This static, ordered arrangement began to shift in the Late Medieval Era. The Quickening World Citizens of Tournai, France, bury their dead, from the Tractus Quartus, c. Smiths often worked on a small scale, with one or two apprentices, usually close family, who would learn the trade of the smith and, eventually, take over the forge when the elder smith could no longer work. Only the wealthiest lords in more urbanized environments could have afforded to have a smith skilled enough to outfit and maintain the weapons and armor of their household - thus, the status of the individual smith was commensurate. Most blacksmiths produced simple work, shoeing horses, making nails, fashioning door hinges, and so on. The smith, being a non-agricultural worker, was likely bound by slightly different bonds, swearing their craft in service to a particular lord. In return, the Lord would protect them and permit them to keep some food for subsistence. A peasant would be sworn to serve a lord, tilling the lord’s land and paying taxes in the form of food. The position of smiths in society (as indeed, the position of everyone) was determined by feudal bonds: sworn oaths of service that bound individuals to a set of responsibilities and claims. The only surviving names are considered to be mythological, like Weyland the Smith, a Germanic folk figure who made the mythic hero Beowulf a shirt of maille so fine that he offered it to his lord upon his death. Though we can instantly observe the status of such burials, showing that across Medieval Europe skilled smiths were highly valued, the names of these smiths are lost to us. For example, in Sogndalsdalen, western Norway, the grave of a Norse blacksmith who lived in the 9th century was discovered in 2015, replete with a set of fine tools buried alongside him, as well as a sword and an axe which he may well have made himself. 800 – 828 CE), tell us an enormous amount about the status of armor in that society: fine brunia of chainmail were handed down through successive generations of the wealthiest families like the most precious heirlooms - but these documents tell us little about their construction or the individuals who made them.Īrchaeology can help us identify sites of metalworking, and even in rare cases help us identify individuals with a degree of certainty. This is partly due to the problem of historical sources which pervades Early and High Medieval history in general: very few original documents have survived, and they deal almost exclusively with the affairs of the church and the highest rungs of the nobility.įor example, the inheritance rolls of the Frankish Empire under the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (r. 1250 CE onward), we have little or no examples of individual armorers that we can confidently ascribe particular works to. If we are to look at the process of armor-making and the individuals whose craft gained them fame and renown, we have to look toward the end of the Medieval Era at the beginning of the Renaissance and the post-Medieval world. Medieval Armor and Medieval Armorers Fine chainmail and scale armor, from the Stuttgart Psalter, 9th century, via State Library of Württemberg
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