Medieval Warfare in Manuscripts

Download or read book Medieval Warfare in Manuscripts written by Pamela J. Porter and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The glamour associated with knights in shining armour, colourful tournaments and heroic deeds appeal strongly to the modern imagination. However, few pieces of military dress and equipment have survived to provide direct insight into the way that war was waged in the Middle Ages. For a comprehensive view of the nature of medieval warfare we rely on written documentation and the information preserved in paintings, sculptures, carvings, and other pictorial sources. The most numerous by far of these are the miniatures and drawings found in manuscript books, partly because books tend to survive better that other artefacts and partly because many individual volumes contain multiple representations. Pamela Porter presents and describes a variety of evocative manuscript illuminations in an effort to reveal them as a source of information about military dress, equipment, and practices.