HANGING JAECES FOR HORSES

The old belief that one of the saddles in this armoury, whose bows are chased with a design in black and gilt of leaves and pilgrim's shells, was once upon a time the Cid Campeador's, has been exploded recently. The saddle in question is known to be Italian, dates from the sixteenth century, and bears the arms of a town in the duchy of Montferrato.

The inventory (1560) of the dukes of Alburquerque mentions some curious saddles, including one “de la brida, of blue velvet, with the bows painted gold, and on the front bow a cannon with its carriage, and on the hind bow another cannon with flames of fire.” Among the rest were “a gineta saddle of red leather, used by my lord the duke,” together with saddles of bay leather, of dark brown leather, of “smooth leather with trappings of blue cloth,” of Cordova leather, and “a date-coloured gineta-saddle, complete.”

The same inventory specifies innumerable smaller articles of harness, such as stirrups, spurs, reins, headstalls, and poitrals or breast-leathers. Many of these pieces were richly ornamented; e.g., “some silver headstalls of small size, enamelled in blue, with gilt supports of iron,”[145] as well as “some silver headstalls, gilded and enamelled green and rose, with shields upon the temples.” Others of these headstalls were made of copper, and nearly all were colour-enamelled.

The stirrups included “two Moorish stirrups of gilded tin, for a woman's use”;[146] “some large Moorish stirrups, gilt, with two silver plates upon their faces, enamelled gold, green, and blue, and eight nails on either face”; “some other Moorish stirrups, wrought inside with ataujía-work in gold, and outside with plates of copper enamelled in green, blue, and white; the handles gilt, with coverings of red leather”; and “some silver stirrups with three bars upon the floor thereof, round-shaped in the manner of an urinal, with open sides consisting of two bars, a flower within a small shield on top, and, over this, the small face of a man.”

The many sets of reins included several of Granada make, coloured in white, red, and bay; while one of the most elaborate of the poitrals was of “red leather, embroidered with gold thread, with fringes of rose-coloured silk, buckles, ends, and rounded knobs; the whole of copper enamelled green, and blue, and white.”

Small but attractive accessories to these handsome sets of mediæval Spanish harness were the decorative medals (Plate [lx].) hung from the horse's breast in tourneying or in war. In France these medals were known as annelets volants, branlants, or pendants; although in Spain, where it is probable that they were used more widely than in other countries, they have no definite name. The term jaeces is sometimes applied to them; but jaez properly means the entire harness for a horse, and the word is thus employed by classic Spanish authors, such as Tirso de Molina. A recent term, invented by a living writer, is jaeces colgantes, or “hanging jaeces.”

These ornaments, which had their origin among the Romans and Byzantines, are figured in certain of the older Spanish codices such as the Cántigas de Santa Maria. In Christian Spain, however, their vogue was greatest in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. They disappeared altogether in the sixteenth century; and among the Spanish Moors their use, though not unknown, was always quite exceptional.

The mottoes and devices on these little plates are very varied. Sometimes the motto has an amorous, sometimes a religious import. Sometimes the vehicle of the motto is Latin, sometimes Spanish, sometimes French. Sometimes the device contains, or is composed of, a blazon, and commonly there is floral or other ornament. A collection of nearly three hundred of these medals belonged to the late Count of Valencia de Don Juan, all of which were probably made in Spain. The material as a rule is copper, adorned with champlevé enamelling, and the colours often used to decorate and relieve the interspaces of the gilded metal are red, blue, black, white, and green.