Talk:Bascinet

Title of the article

I'm curious about why this article is as Bascinet rather than Basinet - my Oxford English Dictionary lists only the latter spelling. Matthew 13:51, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

My copy of the 1968 Encyclopedia Britannica has an article under "helmet" that uses the "bascinet" spelling. Granted the article is by Harold L. Peterson, an American. --Kiyoweap (talk) 14:11, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Temp change of lead picture

As to my recent edit job, sorry I couldn't quite complete the task and had to leave it in a rough-hewn state. The leading image now is lame, I know, but the previous one (image:Bascinet by Wendelin Boeheim.jpg) with the bretache nose piece was sent lower down, because of a couple of problems.

The article claims the bretache was the earliest development for facial protection (i.e. predating visors) for the bascinet. But no inline authority was cited for this, and I couldn't google anything to substantiate it, so I'm assuming the contributor just drew his own conclusion (because it just looked cruder). However, Boeheim's Handbuch der Waffenkunde itself, where the image is taken from (p.34) says the "Nasenband (bretèche)" appeared c. 1330 and disappeared 1370. That would be after the visor, which arrived around 1300 (accord. to Viollete-le-duc and Peterson).

Secondly, it may not even be a picture of a bascinet, even. Boehmer's image is a reproduction from Viollete-le-duc's dictionary, but in the original it appears under "Barbut"! (not "Bacinet"). --Kiyoweap (talk) 15:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Reorganization of article (reduncancy)

In the previous incarnation of the article, there were two major sections, /*Development*/ and /*Use*/. But what the /*Use*/ section did was to redunantly revisit all the major points of the /*Development*/ section, garnishing them with just a bit of historical context. It even had an entire /*Facial protection*/ subsection.

Perhaps this was the result of trying to accomodate the gallery of the bascinet helm pics the contributor wanted to feature, and in order to layout the pics the way you want it sometimes you are compelled to write some filler or repetitive texts.

Anyway I retitled /*Use*/ as /*Historic use*/ hoping to have it populated with more instances of knights or monarchs, in real life or in artistic depiction. I placed all the developement related stuff in the previous section, with the result that there are glaring redundant passages, that still need to be eliminated.

Also, the repeated portions aren't consistent IMO, and make a confusing read for me.

According to my source (Harold L. Peterson (1922-1978), under "Helmet" in the 1968 Ency. Britannica), "About the year 1400 this camail was superseded by additional plates, and the so-called 'great bascinet' had appeared". The old edit to the article had a few passages on this which were not very well reconciled:

• /*Developments*/ "The bascinet up to c. 1390-1410 usually had a neck and throat defence of mail called a camail or aventail"
• /*Developments*/ "In later versions of the bascinet (from the end of the 14th century onwards) the mail aventail was replaced by a plate defence, termed the gorget."
• /*Later versions*/ During the first half of the 15th century, more plates were added to protect the throat better, producing a form called the "great bascinet".

Presumably if you take these three sentences at face value, around perhaps 1390-1410 bascinet had "usually camails" but were paradoxically also being "replaced by a plate defense" around the same period. And the jaw-plate reinforced types of this period have no business being referred to as "great bacinets", while only "later versions" dating closer to 1450 are called "great bascinet" ??? Pourquoi? --Kiyoweap (talk) 16:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

"At a point early in the fifteenth century, the mail aventail of the bascinet was replaced by plates. This produced a helmet known to its contemporaries as a great bascinet..." Oakeshott, p. 117. Both the French and German sources are very, very old, and while Viollet-le-Duc is useful for illustrations, he made many high quality drawings of armour from original art work or actual examples, he and the German are not useful for typology or dating purposes. Be particularly wary of putting too much reliance on literal translations of terms, as usage may have changed today. Urselius (talk) 19:18, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The original point was that you gave out 3 different time rangesof when the transition into "great bascinet" occured. Ergo, confusing. If you want to commit to one consistent date based on Oakeshott (over my Peterson) that's fine and I'm glad you're quoting out of the source for verification. (Had you presented three different scholarly opionion which were attributed, that would have been another way to remedy, though more tedious to write up). But your edits are rife with unbacked claims, to be perfectly blunt. --Kiyoweap (talk) 08:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

No, I gave a number of dates culled from various sources as to different overlapping developments. That is the transition from extremely pointed-skulled bascinets to round-skulled bascinets and from extremely pointed visors to rounded visors, and the introduction of plate gorgets and the phasing out of camails all happened over different and somewhat overlapping time-frames. I was trying to express these developments within the less than ideal sub-section structure that I found already in existence in the article. Unlike yourself I did not ride roughshod over previous contibutors' work, but tried to subtly improve the article. A process far from complete when you made your intervention. To be blunt your quality of English expression is less than ideal. Urselius (talk) 12:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Breteche section

This goes under the /*Breteche*/ section.

There was a block of text added in an Urselius (talk · contribs)'s old edit 13:26, 18 September 2012 ( 365 bytes) (diff)

The earliest form of face-protection used with the bascinet was the bretache, a detachable nasal , this protected the nose and the central part of the face. It was employed if the great helm was not worn or removed in combat; the lower part of the bretache was attached to the aventail, the upper end locked onto the brow at the front of the helm.<ref>Nicolle 1999, p. 232</ref> Poorer soldiers, and those who favoured greater vision and agility over protection, often wore only a visor-less bascinet with a bretache, not employing a great helm at all.

• Nicolle, David (1999). Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era, 1050-1350: Western Europe and the Crusader States (snippet). London: Greenhill Books.

which I removed (and replaced with a different view that was attributable) because as far as I could tell (not 1000% sure), it does not actually state here this was the earliest form of face protection, i.e., the one that prefigured the addition of the camail/aventail ca. 1300.

Based on snippet view link given above, what Nicolle's book on p.232 does seem to refer to is the "bretache" on the tomb effigy of it:Gherarduccio Gherardini (d.1331). I am guessing it's the thing dangling down the chin like a pharoah's beard on the sepulchre image (File:Sepolcrogheraduccio.jpg).

Since I didn't find any other books corroborating this "earliest" theory either, I sourced out of Boeheim's book (in German) which contained the "Bascinet with breteche", which gave the dates 1330 - 1370 for when such breteche appeared and disappeared. --Kiyoweap (talk) 09:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

OK you got me - I extrapolated from the very little information I could get hold of - at the time there was an illustration of a bretache in the article and nothing in the text to comment on it. I now have some very good information from JSTOR on the origins of the bascinet and the earliest recorded use of the term. Urselius (talk) 13:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Stop-press I found an article on a reliquary which suggests that the bretache preceded and overlapped with the klappvisor from c.1329 when it appears on the sculpture of Cangrande della Scala. The appearance of true visors on bascinets is therefore distinctly later than 1300. Urselius (talk) 14:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Bretache open

I am finding a number of works (two of which I will refer to in the text) giving earliest dates for the bretache of c. 1330, klappvisor at the same time or slightly later, visors with two pivots from c. 1350 and the hounskull at c. 1380. The earliest datable representation of a bascinet with a visor with two pivots I can find is here: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12577/

This funerary efffigy dates to shortly after the death of the person in 1347. Even here the visor is not a fully developed hounskull. The Encyclopeadia Britannica article would not have been written by an armour expert, just a researcher, and it would appear to be inaccurate. Urselius (talk) 09:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Urselius, in your edit to /*Visored bascinet*/, unless you can find better corroboration, it is merely your own hypothesis ( "extrapolated," by your own admission) that the "bretache" was the type of facial protection that preceded the "visor", and constitutes Original Research type material.

No, Lucchini unambiguously states: "the bretache preceded and overlapped with the dissemination of a new type of visor. Known as the Klappvisier.

• In my earlier edit on 14:00, 7 January 2013 (Special:Permalink/531784922) I gave a ca. 1300 dating for the advent of the visors on the bascinet. I will concede I gave two sources which may be dated, but I don't feel your source is quite solid enough to change the date to 1330 and remove my two sources while at it. The 1968 Britannica article was by Harold Leslie Peterson, an "expert on arms and armor " in his own right (cf. Paterson papers), and an author of numerous titles in the field, so your characterization that it had "not have been written by an armour expert, just a researcher, and .. inaccurate", is spurrious.

Rather old though, see my next comment. Urselius (talk) 08:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Your Gravett, p.116, didn't exactly say 1330 was the very first time that visors appeared, only that: "From about 1330 the basinet was often worn with a visor," which is a much more ambiguous statement, and not really commital about its first appearance.

Mere sophistry. These are always approximations, no one filed patents in the 14th century. Much of the dating is based on funerary effigies and accurately dating these is often more difficult that you would expect. In general, dating of the appearance of new forms of armour in the 14th and 15th centuries has moved forwards in time, according to more recent research. I have, however, amended the text so that it mirrors the exact wording of the Gravett piece to reflect your very particular sensibilities. Urselius (talk)

• You perpetrate another swicheroo of this type when you write "The "klappvisor" was the first type of visor employed on bascinets from around 1330-1340;". In fact what the cited source Lucchini, pp. 45-46, actually say is that the Klappvisier was a "new type", and not the "first type" of visor.

Mere sophistry again. I have modified the text to accommodate your delicate sensibility on the subject. In fact you are wrong, though what you quote is correct in itself the whole passage unambiguously says that the Klappvisor preceded the side pivot type - in the absence of any other type of visor being recorded as existing then the klappvisor is, by action of logic, "the first type". Urselius (talk) 08:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Since Lucchini says that the klappvisier (one where the mask was "affixed to the brow through a single central pivot") is the new type, we might reasonably infer he regarded the type "double-pivoted" on the sides to be the earlier form. Conjectures aside, we can quote directly from one of the sources you yourself cited, Devries & Smith 2007, p. 176: "The bascinet was fitted with a visor, called the Klappvisier, which at first was rounded and pivoted at the sides of the skull, although later was attached to the top center of the face opening." (DeVries, Kelly; Smith, Robert Douglas (2007). p.176 Medieval Weapons: An Illustrated History of Their Impact. ABC-CLIO. p. 176. {{cite book}}: Check |url= value (help))

No, Lucchini states that the hounskull, which he equates with all double-pivoted visors, was later than the klappvisor unambigiously in the text. Urselius (talk) 08:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I quote: "the Klappvisier was progressively replaced by a sturdier type of iron face guard that was hinged at the temples of the headpiece. Although the two modes of attachment coexisted for a short period, and German examples indicate that the use of Klappvisiere continued north of theAlps until the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the centrally hinged face guard had a briefer circulation in Italy, from the 1340s to the 1380s."

• Yet in the face of this (Devries & Smith 2007, p. 176) you represent the "double pivot" type as appearing later, somewhere in the 1340s, flipping the order of which came first.

What? Everything I wrote is internally consistent, but Devries and Smith have got their facts wrong, you can't have a klappvisor with side pivots, as the definition of a klappvisor used by most authors is that it has one pivot on the brow of the helmet. However, I have included their alternative definition in the text.Urselius (talk) 08:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• The fact that the brass rubbing of Sir Hugh Hastings (d. 1347) in http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12577/ was "The earliest datable representation of a bascinet with a visor with two pivots I can find" (in your previous thread) does not warrant you to state "The side-pivot mount which used two pivots,.. is first shown in illustrations of the 1340s" as fact, since it is blatant original research. The source you cite in the article (Gravett p.115) illustrates the brass rubbing with a caption, but there is no mention I can find here about it being one of the earliest depictions. I have not found a very good counterexample on this unfortunately. Boeheim mentions the tomb monument (Grabmale) of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke d. 1323 [sic.], but I don't think this knight's effigy depicts a visor, so Boeheim must mean the sculpture on the canopy as shown here [1]. --Kiyoweap (talk) 07:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Can't see the images. In your scenario, which I changed because I found superior sources - Gravett is or was a curator of armour at the Royal Armouries and Nicolle is a leading scholar and author in the field who has written many very scholarly works as well as more populist ones - we would have the hounskull appear in 1300, and not change until about 1410, this seems entirely implausible on grounds of common sense, if nothing else. Urselius (talk) 08:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Are you some sort of lawyer? Urselius (talk) 08:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Lead

The lead is not usually referenced in Wikipedia articles - certainly not FAs. Urselius (talk) 15:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Merge from Hounskull

Urselius has proposed deletiong Hounskull with the following rationale: "The term hounskull does not refer to a type of helmet, it refers to a type of visor attached to a type of helmet called a bascinet. The content of this page is adequately covered in the article "Bascinet". Where it has the advantage of being within a much wider context of helmet evolution. The hounskull visor was made to be completely detachable. If a soldier detached his visor, he would still be wearing a helmet, but would the helmet be a bascinet or a hounskull? This question completely negates the logicality of the concept of a 'hounskull helmet'."

I am WP:DEPRODding so that a merge may be discussed here. ~Kvng (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I support the merge, the content of the Hounskull article is exactly what I would expect to see if I wanted to read about bascinets. The most common depiction of the bascinet is with the visor, in my limited experience. K.Bog 22:24, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I strongly support a merge, at best 'hounskull' describes a subtype of bascinet and in any case the term is informal. 82.176.221.176 (talk) 11:18, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Sculpture

@Urselius: I removed an image of a sculpture of a warrior wearing a bascinet. I don't think it makes for a reliable depiction of a bascinet. We should stick to technical diagrams or photographs of bascinets. Kurzon (talk) 06:23, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@Kurzon: A huge, and I mean really huge, proportion of academic work on pre-Renaissance arms and armour is derived from depictions in manuscript illustrations, church brasses and sculpture. This is because there is a scarcity of actual examples. Using contemporary illustrations and sculpture is perfectly acceptable in scholarship (see any scholarly book, for example those by Ewart Oakeshott, who invented the Medieval sword typology in use today) and consequently in Wikipedia articles. Sculpture is therefore admissible in principal, and the sculpture in question is of particular relevance, as it is the only one available on Wikimedia which illustrates the combination of bascinet with a plate gorget to which it is not physically attached. As such it directly illustrates something alluded to in the text. Urselius (talk) 09:28, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I have just noticed that you had removed the illustration again. This shows either a lack of good faith or an unwillingness to abide by Wikipedia norms. If an edit is challenged then the default is that the page returns to its original state WHILE discussions are held on the talk page. I have once more reverted. Urselius (talk) 09:36, 20 October 2020 (UTC)