventory from the end of the 4th century BCE, IG II² 1485 lines 60-63, mentions 13? cuirasses linen and scaly which were neither in good shape nor intact (θώρ[α]κ[ες λιν]οῖ καὶ [φολιδωτ]οὶ ∶ΔΙ[ΙΙ∶] ο[ὐ]χ ὑγιε[ῖς οὐδὲ ἐ]ντελεῖ[ς∶]) These may be descended from the 16 cuirasses listed in the year 369/8 BCE (IG II² 1424a).
- Amphipolis Military Decree (Macedonia, -II): Sometime in the second century BCE, the regulations for soldiers in the service of one of the Antigonid kings were carved on marble. Among other things it listed penalties for appearing without a specific items of equipment. There is a published translation in M. Austin, The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest no. 90 pp. 180ff (Google books link); for transcription of the Greek see SEG 40.524 on the Packard Humanities Institute website or M.B. Hatzopoulos, Macedonian Institutions Under the Kings, Volume 2. Epigraphic Appendix. Athens 1996 (I have not seen this).
- Polybius 6.19-25 (Italy, -II): Polybius’ famous description of how the Romans raised their armies includes a detailed description of their equipment. The Loeb translation is available on Lacus Curtius but remember that it gives Latin equivalents for his Greek words and was written as a ‘crib’ for readers with the Greek text on the facing page. The description of the Macedonian phalanx is at Polybius 18.28-31 but unfortunately he assumes that Greek soldiers know how a Macedonian phalanx is equipped.
- Plutarch, Life of Alexander 32.8-12 (+II): Description of how Alexander the Great dressed for the battle of Gaugamela. Link (I can’t vouch for the translation). ←
- Hellenistic tacticians (Mediterranean, -I to +II): Theories of how to build the ideal army included the weapons and army which that army should use.
- Caesar, Civil War 3.44.6 (Mediterranean, -I): During a long period of trench warfare at Dyrrachium:
Pompey sent archers and slingers, of which he had a great number, into his own positions, and they wounded many of our men, and a great fear of arrows came upon them, until almost all of the soldiers had made tunics or coverings out of felts or patchworks or leathers, with which they were protected from missiles.
This is one of very few pieces of evidence for soldiers wearing improvised armour before the 20th century (perhaps because in earlier times, materials were expensive, and soldiers did not have trains or motor vehicles to help them carry the weight). The Latin is available on the Perseus Project, the translation above is my own. ←
- Diodorus and Nepos on Iphicrates’ reforms (Mediterranean, -I): Two sources describe how the Athenian general Iphicrates changed the equipment of his infantry in the fourth century BCE. The sources are Diodorus 15.44 (English on Lacus Curtius) and Nepos, Iphicrates 1 (Latin on Bibliotheca Augustana). ←
- Strabo, Geography (Mediterranean, -I): …
- Josephus, Jewish War (Judaea, +I): BJ 3.5.5 on a legion on the march, BJ 6.1.8 on the problem of wearing hobnails in a stone court, …
- Roman papyri and writing boards (+I to +III): P. Berlin inv. 6765 in Bruckner and Marichal, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores X I no. 409, P. Vindob. L135 (in Harrauer and Seider, “Ein neuer lateinischen Schuldschein,” Zeitschrift für Papyr. und Epigr. 1981), Tomlin, “Roman Manuscripts from Carlisle: The Ink-Written Tablets,” no. 16 Text Relating to Missing Lances, Vindolanda, Vindonissa, P. Aberdeen 70, letters of Claudius Terentianus the marine in P. Michigan VIII.467 and VIII.468 (P. Mich. inv. 5391 and P. Mich. inv. 5390), P. Giss. 47 where an agent buys a cuirass of good brass (θῶραξ ἐκ καλοῦ ὠραχάλκου) for a strategos in Egypt for 360 drachmas of silver sometime around the reign of Hadrian (available in Greek and German) … Available on Armour in Texts.
- Vindolanda tablet 164 (1st century CE): “The Britons [are unarmou]red (nu[di sunt]). Very many are horsemen. The horsemen do not use swords, nor do the Brits halt in order to throw javelins.”
- Cassius Dio 78.7 on the ‘Macedonian phalanx’ of Caracalla (Greek text available here, at first glance I have no problem with the English translation here) …
- Anonymous treatise on military matters (de rebus bellicis) (Western Roman Empire, +IV or +V) … here there be dragons! A Latin text is available on the Digital library of late-antique latin texts and an English translation is available on a web forum ←
(To start your research into western sources, see the Reallexikon der Assyriologie and Bishop and Coulston’s Roman Military Equipment; typing words for arms and armour into databases of inscriptions or modern dictionaries of classical Greek can also be helpful. Greek and Akkadian are probably the most useful languages to learn. I can’t give advice on Sanskrit or Chinese sources unfortunately).
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That is my most recent classical source. To return to the top of the page click here ↑
Early Medieval (+VI to +X)

Folio 158v (Paris, early 9th century CE) c/o http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4868/13197/
“during the early Middle Ages, people (in the former Western Roman Empire) did not write in detail about warfare”
– Guy Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450-900 (Routledge: NY, 2003) p. 2
- Maurice, Strategikon (Eastern Roman Empire, +VI): A manual proscribing how cavalry and infantry should be equipped, with ethnographic notes on how the Romans’ main enemies fought. There are two main translations: one available in cheap paperback by George T. Dennis (link) and another scholarly edition by Philip Rance (link). I own the former but not the later. Books I, XI, and XII contain most of the information on arms and armour.
- The anonymous Byzantine treatise on generalship (Eastern Roman Empire, +VIIII): This text, probably from the 9th century, is said to recommend that soldiers wear a special garment (ἱμάτιον) a finger thick under their iron armour. I have not seen it, but there is a Greek text and German translation in Rüstow and Köchly’s Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller vol. 2 pt. 2; George.T. Dennis has a translation from Harvard University Press (ISBN 9780884023395). On the date see Philip Rance, “The Date of the Military Compendium of Syrianus Magister (Formerly the Sixth-Century Anonymus Byzantinus),” Byzantinische Zeitschrift Bd. 100/2 (2007) I. Abteilung pp. 701-737) [academia.edu] ←
- Hrabanus Maurus, “On the Girdling of the Roman Military” (France, +856): King Lothair II asked one of his court scholars to boil down Vegetius de re militari into what was useful in modern tines. The result was seven pages which focused heavily on military training. Ernst Dümmler (ed.), Hrabanus Maurus, “De Procinctu Romanae Miliciae.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum – N.F. 3 = 15 (1872) pp. 443-451 https://archive.org/details/zeitschriftfrd15wiesuoft/page/442/mode/2up For the differences between the epitome and the original, see Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire, pp. 84–131 … people who are skeptical of how it relates to practice whisper and hint but don’t lay out a reasoned argument where I can find it.
- Monk of St. Gall, De Carolo Magno (Switzerland, +VIIII): In a series of anecdotes about Charlemagne and his world, the monk describes how the Old Franks, Charlemagne, and his army were armed. See book 1 chapter 34 and book 2 chapter 17 (pages 132-133 and 162-164 in Lewis Thorpe’s Penguin Classics translation). For the Latin text, see Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Vol. II (Scriptores rerum Sangallensium. Annales, chronica et historiae aevi Carolini) pp. 726-763 or Philipp Jaffé ed., Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, Vol. IV pp. 628ff here.
- Leo VI, Taktika (Eastern Roman Empire, +X): …
- Nikephoras Phokas, Presentation and Composition on Generalship (Eastern Roman Empire, +X) …
(A handy summary of Latin documents in the 9th century is Simon Coupland, “Carolingian Arms and Armor in the Ninth Century,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies vol. 21 (1990) https://deremilitari.org/2014/02/carolingian-arms-and-armor-in-the-ninth-century/)
(The Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität, digitalized by the Austrian academy of Sciences, contains many military words like ζάβα “body armour” http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lbg/)
These sources are free to read, but finding and copying them takes time and money. If you found this website helpful, please consider a small donation.
That is my most recent source from the early middle ages. To return to the top of the page click here ↑
Late Medieval (+XI to +XV)

- Some of the early sources for soft armour worn over or under mail in the late 12th century … check dictionaries of Old French, Old German, etc.?
- Murḍa Ibn ˁAli al-Tarṣuṣi, Tabṣirat arbāb al-lubāb (Egypt, c. 1167-1187): This military treatise composed for Saladin has chapters on iron, shields, coats of mail and cuirasses as well as the famous ones on trebuchets, crossbows, and naptha. Al-Tarsusi ←
- Anonymous, Athis and Prophilias or the Romance of Athens, Story of Two Friends (France, c.1200): Line 1849 tells us that “(the vassal) was dressed in a jupel of aketon, quilted and stuffed with cotton, re-put once (Remest sengles), well was it cut …” From this time onwards, the most common way of making aketons, pourpoints, gambesons, and jupes in Europe was to stuff them with raw cotton (silk bourre or layers of woven linen were much more expensive). The French text is available on The Internet Archive
- Nicetas Choniates or Akominatos (died 1217) described the linen body armour worn by Conrad of Montferrat, the man who would be king of Jerusalem, in 1187 or 1188. I hope to add this text in the future.
- Anonymous, Route of the Pilgrims and Deeds of King Richard (France, c. 1200): This text contains a very early description of a pourpoint worn by a soldier (book 1, chapter 48). A Latin text of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum is available on the Internet Archive, an English translation is hosted by York University, and some other editions and translations are available in university libraries
- Heinrich von der Türlin, Diu Crône (German-speaking region, +XIII): This Arthurian romance contains a number of arming scenes from the 1220s. Ein wambeis wart ime gesuocht / Von einem buckeram blanc, …
- Anonymous, Moriz von Craon (German-speaking region, +XIII): Another Arthurian romance with arming scenes. dô zôch er aller êrste an / ein wambes von buggeran. / dô hieʒ er im reichen / einen vilz weichen / und bant in für sîniu knie. An edition of Moriz by M. Haupt is on the Internet archive, the brothers Grimm preferred one by Eduard Schröder.
- Norwegian King’s Mirror (Norway, +XIII): Advice on how to arm oneself for a fight at sea and a fight on horseback. Link
- Il Libro di Montaperti (1260) defines the equipment which footsoldiers and horse soldiers of the Commune of Florence should have. On another site.
- Various, Rules of the Paris Guilds (France, +XIII): Regulations for various guilds including the armourers who proscribed how gambesons, coats, gauntlets of whalebone, gauntlets of plates, etc. were to be made. Rules of the Paris Guilds.
- Anonymous, Inventory of the Armour of Raoul de Nesle (France, 1302): An inventory of the effects of one of the French knights killed at Courtrai survives, and the section on arms and armour has been published in the original French and a parallel English translation. See Francis M. Kelly, “A Knight’s Armour of the Early XIV Century Being the Inventory of Raoul de Nesle,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 6, No. 24 (March 1905), pp. 457-469 http://www.jstor.org/stable/856122
- Inquiry into the death of Giles de Flandres (17 December 1302): before testing armour, its a good idea to take it off. On Florilegium Urbanum (thanks Matt Easton)
- Anonymous, Modus Armandi Milites (England, +XIIII): Proscription of how a knight should arm himself for a tournament, a joust, and war. The second and third sections are very concise. There is a free transliteration and translation on Will’s Commonplace book and a more detailed analysis in Ralph Moffat, “The Manner of Arming Knights for the Tourney: A Re-Interpretation of an Important Early 14th-Century Arming Treatise,” Arms & Armour Vol. 7 No. 1 (2010) pp. 5-29 ←
- London Regulations on The Armour Trade, 1322 (England, +XIIII): A decision from 1322 addressing soft armour and covered headpieces was first printed in appendix A of Charles ffoulkes’ The Armourer and His Craft before the First World War (Internet Archive edition) although a modernized version is available in British History Online. A transcription is available here. A decision from 1328 addressing the use of sheepskin to cover body armour and gauntlets was printed in Modern English in 1926 and is also available through British History Online.
- Various, Inventories of the Tower of London (England, +XIIII): Lists of equipment held in, acquired by, and distributed from the Tower of London in the fourteenth century. Anglicized summary and partial transcription in Thom Richardson, The medieval inventories of the Tower armouries 1320–1410. PhD thesis, University of York (http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3919/)
- Various, Great Wardrobe Accounts of Edward III (England, +XIIII): Lists of materials used to construct garments for Edward III and his court survive in archives and give a very precise understanding of the amounts and types of cloth, cotton, and thread required for specific items. Among other things, they show that cloth and cloth-covered armours were part of the world of luxury textiles, alongside banners, tents, dragons’ heads, and other delights. A transcription of accounts from the 1340s, complete with the original abbreviations, was published in Sir Nicholas Harris Nicholas, “Observations on the Institution of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,” Archaeologia: or, Miscellaneous tracts Relating to Antiquity xxi (1846) pp. 1-163 (available on the Hathi Trust and on Google Books); Latinists who don’t often work with medieval abbreviated texts will want a copy of Cappelli’s Dizionario di Abbreviature nearby. (Or use the online edition of the introductory essay and the individual entries).
- Jean II of France, “Reglement pour les gens de guerre” April 1351: This ordinance specifies the minimum equipment of many types of soldiers including men-at-arms, haubergeons, and crossbowmen. It was printed in Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisième race 4e volume pp. 67-70 https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k118972k/f80.item
- Various, Archive of Francesco di Marco Datini (France and Italy, +XIV): Descriptions of arms and armour owned, bought, and sold by a merchant from Prato. Datini’s archive is very large and very detailed, and few of the documents relating to armour have been transcribed and published, but a French summary of some of the Italian documents by Robert Brun was published in 1951. Link.
- Republic of Florence, Book of the Hirelings (Italy, +XIV): A volume in the archives of Florence contains a Latin contract which their mercenaries signed in 1369. This contains many details of the minimum equipment of infantry and cavalry, with special clauses for English and Hungarian soldiers and those who wished to be equipped in the English fashion. Mercenaries and their Masters by Michael Mallett informs me that later contracts rely more on general phrases like “conduct themselves according to military discipline” and “well armed” and less on explicit details. The Latin text is available on my website.
- John Lydgate, Troy Book (England, +XV): Retelling of the Trojan War with the heroes dressed in the latest kit. Link.
- Johan Hill, Treatise of the Points of Worship in Arms (England, +XV): Instructions on how a champion can best be armed for a duel on foot. Transcription of the two printed editions and discussion by several people who make and wear armour. According to an article by Thom Richardson, its shelf number is Ashmolean S 856 art. 22, 376–383 and the editio princeps was W.H. Black, Illustrations of ancient state and chivalry from manuscripts preserved in the Ashmolean Museum (William Nicol, Shakspeare Press: London, 1839) pp. 1–11. Most people who have read this text have read the edition by Charles ffoulkes which seems to be a worse reflection of the contents of the treatise (neither is a pen-stroke-for-pen-stroke and abbreviation-for-abbreviation diplomatic edition, and I do not have access to photos of the original).
- Anonymous, Traité du Costume Militaire (France, +XV): Around 1446, someone wrote a treatise on the armour and weapons customarily worn in France. Unlike the book by King René d’Anjou on tournaments, this is relatively poorly known in the English-speaking world, and I am not aware of any translation. The only printed text was edited by René de Belleval in 1866 and can be found at http://pfef.free.fr/Medieval/Unif_Org/CostMilFr.htm for more information and an original manuscript see The French Treatise on Military Costume ∴ ←
- Anonymous, “How a Man Shall be Armed” (England, +XV): Instructions on how to arm a man for formal combat on foot with a famous illustration. Transcription of original English and translation into 20th century English. The famous “Hastings manuscript” now seems to be in New York, Morgan MS. M.775 http://corsair.themorgan.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=158842.
- René d’Anjou, Tournament Book (France, +XV): Around 1460, this noble with scattered estates wrote a book on how to hold a melee on horseback like in the good old days, with detailed comments on the equipment which he did and did not approve of https://www.princeton.edu/~ezb/rene/renehome.html Steve Muhlberger is working on a translation of a related work by “Sicily Herald” which is much less well known.
- Martin Rondelle, “Letter to John Paston II” (Flanders, +XV) On 28 August 1473, an armourer in Bruges wrote to a wealthy client in England asking for clarification before he started a new project. The letter is summarized in English in various places, but you can find the original French and an English translation on Age of Datini. The manuscript is British Library Add MS 27445 f. 72
- French military ordinances (France, +XV): For now I just have the ordinance with jacks and pourpoints for francs-archers. ←
- Military ordinances of Charles the Bold of Burgundy (Burgundy, +XV)
- Various, Statutes and Privileges of the Armourers and Scabbardmakers of the City of Angers (France, +XV): Link
- Sir John Howard, later Duke of Norfolk (England, +XV): The private account books of Sir John Howard from the 1460s and 1470s survive. These famously contain a few references to armour mixed among the other entries, including a list of materials for a doublet of fence and the names of various armourers and armour merchants. There is a collection of modernized excerpts in Robert W. Reed, Jr., “Armour Purchases and Lists from the Howard Household Books,” The Journal of the Mail Research Society 1.1 (July 2003) pp. 25-38 http://www.erikds.com/pdf/tmrs-journal-1.pdf but I don’t always agree with his modernizations of the original English.
- Anonymous, “TH’ apparell for the feld for a baron in his souvereyn compeny, or for a baneret, or a ryche bacheler.” (England, +XVI). A manuscript of the late fifteenth century lists everything that a rich gentleman or a middling gentleman should bring with them on campaign. It is transcribed in Sir Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons (London: S. Hooper, 1786), pp. 83 ff citing “a MSS [sic]. L. 8 fol. 85 in the Coll. of Arms” from the time of Richard III or Henry VII. A transcription (AoD) and scan (Internet archive) are available. A record for similar purchases by John de Mowbray the Duke of Norfolk before the 1415 campaign in France is discussed in Capwell, Armour of the English Knight, 1400-1450, pp. 169, 67 note 12
… add some sources from the Moslem world such as Usama ibn-Munqidh, the Arab-Syrian gentleman and Bahāʾ al-Dīn on the crusader march to Arsouf in 1191 (but check a newer translation by Donald Sidney Richards where the “felt jackets” (lbd / libd / labūd in David Nicolle, The Military Technology of Classical Islam, vol. 1 p. 180) become “iron cuirasses”, the meaning of the other type of armour sābighah “mail hauberk” seems less controversial- ed.) …
(A directory of sources, but focused on prices from England, is Randall Storey, Technology and Military Policy in Medieval England, c. 1250-1350 (PhD Thesis, University of Reading, 2003) which is sometimes online and sometimes offline. It used to be available here and has been archived by the Wayback Machine).
(Another collection is Ralph Moffat ed., Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook. Volume 1, the Fourteenth Century (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) ISBN 9781783276769 Publisher’s site or Bookfinder)
(David Nicolle’s encyclopedic knowledge of medieval military technology began with David Nicolle, The Military Technology of Classical Islam (PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1982) http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7432 Part 2 contains a discussion of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish words for armour).
(Another useful collection is Du Cange’s Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis s.v. Aketon, Armatura, Bacinetum, Bacinetus, Chirothecae, Cuissellus, Gamberia, Gambeso, Ganteletus, Gorgale, Gorgeria, Halsberga, Lorica, Musachinum, Palectus, Pancerea, Pisanum, Pectorale, Wantus. Entries for Cassis, Elmetus, Elmus, Gallea less useful.)
(Another is the Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330-1500) eg. http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/GRÈVE2 http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/poulain3 http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/CUISSE http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/brigandine http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/cuirasse)
(French works by 19th century archivists like Victor Gay’s Glossaire Archéologique du Moyen Age et du Renaissance [available on the Internet Archive and in old university libraries] and Dehaisne’s Documents et Extraits Divers [also available on the Internet Archive]) contain many more passages in French and Latin).
(Mart Shearer has spent a lot of time transcribing inventories, mostly from England and its neighbours in +XIV, from out-of-copyright editions and posting them on a web forum with suggestions on translation and similar phrases in other texts)
(If you know medieval Latin paleography, scans of the English Great Wardrobe accounts with detailed information on the manufacture of clothing and soft armour are available at http://aalt.law.uh.edu/IndexPri.html )
(William R. Short from Hurstwic has collected all the references to weapons, armour, and combat in the Sagas of the Icelanders, written down between the 13th and the 15th century but set in older times, on the Hurstwic website).
(And of course the dictionary of German by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm has citations for many military words like Wams, Panzer, Plattenrock, Eisenhut, … the citations take some work to decode. Many libraries have a paper copy of this book).
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Those are all my sources from the late middle ages. To return to the top of the page click here ↑
Modern (+XVI to present)

Pietro Monte (Italy, +XVI): At the beginning of the sixteenth century, this Spanish gentleman wrote down many observations about arms and armour … which were published in clumsy Latin translation printed in a Gothic font with many abbreviations and ligatures. So far, the font has repelled most of those who wished to learn from his experience. Matt Easton in the UK hosts a scan of one of Monte’s published works, the Collectanea (link to page 1); Sydney Anglo summarizes some of Monte’s suggestions in The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe and “The Man who Taught Leonardo Darts” (The Antiquaries’ Journal, 1989). Jeffrey L. Forgeng stated that he was working on a translation during an interview with The Medieval Herald in October 2016, but scholars who propose to transcribe and translate Monte have a way of going silent … In 2018 he finally published Pietro Monte’s Collectanea with Boydell & Brewer. Mike Prendergast and Ingrid Sperber have released a draft translation without the Latin at http://mikeprendergast.ie/monte/ ∴ ←
John Mair’s Historia Maioris Brittaniae (a pun which means both Mair’s History of Britain and History of Greater Britain) book 1 chapter 8 fol. xvi (Scotland, 1521): This history contains a famous description of the dress and weapons of the highland (‘woodland’) Scots:
In time of war they put on a hauberk of iron rings over the whole body and fight in that. Having his body covered in linen cloth sewed together in many layers and waxed or pitched and covered with stag’s skins the common woodland Scot charges into battle. But our domestic plebians and the English fight in woollens (sagis).
Latin 1521 and English 1892 editions are available on the Internet Archive.
William Patten, The Expedicion into Scotlande (Scotland, 1547): The secretary of an English lord published a startling description of the aftermath of Battle of Pinkie in 1548. Amongst other things he marvelled that the Scots all dressed the same way with no sign of their different stations, so that the English accidentally killed rich men and spared poor ones, and that although the number of the Scottish dead was terrible they were all stripped naked in a very short time (link to excerpts in modern spelling and scan of a facsimile with the original 16th century spelling and abbreviations) ←
Bernal Dìaz, Diego de Landa, and other 16th century sources on Mesoamerican armour … are there any indigenous texts to cite? An English version of Díaz is available on Project Gutenberg and an English version of de Landa sections XIII and XIX on the Internet Sacred Texts Archive but I don’t know where to find the Spanish of either writer.
William Harrison, Description of England book 2 chapter 16 OF ARMOUR AND MUNITION (England, 1577): Harrison gives a charming description of the role of arms and armour in Elizabethan England, when a minister might decide that the dignity of his position meant that he should only wear a hanger (short hunting sword) instead of a rapier when travelling. There is a transcription of a reprint from 1807 on the Perseus Project.
Pedro de Aguado, Recopitación historial resolutoria de Sancta Marta y Nuebo Reyno de Granada de las Indias (oldest manuscript c. 1581): This Franciscan friar wrote a history of Venuzuela during and after his time preaching in the New World which includes a detailed description of the local armour stuffed with cotton (part I, libro secundo, capitulo secundo). The friar was unable to overcome the Spanish censorship during his lifetime, and the 20th century editors who finally printed his book both seem to ‘correct’ his dialect towards the spelling of their day. I have a transcription and a translation here.
Sir John Smythe, Certain Discourses Concerning the Forms and Effects of Diverse Sorts of Weapons (link) (England, published 1590) and Certain Instructions, Observations, and Orders Military (England, published 1594) link): After the muster at Tilbury in 1588, an old English soldier (born ca. 1534, see the Dictionary of National Biography for a short biography, or the Victoria and Albert Museum for a sample of his taste in armour) published a series of pamphlets to help his countrymen understand that they were doing everything wrong and should go back to fighting the way they had when he was young and dashing. For some reason they refused to listen, but Smythe’s pamphlets contain many opinions about what different types of armour were good for and what they should be worn over, and some sharp comments on practices which he did not approve of.
Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times, second edition (Longmans, Green, and Co.: London, 1920) pp. 70-73 https://archive.org/details/cu31924024056750/ seventeenth-century Maratha prince Shivaji met with Afzal Khan while wearing a shirt of mail under his coat and a skull-cap inside his tunic. The Khan had a hidden dagger, but no armour, and events did not proceed as he had expected.
Maurice, Comte De Saxe, Mes Rêveries (France, +XVIII): In the middle of the 18th century, a French general laid down proposals for military reform in a spurt of manic energy. Among other things he called for the infantry to take up the pike and bucklers of leather stiffened with vinegar (book I, chapter ii) and the cavalry to wear a suit of armour as they had in his grandfather’s time (book I, chapter iii, Article 2 Of the armour of the cavalry or Des armures de la cavalerie); as he pointed out, soldiers had worn armour for hundreds of years after the introduction of gunpowder, and in battle many men were wounded with swords or stray balls which a light armour could stop. If you can read French at all, the original edition is worthwhile for the colour plates alone.
Sakakibara Kōzan, Chūkokatchū Saisakuben aka. The Manufacture of Armour and Helmets in Sixteenth Century Japan (Japan, +XVIII): At the end of the eighteenth century, a Japanese courtier put together a passionate argument that his countrymen should use the styles of armour which had proved effective in the wars of the Sengoku period, and not be seduced by elaborate decorations or earlier styles of armour which sixteenth-century warriors had abandoned. In passing he gives a treasure-trove of advice about the advantages and disadvantages of different features, and the ways in which suppliers or armourers might try to save money. Unfortunately the early translations by A. Wakameda, A.J. Kroop, and Hogitarō Inada seem to have never been printed, and the only published one, by H. Russell Robinson, is in copyright but out of print.
Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzclarence, later Earl of Munster, Journal of a route across India, through Egypt, to England, in the later end of the year 1817, and the beginning of 1818 (India, 1817/18): On his travels Fitzclarence spoke to some Indian cavalry and examined their thick coats. Link and transcription.
Churchill on the Dervishes (Sudan, 1898) … for an example of the armour which he describes, see objects Af1899,1213.1 and Af1899,1213.2 in the British Museum or find the people who still make it for parades and mounted games! Its in My Early Life and not The River War.
(Gabor Agoston, Guns for the Sultan (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and Alan Williams, The Knight and the Blast Furnace (Leiden: Brill), and Stuart W. Pyhrr and José-A. Godoy, with essays and a compilation of documents by Silvio Leydi, Heroic Armour of the Italian Renaissance (link to open access version) are three books which cite many documents on the production of arms and armour from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).
(There is a great deal of information on soft and covered armours in early modern Europe in Ian Eaves, “On the remains of a jack of plate excavated from Beeston Castle in Cheshire,” Journal of the Arms & Armour Society, Vol. XIII, No. 2 (1989) pp. 81-154. The Tudor Tailor group in the UK plans to publish a book Doublets of Defence: Arming doublets, jacks and privy coats 1485 to 1603 which will consider texts as well as surviving pieces).
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That is my most recent source from the modern era. To return to the top of the page click here ↑
Acknowledgements
This project was inspired by observing online discussions about arms and armour, and by the linked projects Aquamanila, Armour in Art, Effigies and Brasses, and Manuscript Miniatures which try to bring evidence for late medieval material and military culture together in a taggable, linkable format. I acknowledge sources for particular texts on the appropriate pages.
Some similar projects are Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture by Karen Larsdatter (covers periods from late antiquity into the 18th century) and Marc Carlson’s site on clothing and shoemaking http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/
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What’s New (Since March 2017)
- 2017-04-09: Added a link to the online version of the German dictionary by the Grimm brothers and to the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität, a Medieval Greek-German dictionary.
- 2017-04-16: Added a few paragraphs to the transcription of the rules of the Paris guilds from 1364.
- 2017-04-23: Added P. Giss. 47 where someone in Roman Egypt buys a body armour.
- 2017-04-28: Added the anonymous Byzantine on strategy and the de rebus bellicis.
- 2017-04-29: Added a link to the scans of the English Great Wardrobe accounts.
- 2017-12-13:
s/Biblitheca/Bibliotheca;
- 2018-01-10: Added a note to include sources on Mesoamerican armour.
- 2018-01-16: Added links to the kind of cotton armour which Churchill faced at Omdurman to the Modern section.
- 2018-06-10: Announced the new transcription and translation of Monte’s Collectanea in the Modern section.
- 2018-08-20: Added William Harrison to the Modern section
- 2019-09-23: Added a page with the French military ordinance describing jacks of 30 linens and a stag skin
- 2018-09-25: Added the anonymous French treatise on military costume which begins “Icy après sensuit la façon comment les gens de guerre du royaulme de France, tant à pié comme à cheval, sont habillez en la manière et usance de le guerroier quilz font contre leurs ennemis.”
- 2018-10-05: Added the letter from Martin Rondelle to John Paston
- 2018-11-15: Added the Itinerarium Peregrinorum; I plan to add translations of a few passages. Added a note to search some sources from the Moslem world if I can find a good guide.
- 2018-11-29: Added a link to one of the texts from Delos thanks to Ruben Post c/o Paul Bardunias.
- 2019-01-17: Added an entry for the romance Moritz von Craon.
- 2019-03-12: Added Pedro de Aguado’s Recopitación historial, text will come when I have time to copy, proofread, and read it
- 2019-04-10: Added a link to Usamah’s memoirs and to the free translation of Pietro Monte’s Collectanea.
- 2019-05-17: Updated the entry on the anonymous Byzantine on generalship.
- 2019-06-22: Added the chapter and verse of the improvised armour at Dyrrachium
- 2019-08-24: Added an 1846 edition of one of the Burgundian ordonances
- 2019-09-23: Added a page for Pedro de Aguado
- 2019-10-27: Added a link to Bahāʾ al-Dīn, Life of Saladin and the disputed translation
- 2019-11-02: Added a cite to al-Tarsusi
- 2019-12-07: Added Athis and Prophilias
- 2020-05-12: Added the Guy Halsall quote
- 2020-06-11: Added Hrabanus Maurus and John Mair’s Historia Maioris Brittaniae
- 2020-10-13: Added Pierre Touremine’s challenge of Robert de Beaumanoire to a duel over the charge that de Beaumanoir had murdered Touremine’s brother: Gui Alexis de Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne (François Muguet: Paris 1707) II col. 663-677 https://archive.org/stream/b30455194_0002
- 2020-12-29: Tidied up some of the Late Roman sources from de rebus bellicis to the anonymous on generalship, added direct links to more sources with a leftwards arrow ←
- 2021-01-15: Added a link to a rule of Jean II of France from 1351
- 2021-01-27: Added a page for Murda al-Tarsisi’s treatise on arms and armour and engines
- 2021-02-22: Added a page for the rule of the pourpointiers of Amiens from 1429/30
- 2021-05-19: Added a link to the Latin text of de rebus bellicis and to a free translation
- 2021-07-29: Migrated to a self-hosted WordPress installation, added my own copy of the famous illustration in the J.P. Morgan Library versus linking to their copy
- 2021-08-24: fixed some issues with the new Block format (eg. the quote from Caesar was not being rendered as a block quote just tagged) and with links to images (a few were broken, and images were sometimes before and sometimes after the header)
- 2022-02-16: added article by Simon Coupland and book by Ralph Moffat
- 2022-07-21: added Shivaji and his Times
- 2022-08-24: added inquiry into the death of Giles de Flandres
- 2022-10-27: added link to translation of the letter from Martin Rondelle to Sir John Paston
- 2023-01-08: added link for the French treatise on military costume
- 2024-06-03: separated the French and the Burgundian military ordinances after being pointed to a new edition of the later
- 2024-06-18: added article by Miguel Civil
- 2024-11-16: added link to Libro di Montaperti
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