How much did medieval suits of armor weigh?

Factual Questions
41

The authors addressed the genetics issue. You are free to disagree with them of course, but without any contrary evidence GQ is not the place to do so. At this stage the fact is that evidence can be discounted. If you want to debate the authors’ conclusions that genetics is not an issue on the study issue then we can take it up in GD.

The authors also addressed the diet issue, by pointing out that it varies as much or more over century timescales within regions than it does between regions at the same time.

In both these cases your criticism is reasonable, but neither has any evidence to actually support it. And in both cases if they were true all they would do is serve to make it impossible to judge medieval heights any more accurately than this study has done. IOW if your criticisms are valid then this study is the best analysis we will ever achieve of the height of medieval men but it is of dubious trustworthiness. And if they are incorrect then this study is the best analysis we will ever achieve of the height of medieval men and totally trustworthy.

But either way this is the best evidence we have, the only facts we have and either way the conclusion is the same: men from this time period were not substantially shorter than modern men from the UK or US and knights and other nobility were likely the exact same height.

While I understand your point here you still have yet to produce any evidence for your claims that medieval Europeans from England, France and Germany were significantly shorter than they are today. IOW at this stage we have evidence that they were no shorter that you think is flawed (reasonably enough), but no evidence at all that they were shorter.

I have seen plenty of other evidence which all reaches the same conclusion: that while medieval knights were slightly shorter than modern men it wasn’t spectacular. Until you can produce some evidence to the contrary that is what the facts say. Your experience looking at armour in museums does not go any way at all to supporting your position.

Firstly Japan is not even remotely like the climate of Northern Europe. Northern Europe ranges form frigid to cool temperate, Japan ranges from warm temperate to wet tropical. Japan is distinctly monsoonal while Northern Europe ranges from distinctly Mediterranean to mild continental.

All you have to do is look at the average temperature for Kyoto compared to Brest, which is the closest “Northern “European city I can think of

Secondly nobody is proposing that you take it as the height of Japanese people at the same time. I am proposing that you take the heights for Northern Europeans at the time, that the authors say they have treated so as to be representative of Northern Europeans of the time, and use it as a representation of Northern Europeans at the time.

How else would you describe a full grown man that is the same size as a typical twelve year old boy? That is what people have been saying in this thread
You yourself have said that they had a height some 5 inches shorter than modern men because that’s what the armour looked like. While not quite a dwarf that is substantially shorter than today, and is not supported by the evidence which says the height difference was at most two inches and that their probably wasn’t any height difference at all

But the height difference according to that study was only 1/10th of an inch. So where did this three inches stuff come from.
Look, at this stage the best evidence we have says that the height difference between medieval knights and modern men is in the magnitude of an inch at most, and very likely there was no difference at all.

And we have explained why you simply can not use suits of armour as guides to height.

So do you have any actual evidence for this three inch height difference that you are purporting to exist? And I note that this height difference went from the original ~12” difference down to your original ~5” difference to your current 3 inch difference. If this trend continues it will become a 1” difference that I am happy to accept and we can leave it at that.

42

Epic thread.

43

On the same subject of height, I remember back in the early 1990’s in school going on a field trip to an old church in the city centre. Part of the tour of the church included a visit to the burial crypts. The church dates back to the early middle ages and one of the bodies was of a Norman Crusader I think he was from the first crusade. Anyway I remember the tour guide mentioning him in particular because he was so tall for the time, over 6 feet, something like 6’4’’. His skeleton was huge I remember that much. There was also the skeleton of a nun from the same period, which was considerably smaller. The skeletons were visible because the coffins had mostly rotted.

44

The discussion’s gone elsewhere, but FWIW I retract my vague assertions.

45

Indeed, so by that inherent unreliability, doesn’t it seem wiser to confine the area we are talking about to the area we actually have data on? Extrapolating poor data to a larger number of people seems to be not the best choice.

The people in the regions that your PDF includes have grown three inches. I’ve said nothing more nor less than this than to suggest that the advancements of nutrition between then and now are probably the largest cause and hence ~3" change seems like a decent number to run with. But I would agree that you’re assuming quite a bit to extend that number out to other regions of the map as you would to assume that the absolute height of Europeans was consistent all around back then.

I’ve never mentioned any specific height than ~3". Perhaps someone else did, but I did not.

46

Monsoons aside, Japan is actually not all that tropical. Hokkaido is prime cattle grazing ground and is quite the winter wonderland. Pretty much everything North of Niigata is comparable to England, Sweden, or Norway. That’s nearly half the nation, though I agree that the capital and the majority of the populace has always been in the more tropical areas.

I knew a guy who had a friend who built a tree house (like a real house) in the forests of em…Yamagata or thereabouts I think. http://www.treehouse.jp/

47

I’m surprised to see that nobody’s really mentioned the very important point that wearing plate armor is not like shoving the plate armor into a backpack and putting it on your back, or like carrying it in your arms. It isn’t even like chainmail, which essentially hangs from your shoulders. You tie it on to your clothes, so the weight is distributed a lot more than, say, a basket carried on the head of an African lady. When you look at the weight of a suit of armor you have to consider how it’s carried.

48

I mentioned it. Didn’t stop some of the people spouting off ignorance on this thread from ignoring though :slight_smile:

49

I don’t know if personal experience is considered a proper cite, but I thought I’d weigh in (pun intended) on the subject.

First, some background: I am 33 years old, have worked the majority of my professional life at a desk job either doing tech support or graphic art, and never played sports seriously. An athlete, I am not. I’m also rounder then I’d care to be!

That said, I regularly wear a suit of plate armour that covers 3/4 of my body, and I have absolutely no problems with mobility in it. My suit is based off the Churburg #13 harness, which dates to the same time, roughly, as the battle of Agincourt (actually, about 20 or so years earlier). It looks very similar to the following picture, save that I have an open face and don’t wear the greaves and sabatons on my lower legs:

http://www.medievalrepro.com/Images/Churburg%20Armour%2001%20044%20copyedit.jpg

My suit is actually heavier then the original it is based off of, which I believe weighed in around 60-70 lbs (not at home, so I don’t have a source handy) - my full rig weighs in at just over 80 lbs. This is mostly because I built it out of heavier steel than its historical counterpart, so as to have to spend less time repairing it. I also want to note that my suit is replicated quite closely as far as techniques of articulation and construction; the man that I studied under while it was built has actually inspected the original first hand, and built his patterns off of it and the munition grade pieces he examined while in Europe.

Now, as stated, I am hardly in the best of shape, but I have spent upwards of a week wearing my plate 8-9 hours a day, spending probably 6 of those hours in movement, either fighting, charging, or marching. I have fallen to the ground countless times in that period (part of my group’s fighting rules requires one to “fall dead” when struck with a stout blow), and have never been “like a turtle” in attempting to right myself. Mostly, I just stood back up as soon as the marshals said I could, save for the few times where I had bodies laying on top of me to prevent me from doing so! Were I a more athletic and flexible man, who spent the majority of his time training and practicing in my kit, I have no doubts that I’d be able to do somersaults and cartwheels in my armour.

The point, in the long run, is this: at the end of the day, a vaunted historian, however well trained and educated, is just a man making guesses unless he’s actually tried the stuff out himself. The fallacy that a man in armour was over-encumbered, like a turtle on the ground, or in any other way made vulnerable by his kit is one that has grown due to lack of personal experience.

50

Not just a lack of personal experience but also a complete ignorance on period literature on the subject, including but not limited to fighting treatises of the time (fechtbucher) which depict combat in and out of harness and the various marital maneuvers expected to be used while wearing the armor.

This has changed recently, however. As more and more evidence that previous notions about the time period were just wrong, newer publications are making strides on educating those interested on the subject.

Just look at this thread. Most people here know a thing or two about the subject with only a couple of people really not having been exposed to any serious and modern scholarly information.

51

Oh, absolutely! I’ve studied the I.33 manual fairly extensively, and have played around with people who are well versed in Fiore, Talhoffer, and Ringeck - the stuff they learned from the period manuscripts is amazingly effective - actually, strike that, not so amazing…they wrote it because it works!

I do hope that there comes a point where the fallacies propped up by a lot of historians (based off of the guesses of other historians and not on period sources) are replaced with facts that come from experience and study of actual period literature.

52

Ah, but what if you were a pox-ridden syphillitic inbred milk-fed Scandanavian peasant-killing cowardly dwarf with a vitamin deficiency? Obviously your experience is not applicable.

53

Lol! I’m sure Ringeck must of mentioned a marital maneuver or two as well! :slight_smile:

54

His treatise was on handling a “longsword” :wink:

55

While many knights did wear mixes of plate and mail, it wasn’t true that “no one” wore full plate.

If you’re trying to imply that mail is lighter than plate armor, you’re wrong. Mail’s 3-dimensional links can make it quite heavy for a given coverage of surface area. Plate is an improvement in both weight and deflection; it was simply harder to make (at first). Plate also can cause joint-articulation problems to varying degrees depending on the design. Badly-designed mail, however, lays all its weight on the shoulders and can be fairly burdensome.

Fantasy games have given a lot of people a bad idea about plate armor’s weight, in trying to come up with “game balance” reasons to balance plate armor against other choices. In reality, once plate was available, it was generally adopted by everyone who could afford new armor.

56

I will chime in as well. Good post, Woeg.

I am 48 years old, 175 lbs. I last wore my armor about 4 years ago,

It weighs approximately 43 lbs. I can run, jump, trot, walk, leap, somersault, roll, and carry weapons. I have full mobility and never felt like it was heavy or cumbersome. The weight is distributed quite well. I fancy myself a mediocre swordsman, however I have had no trouble engaging in long bouts with multiple opponents and not once have I passed out with exhaustion. When I’ve been knocked off my feet, I was easily able to get right back up again.

It is based on a 14th century plackard, from Austria. Brigandine, arms, pauldrons, gaunlets, legs, gorget, and helmet included.

I also have worn mine for 8-9 hours at a stretch.

So there.

57

You lucky guys with your harnesses. I’ve been sticking to bloss-fechten, partly because I can’t afford a harness. If you guys ever feel the burning need to bequeath you armor to someone and the children are too into their XBOX’S to care, you know who to call!

58

Alas, Kinthalis! If you lived closer, I’d offer to help you build one! I’ll let you know if I ever relocate that direction!

59

You guys with the actual suits of armor - how much do these things cost?

60

Is the kind of ammor you guys made equivalent to the real thing, or is it better because of better alloys, or is it worse because the know-how has been lost?