The close helmet or close helm is a type of combat helmet that was worn by knights and other men-at-arms in the Late Medieval and Renaissance eras. It was also used by some heavily armoured, pistol-armed cuirassiers into the mid-17th century. It is a fully enclosing helmet with a pivoting visor and integral bevor.
The close helmet was developed from the later versions of the sallet and the superficially similar armet in the late 15th century. In contemporary sources it was sometimes also referred to as an 'armet', though modern scholarship draws a clear distinction between the two types. [1]
While outwardly very similar to the armet, the close helmet had an entirely different method of opening. Like the armet, the close helmet followed the contours of the head and neck closely, and narrowed at the throat, therefore it required a mechanical method for opening and closing. While an armet opened laterally using two large hinged cheekpieces, a close helmet instead opened vertically via an integral rotating bevor, which was attached to the same pivots as its visor. The moving parts were usually secured when closed by pivot-hooks engaging pierced staples. Alternatively, spring-loaded studs could be employed. The bevor was often held closed by a strap. [2]
Beginning around 1500, armour, including helmets, became more immediately influenced by fashion, especially in civilian clothing. As a result close helmets came in a huge variety of forms. The earliest close helmets resembled contemporary armets. In Italy, England and France in the period 1510–1525 helmets were rounded with visors of the 'sparrow's beak' form, whereas in Germany, the fluted 'Maximillian' style of armour produced distinctive types of helmet. The skulls of these helmets were globular with a low crest; many were decorated with fluting but some were plain. Two types of visor were produced, the Nuremberg form, which had a 'bellows' shape, and the Augsburg form, which was more projecting and is commonly called a 'monkey face'. [3] [4]
From the 1520s a new, almost universal, variety of close helmet was developed. The previous forms of one-piece visor were replaced by a more complex system of face covering. The visor was split, below the eye-slits, into two independently pivoting parts. The lower half, called the ventail or upper bevor, was projecting and shaped like the prow of a modern ship. The upper visor, when closed, fitted within the upper edge of the ventail; it could be raised independently of the ventail by the provision of a projecting lifting peg. At the same time, on most helmets, the base of the bevor and the lower edge of the skull had laminated gorget plates attached. Crests, running from front to back tended to become taller in the course of the 16th century, becoming particularly exaggerated in some Italian-made examples, before becoming reduced in size at the century's close. [5] [6]
There are many helmets surviving with 'grotesque' visors. These are thought to have been used as part of a 'costume armour' worn at parades and during festivities. Some of these masks portrayed the heads of animals or demons, whilst others were evidently for comic effect, being caricatures of the faces of their owners. [7]
The close helmet was used on the field of battle, but was also popular for use in tournaments. Wealthy men often owned 'garnitures', which were armours with interchangeable parts ('pieces of exchange') to suit heavy or light field use, and the many different forms of tournament combat. Garnitures would usually include elements for reinforcing the left side of the helmet for use in jousting. Such reinforcing pieces were called 'double pieces' or 'pieces of advantage'. [8]
A helmet is a form of protective gear worn to protect the head. More specifically, a helmet complements the skull in protecting the human brain. Ceremonial or symbolic helmets without protective function are sometimes worn. Soldiers wear combat helmets, often made from Kevlar or other lightweight synthetic fibers.
A rondel dagger or roundel dagger was a type of stiff-bladed dagger in Europe in the late Middle Ages, used by a variety of people from merchants to knights. It was worn at the waist and might be used as a utility tool, or worn into battle or in a jousting tournament as a side arm.
Plate armour is a historical type of personal body armour made from bronze, iron, or steel plates, culminating in the iconic suit of armour entirely encasing the wearer. Full plate steel armour developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages, especially in the context of the Hundred Years' War, from the coat of plates worn over mail suits during the 14th(1300s)century.
The sallet was a combat helmet that replaced the bascinet in Italy, western and northern Europe and Hungary during the mid-15th century. In Italy, France and England the armet helmet was also popular, but in Germany the sallet became almost universal.
The bascinet – also bassinet, basinet, or bazineto – was a Medieval European open-faced combat helmet. It evolved from a type of iron or steel skullcap, but had a more pointed apex to the skull, and it extended downwards at the rear and sides to afford protection for the neck. A mail curtain was usually attached to the lower edge of the helmet to protect the throat, neck and shoulders. A visor was often employed from c. 1330 to protect the exposed face. Early in the fifteenth century, the camail began to be replaced by a plate metal gorget, giving rise to the so-called "great bascinet".
A gorget, from the French gorge meaning throat, was a band of linen wrapped around a woman's neck and head in the medieval period or the lower part of a simple chaperon hood. The term later described a steel or leather collar to protect the throat, a set of pieces of plate armour, or a single piece of plate armour hanging from the neck and covering the throat and chest. Later, particularly from the 18th century, the gorget became primarily ornamental, serving as a symbolic accessory on military uniforms, a use which has survived in some armies.
The armet is a type of combat helmet which was developed in the 15th century. It was extensively used in Italy, France, England, the Low Countries and Spain. It was distinguished by being the first helmet of its era to completely enclose the head while being compact and light enough to move with the wearer. Its use was essentially restricted to the fully armoured man-at-arms.
The great helm or heaume, also called pot helm, bucket helm and barrel helm, is a helmet of the High Middle Ages which arose in the late twelfth century in the context of the Crusades and remained in use until the fourteenth century. The barreled style was used by knights in most European armies between about 1220 to 1350 AD and evolved into the frog-mouth helm to be primarily used during jousting contests.
The burgonet helmet was a Renaissance-era and early modern combat helmet. It was the successor of the sallet.
A barbute is a visorless war helmet of 15th-century Italian design, often with a distinctive "T" shaped or "Y" shaped opening for the eyes and mouth.
The lobster-tailed pot helmet, also known as the zischägge, horseman's pot and harquebusier's pot, was a type of post-Renaissance combat helmet. It became popular in Europe, especially for cavalry and officers, from c. 1600; it was derived from an Ottoman Turkish helmet type. The helmet gradually fell out of use in most of Europe in the late 17th century; however, the Austrian heavy cavalry retained it for some campaigns as late as the 1780s.
Maximilian armour is a modern term applied to the style of early 16th-century German plate armour associated with, and possibly first made for the Emperor Maximilian I. The armour is still white armour, made in plain steel, but it is decorated with many flutings that may also have played a role in deflecting the points and blades of assailants and increasing the structural strength of the plates. It is a transitional stage in the decoration of armour, after the plain steel surfaces of 15th-century armour and before the elaborate decoration and colouring with etching and other techniques of Renaissance armour. The armour is characterized by armets and close helmets with bellows visors; small fan-shaped narrow and parallel fluting—often covering most of the harness ; etching; work taken from woodcuts; sharply waisted cuirasses, and squared sabatons.
A bevor or beaver is a piece of plate armour designed to protect the neck, much like a gorget.
The nasal helmet was a type of combat helmet characterised by the possession of a projecting bar covering the nose and thus protecting the centre of the face; it was of Western European origins and was used from the late 9th century to at least c. 1250.
A morion is a type of open-faced combat helmet originally from the Kingdom of Castile (Spain), used from the beginning 16th to early 17th centuries, usually having a flat brim and a crest from front to back. Its introduction was contemporaneous with the exploration of North, Central and South America. Explorers such as Hernando de Soto and Coronado may have supplied them to their foot soldiers in the 1540s.
Greenwich armour is the plate armour in a distinctively English style produced by the Royal Almain Armoury founded by Henry VIII in 1511 in Greenwich near London, which continued until the English Civil War. The armoury was formed by imported master armourers hired by Henry VIII, initially including some from Italy and Flanders, as well as the Germans who dominated during most of the 16th century. The most notable head armourer of the Greenwich workshop was Jacob Halder, who was master workman of the armoury from 1576 to 1607. This was the peak period of the armoury's production and it coincided with the elaborately gilded and sometimes coloured decorated styles of late Tudor England.
In heraldic achievements, the helmet or helm is situated above the shield and bears the torse and crest. The style of helmet displayed varies according to rank and social status, and these styles developed over time, in step with the development of actual military helmets. In some traditions, especially German and Nordic heraldry, two or three helmets may be used in a single achievement of arms, each representing a fief to which the bearer has a right. For this reason, the helmets and crests in German and Nordic arms are considered essential to the coat of arms and are never separated from it.
The Coventry Sallet is a 15th-century helmet now on display at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. English sallets have been considered both rare and important.
Funerary Helmets,Mortuary Helms, or Mort Helms were the major element of a suit of armour that was most often placed above or near the carved memorial effigy of the knights or members of the nobility concerned in a tradition that ran from at least the 14th through to the 17th century, particularly when the person concerned had gained a reputation in life as a warrior. These helmets were often brightly painted or otherwise ornamented with floral designs, etc. Largely located within rural churches and other religious buildings, the practice was especially common in the south-west English counties and Cornwall with only a few examples known from Scotland.
The horned helmet of Henry VIII is the surviving part of a full suit of armour made by Konrad Seusenhofer between 1511 and 1514. The armour was a gift from the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I to the English king Henry VIII, following their alliance in the War of the League of Cambrai. The suit was elaborate and intended for display at tournament parades. It is unclear who was the intended wearer of the armour, but it appears to have been modelled on one of Henry's court fools. Henry may have worn the armour as a jest. The helmet has protruding eyes and a toothy grimace and is adorned with horns and spectacles. The helmet survived when the rest of the suit of armour was scrapped, probably after the English Civil War, and it is now in the collection of the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, which formerly used it as a symbol of the museum.
| Head |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Face | ||
| Neck | ||
| Torso | ||
| Arms | ||
| Legs | ||
| Pieces | ||