Warfare in Medieval Manuscripts

The glamour associated with knights in shining armor, colorful tournaments, and heroic deeds appeal strongly to the modern imagination. However, few pieces of military dress and equipment have survived, so 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 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 a variety of evocative manuscript illuminations and reveals them as a source of information about military dress, equipment, and practices.

Pamela Porter is a former curator at the British Library.