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Some notes on terminology

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Sir James A:
Copying this from another thread in which spaulder/spaudler came up.

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Random armor conversation I had on Facebook with some guys from New England. Someone posted a video of their new armor, and a good conversation came up regarding "bevor" or "wrapper" on an armet helmet. And whether or not "bevor" is "bev-or" or "bea-ver". And "arm-et" or "arm-ay". And "gor-get" or "gor-jay". I'll summarize since I don't want to copy/paste a private chat.

Back in the source italian in Boccia's book:

it gets called both "bavaria" and "volante". On the page with a sallet, it's called "lama di barbosa". Then in Blair's book on page 202, the armet wrapper is called "reinforcing-bevor or wrapper". On that same page, there's another picture of an armet, and it's just called "armet with wrapper". On page 200, Blair talks about a sallet, and only says bevor.

I brought up the vagueness of "arming coat" and "gambeson" and "arming jack" and "aketon" historically, since they used them somewhat more interchangeably than our modern-day sense on language is comfortable with. We want a "feature X,Y,Z makes it this or that", and they didn't seem to care as much. It was agreed the discrepancy in terms, especially across cultures, meant there isn't a specific label.

An armorer also said it's important that you and your armorer are talking about the same thing when you use the same words. He said that building "arms" and "arms with integral spaulder" are two different things. Someone corrected him and said there's no such thing as a "spaulder".

We also talked about rebrace, rerebrace, vambrace. It was said that vambrace, which we tend to take to mean forearm armor (like a "bracer"), is inclusive of upper cannon, couter, and lower cannon - the entire arm harness minus the shoulder. Blair said that "rerebrace" is an archaic term for shoulder and upper arm armor. Edge and Paddock use "rerebrace" to refer to early transitional armor with floating/pointed armor, and it refers to the upper arm/bicep.

The closing comment was: "I recognize that lots of people get the spelling of spaudler incorrect, but I promise you that that's how it's spelled in every scholarly source of which I am aware."

I'll see if I can get him to come down to Shortpoint. One of the guys in that convo is already coming.

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There's also a very short myarmoury thread with good info: http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.9085.html


--- Quote ---In his work European Armour Circa 1066 to Circa 1700, Claude Blair calls them "spaudlers". Here is what he said regarding the word's meaning and root:
Claude Blair wrote:

After c. 1450 rerebrace tends to disappear and thereafter pauldron is used for the shoulder-defence. The word spaudler also referred to the shoulder-defence, but presumably in a more restricted sense than rerebrace and not including the plates for the upper arm...

Spaudler I shall confine to the small, cap-like form of the shoulder defence...

It is clearly an anglicised form of espalier, a term found frequently in English documents from the early 13th to the early 14th century. It seems at first to have denoted some form of padding for the shoulder, for an inventory of armour belonging to Falk de Breaute made in 1224 includes amongst linen armour an "espaulier de nigro Cen[all]".


The word is spelled and used the same (spaudler) in The Complete Encyclopedia of Arms & Weapons, edited by Leonid Tarassuk and Claude Blair, as well as Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight by David Edge and John Miles Paddock, A Knight and His Armour by Ewart Oakeshott, and English Medieval Knight 1300-1400 by Christopher Gravett. It seems to be a common spelling among books about arms and armour.
--- End quote ---

Sir Edward:

Well crap, so now I have to get used to "spaudler"?? Eep. Here we go again. Forever correcting myself. :)

It was hard enough to make myself start pronouncing all the T's in armor (armet, bascinet, sallet, gorget), though that one makes a huge amount of sense when you consider that there are many other English words that follow that pattern, such as circlet, helmet, tablet, target, etc.

Sir Douglas:
Heh, I looked in both the Edge/Paddock book and the Oakeshott book that were mentioned and sure enough, staring me right there in the face: "spaudlers". I never noticed that before. That one little transposal of letters never clicked in my brain. Funny though...since I have books that spell it both ways, I must have read it as "spaulder" first; I could have just as easily read "spaudler" first and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. ;)

The link between that particular spelling and the original French espaulier still seems fuzzy to me, though. I don't understand how espaulier indicates that the D should come before the L any more than it indicates the L comes before the D. It seems they could have spelled it whichever way they wanted when they Anglicized it. Unless I'm missing something in the original French pronunciation, which is entirely possible since my French is not that great. :P

Armor terminology is a strange beast. Depending who you ask, you could get ten different terms for the same piece of armor.

Ian:

--- Quote from: DouglasTheYounger on 2013-11-19, 20:13:13 ---Heh, I looked in both the Edge/Paddock book and the Oakeshott book that were mentioned and sure enough, staring me right there in the face: "spaudlers". I never noticed that before.

--- End quote ---

You just did the work for me!  Haha, I was about to check the same books and verify  :)


--- Quote from: DouglasTheYounger on 2013-11-19, 20:13:13 ---The link between that particular spelling and the original French espaulier still seems fuzzy to me, though. I don't understand how espaulier indicates that the D should come before the L any more than it indicates the L comes before the D. It seems they could have spelled it whichever way they wanted when they Anglicized it. Unless I'm missing something in the original French pronunciation, which is entirely possible since my French is not that great. :P

Armor terminology is a strange beast. Depending who you ask, you could get ten different terms for the same piece of armor.

--- End quote ---

Agreed, there was no real progression in his reasoning as to how espaullier should dictate where the 'd' goes in the anglicized term.  It's still strange to me that we agree that the terminology during the middle ages was imprecise at best, but we continue to try and make it super precise now.  It's an exercise in futility.  Spaulder or spaudler, it doesn't really matter as long as everyone in the conversation knows what piece of armor we're talking about :)

Sir Edward:

--- Quote from: Ian on 2013-11-19, 20:17:24 ---Agreed, there was no real progression in his reasoning as to how espaullier should dictate where the 'd' goes in the anglicized term.  It's still strange to me that we agree that the terminology during the middle ages was imprecise at best, but we continue to try and make it super precise now.  It's an exercise in futility.  Spaulder or spaudler, it doesn't really matter as long as everyone in the conversation knows what piece of armor we're talking about :)

--- End quote ---

It's definitely a losing battle. :)

I've updated the glossary.

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