"Pectora tot coriis, tot gambesonibus armant;"—
while a passage cited by Ducange shews us that, sometimes at least, this cuirass was of leather boiled in oil; a material much in vogue in the middle-ages, under the name of "cuir boulli:"—
"Cuirie ot bonne, qui fust de cuir boilly."
No. 35.
A good example of the Scale-armour worn occasionally about the close of the eleventh century is afforded in the following group, given by Hefner[199] from a vellum-painting in his possession. The armour in the original is silvered, and the pendent scales of the foremost figure are ornamented with bosses of gold. The tunics are white, shaded with blue. The Princess Anna Comnena tells us that some of the French knights at this period were clothed in scale-armour[200].
The material of the scale-armour is occasionally Horn. In the twelfth century, the Emperor Henry V. clothed a body of his troops in an impenetrable scale-armour of horn: "So trug im Jahre 1115 eine Schaar im Heere Heinrichs V. undurchdringliche Harnische von Horn[201]." And in the poem of "Wigalois," written about the close of the twelfth century, we have a curious description of this horn-mail worn over the hauberk and richly adorned with gold and precious stones:—
"Ein brunne het er an geleit
Uber einen wizzen halsperch.
Daz was heidenischez werch
Von breiten blechen hurnin;
Mit golde waren geleit dar in
Rubin, und manec edel stein
Der glast da wider einander schein
Saffire und berillen."