Our word ‘shield’ and the German ‘schild’ mean ‘the covering thing,’ that behind which you are sheltered, but you must be careful to distinguish it from the word shell, which means properly a scale or plate, developed like a fish’s scale, for the protection of the body.
There are properly only two kinds of shields, one round and the other square, passing into oval and oblong; the round one being for use in free action, the square one for adjustment to ground or walls; but, on horseback, the lower part of the shield must be tapered off, in order to fall conveniently on the left side of the horse.
And, therefore, practically you have two great forms of shield; the Greek round one, for fighting on foot, or in the chariot, and the Gothic pointed one, for fighting on horseback. The oblong one for motionless defence is, however, almost always given to the mythic figure of Fortitude, and the bearings of the Greek and Gothic shields are always designed with reference to the supposed figures of the circle and square.
The Greek word for the round shield is ‘aspis.’ I have no doubt, merely a modification, of ‘apsis,’ the potter’s wheel; the proper word for the Gothic shield is ‘ecu,’ from the Latin ‘scutum,’ meaning a shield covered with leather. From ‘ecu’ you have ‘ecuyer;’—from scutum ‘scutiger,’ both passing into our English ‘squire.’
231. The aspis of the Greeks might be much heavier than the Gothic shield, because a Greek never rode fully armed; his object was to allow both to his horse and to himself the most perfect command of limb compatible with protection; if, therefore, he was in full armour, and wanted his horse to carry him, he put a board upon wheels, and stood on that, harnessing sometimes to it four horses of the highest breed abreast. Of all hitherto practised exertions of manual dexterity, the driving thus at full speed over rough ground, standing in the chariot, is, as far as I know, the greatest ever attained by general military discipline.
It is true that to do anything perfectly well is about equally difficult; and I suppose that in a chariot race, a tournament, or a modern game at cricket, the manual art of the most highly-trained men would be almost equally fine; still, practically, in Gothic chivalry, the knight trusted more to his weight and less to his skill than a Greek did; nor could a horse’s pace under armour ever render precision of aim so difficult as at unarmed speed.
232. Another great difference of a parallel kind exists in the knight’s body armour. A Greek never hopes to turn a lance by his cuirass, nor to be invulnerable except by enchantment, in his body-armour, because he will not have it cumbrous enough to impede his movements; but he makes his shield, if possible, strong enough to stop a lance, and carries it as he would a piece of wall: a Gothic knight, on the contrary, endeavoured to make his coat armour invulnerable, and carried the shield merely to ward thrusts on the left side, never large enough to encumber the arm that held the reins. All fine design in Gothic heraldry is founded, therefore, on the form of a short, but pointed shield, convex enough to throw the point of a spear aside easily; a form roughly extending from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century, but of which the most beautiful types are towards the end of the thirteenth.
233. The difference in method of device between the Gothic and classic shields resulted partly from this essential difference in form. The pointed shield, having definitely two sides, like a pointed arch, and a determined position, naturally suggested an arrangement of bearings definitely on one side or the other, or above, or below the centre, while the Greek shield had its boss, or its main bearing, in the centre always, with subordinate decoration round. Farther, the Gothic fineness of colour-instinct seized at once on this division of parts as an opportunity for inlaying or counterchanging colours; and finally, the respect for race, carried out by registry of the remotest branches of noble families, compelled the Gothic heralds of later times to use these methods of dividing or quartering in continually redoubled complexity.
234. Essentially, therefore, as distinguished from the classic shield, the Gothic one is particoloured beneath its definite bearings, or rather, bi-coloured; for the tinctures are never more than two in the main design of them; and the specific methods of arrangement of these two masses of colour have deeper and more ancient heraldic significance than, with few exceptions, their superimposed bearings. I have arranged the twelve principal ones[L] in the 7th of your rudimentary exercises, and they will be entirely fixed in your minds by once drawing it.
“They have also the title of honourable ordinaries in that the court armour is much honoured thereby.“ The French call them “pièces honorables.”