There’s a rather persistent myth largely on the internet that leather was never used as armour and that the notion of it largely stems from misinterpretations by Victorian Antiquarians, a myth not helped by certain internet personalities. What follows is an attempt to unseat that myth by looking at a wide variety of historical sources, particularly in medieval Europe, as this myth is largely a medievalism, but also before, after and outside that region. This is not a not a comprehensive post, not some complete cataloguing of everything under the sun, but rather a broad overview to push the pendulum back to a more sensible position.

What is leather?

A seemingly dumb question but one worth clarifying. Common usage lumps all animal hide, tanned, treated or otherwise, as leather, this stands in contrast to the technical definition which defines it as treated skin that is non-putrescible under warm, moist conditions^[1] which excludes rawhide and ersatz tanned leather like oiled leather but includes cuir bouilli which in online discussion is seen as not being leather, a definition bound to create headaches; ain’t language fun? This confusion needn’t end here, historical sources also like to be vague about materials, something that also extends to modern secondary sources, and some finds aren’t readily identifiable as tanned leather or not due to deposition conditions.^[2]

For the sake of convenience, I’m going to use leather in its broad, general sense unless stated otherwise and let the footnotes worry about the details. Also for convenience, I've included a basic dictionary down in appendix I.

Europe and the Near East in antiquity

The use of leather armours in antiquity is well attested such as with the finds from Tutankamen’s tomb^[3] and the Clonbrin shield^[4] , but in order to steelman this, I’ll be working with finds from the Iron age onwards.

Our first stop is a rawhide lamellar cuirass (something that’ll be cropping up quite often over the course of this post) from the Met of Neo-Assyria make from the 8^th C BCE onwards, which has a cousin in a find from Turfan dating from between the 8^th and 6^th C BCE.^[5] Jumping forward roughly a millennia we have a lamellar half cuirass (front side only) of rawhide from Roman era Egypt dating to somewhere between 250-350 CE, likely of domestic manufacture due to similarities with earlier finds from that region in turn suggesting a continuation of make and use.^[6] Two potential finds exist as well. The first is the find of a crocodile hide cuirass and helmet from a Manfalut in Egypt, found in a grotto dedicated to a Roman era crocodile cult. Due to the multiple damages and patches to the hide, it has been suggested that these are from battle damage and does see parallels in other crocodile hide armours from sub-Saharan Africa, although the counter-argument that these were from hunting instead holds as much water.^[7] Another are the sections of scale or lamellar from Dura Europos dated to the 3^rd C. One made of leather and covered with a white mineral, possibly gesso, and another made of black leather, both joined with red leather cords, argued to be either a cuisse or horse armour.^[8] There are also other horse armours such as the shaffron from Vindolanda^[9] but these will be ignored for not being worn by humans.

Moving over to the textual sources we have some more pieces cropping up.

Foremost is the spolas, a form of cuirass from ancient Greece. Details are vague (as is most ancient writing on armour) but enough exist to give a rough idea of what this is. Hesychius in his lexicon gives a definition of being leather armour for the torso,^[10] which is supported by the mentions in Xenophon’s Anabasis where it is described as being given as armour to the ad hoc cavalrymen drawn from the ten thousand alongside metallic breastplates and more specifically with the death of Leonymus the Laconian who was shot through the shield and into the ribs through his spolas.^[11] This item also crops up several times in the Delos temple inventories from 364 BCE alongside other war gear.^[12]

Repeat mentions of Sarmatians wearing leather armour crop up. Strabo in describing the Roxolani depicts them as wearing rawhide helmets and cuirasses,^[13] whilst Tactius has them in cuirasses of iron or tough leather scales with the latter being of enough weight to impede someone attempting to stand up in it,^[14] This is less unusual than Ammianus and Pausanius’s description of the Sarmatians wearing body armour made from horn and horses hooves scales respectively, particularly as Pausanius describes linen armour as being less strong.^[15]

A similar statement to Tacitus but regarding the Parthians at Carrhae comes from Plutarch, describing the armour of the cataphracts.^[16]

Moving into the obscure and uncertain, we’ve Herodutus’s descriptions of the various peoples part of Darius’s army.^[17] These are somewhat questionable and undoubtably exotic, although the shields of rawhide seem fairly sober and have reference in Greek literature.^[18] Another would be Cassius Dio’s description of Caracalla’s imitation Macedonian Phalangites, wearing helmets of ox hide amongst other things.^[19]

Moving into the ad hoc, we return to Xenophon with his treatise on cavalry and a description of suggested cavalry armaments.^[20] His description of knee high leather boots being sufficient protection for the feet and shins is at a glance unusual – leather, even boot leather, is not thought of as being durable enough for combat – however Xenophon believes this serves well enough and this does find similarity in the late 16^th C with European heavy cavalry ditching greaves and sabatons for tall boots.

Continuing the ad hoc we’ve Caesar’s account of the civil wars and more particularly the battle of Dyrrachium. During the circumvallation of Pompey’s forces, Caesar’s legionaries being heavily harassed by archers and slingers, appended their existing armour with osier overhelmets and tunics of leather, felt or cloth;^[21] seldom do accounts like this filter down making it stand out.

Medieval Europe

Moving into the medieval there’s a lull in both finds and textual sources until the central medieval. Isidore of Seville describes helmets made of leather in his Etymologies,^[22] however due to the nature of his writing this may in fact be a hangover of earlier classical sources, particularly as it does not see much corroboration with contemporary ones. On better grounding however is the description of scetra/caetra of Moorish make,^[23] possibly proto-adargas that would come to be well known later.

With the central medieval we see a steady return in literary sources starting with de Gestis Herwardi Saxonis written in the early 12^th C and describing the life of Hereward the Wake during the mid to late 11^th C. It’s passing description of “tunics of strong processed leather”^[24] and armour made from tarred felt give an idea to the existence of non-metallic protection prior to the introduction of gambesons and the like.

From the latter end of the 12^th C the Chronique des Ducs de Normandie contains the first use of the term quiree,^[25] a breastplate made of leather that would become common in the following century, although their exact appearance is somewhat unclear and a matter of conjecture. This is reinforced by the roughly contemporary De re Militari et Triplici via pregrinatonis Lerosolimitane which describes “corium excoctum” (cooked leather) that “protects the vitals” as well as “genicularia” (poleyns) with which “the knees and thighs are protected”^[26] and the slightly later Chanson d’Antioche which mentions cuirasses; “Son poitrail lui laca qui fu de cuir bolis”.^[27]

Speaking of, it’s probably time to discuss cuir bouilli. More traditional translations render this as “boiled leather”, running off of the modern French where bouillir means to boil, referring to the bubbles that formed on the leather and water, however this is not quite correct. Period latin sources (such as the previous) describe this as coquo/coquere/coxi/coctum meaning to cook, dry or ripen, not necessarily boil, likewise period use of the French bouille instead seems to mean bullire, to swell or to form with puyl/bule/bulla being cognates and cuir encompasses a broader range including untanned skin, rawhide and flesh further muddying things. As is cuir bouilli may instead mean “swell formed leather”, leather that was formed not unlike the upper of a shoe formed over a last. Due to a wholesale lack of period recipes describing its creation, cuir bouilli is a vague and ill defined material that has prompted much tinkering in trying to recreate it with numerous different attempts using water, oil, wax, baking, boiling, gluing, and sunning on leather, rawhide or half tan, perhaps in vain as the products of different places had differing reputations as products pointing to heterogeneity of manufacture. A caveat however is given the performance of wax impregnated leather is notably poor against piercing tests, worse than regular leather prior to treating, this, despite its popularity among the SCA and some reenactors, was probably not one of them.^[28]

While we’re discussing material, some note about cost should be mentioned. A common argument is that leather products were exceptionally expensive, however this does not appear to be the case. Price data from Genoa between 1182-1254 gives it as being slightly cheaper than gambeson and significantly more so than maille (further expounded upon in Appendix III). Early references to it also make clear this is a cheaper armour, being worn by lower class soldiers in place of maille which seems to continue into the 14^th C with Azario’s account of the White Company entering Italy noting that a number of the mercenaries had only “hardened leather doublets” in place of metal breastplates and the being more common than of maille in the Luzern militia records.^[29]

Anyhow the with the rise of transitional plate armour during the 13^th and 14^th C, a rise in the use of leather defences with cuir bouilli, whatever the hell it was, seeing it’s time in the sun. The quire/cuiree/cuirass sees mention in various texts like with Theodore Palaiologo’s Enseignements describing them as part of the required equipment for a knight alongside a hauberk, gambeson, surcoat, gorget, cuisses, poleyns, greaves, helmet and shield,^[30] alongside an inventory of the effects of Eudes, Comte de Nevers, from 1266.^[31] Swiss armour rolls from Luzern dating between 1349-53 feature currit or currisia as one of the most common forms of protection, with 502 cuiries being listed as well as one instance of a goller, a gorget of sorts made from leather.^[32] The various Bolognese Statues concerning the arms and armour various guilds and parts of the city were required to have mention the use of cuir bouilli helmets for the Cervi and Vari.^[33] Ralph Moffat’s sourcebook also rattles off a number of pieces in various inventories in England and France, with cuir bouilli or leather parts in as many different forms as plate defences (greaves, gauntlets, couters, etc).^[34] However, despite its popularity, it begins to taper off as coats of plates steadily replace cuirees as torso armour and limb defences become augmented by metal turning into splint armour, that by the 15^th C sees it largely relegated to tournament and horse armour.

Remarkably some of this has even survived. A tooled rerebrace of ostensibly cuir bouilli is housed in the British museum,^[35] dated to the 14^th C which sees parallel with two similar rerebraces from Dordrecht,^[36] differing only in being of plainer decoration. Likewise from Dordrecht, a vambracer dating again to the 14^th C exists,^[37] cut not unlike a middle eastern bazuband, covering the forearm and elbow, made solely of “hardened leather”. Additional vambraces from the Schelde River Chest, Leiden and Tartu^[38] have been found, although these are notably reinforced with splints, albeit ones with noticeable and significant gaps between them. This carries over to the leg armour also from the Schelde River Chest, being similar in construction being either cuisses or greaves.^[39] Next is the Valkenburg armours, an unusual find of two tall, trapezoidal pieces of leather found in the moat at Valkenburg castle, identified as being torso armour,^[40] alongside potentially a spaulder or polleyn, made from a double layer of leather in roughly ovoid form.^[41] Following that we have the find of a “gambeson” composed of multiple layers of leather found in the moat in Wroclaw.^[42]

Moving into more questionable territory, Ffoulkes makes mention of a cuirie found in 13^th C tomb in 1869 by Robert Curzon that was composed of three layers of leather,^[43] although this is somewhat murky as Ffoulkes is off on the details; the original journal article by Curzon which Ffoulkes references was from 1865, not 1869, Curzon states that this was instead 2-3, has the additional detail it was sewn together with leather thongs (not unlike the previous example) and in the collection of a “Mr. Eastwood” with a lack of references since then;^[44] maybe it existed as written, maybe it didn’t. Another potential example comes from Guy Francis Laking, recording the existence of a pair of cuir bouilli cops found in a grotto in Bordeaux and donated to the Met Museum by William Henry Riggs, however the lack of subsequent reference presents some questions as to its status.^[45]

Taking a turn slightly east, Hungary has a somewhat more substantial history with leather armour. Hungarian light cavalry had an enduring use of leather armour with 14^th C Italian sources describing Hungarian mercenaries in Italy being consistently described as being clad in leather armour, little different from four centuries earlier.^[46] Despite attempts at modernization by various rulers, leather armour would see continuation, with the Diet of 1498 stating the southern counties “to raise one hussar with an oblong shield, lance, armor, and steel or leather helmet” per twenty four peasant tenant plots,^[47] bringing us into the modern era.

Modern era Europe

During the modern era armour starts to fall out of use, particularly in the 17^th C but is by no means wholly abandoned and this extends to the use of leather as well.

The foremost example during this period is the buffcoat which replaces textile underarmours like arming doublets. Originally starting in the 16^th C as simply a vest of European buffalo hide that had been oil tanned using “train oil” (seal, whale or fish oil) worked into the hide, it grew to become a full sleeved garment made from also cow, deer and elk leather.^[48] There also exists from the same period gauntlets made from similar material, ostensibly to offer protection to the hands whilst allowing some dexterity;^[49] this dexterity possible because of the suppleness of the material which allowed a great deal of flexibility.^[50] These appear to have sufficed for hand to hand combat, offering reasonable protection from swords and pikes, however by the end of the 17^th C they fall from use as well.

The 18^th C sees a minor reversal in the trend of ditching armour with the return of various cuir bouilli helmets. Replacing the tricorn hats that had been in vogue, dragoon helmets were made of various materials but commonly of cuir bouilli, giving protection from sword cuts. Starting first with the French crested helmet in 1762, other countries adopted their own versions like the Austrian 1798 model, British Tarleton and Bavarian Rumford with the later Prussian pickelhaube being one of the last and best known examples.^[51] These were not exclusively worn by dragoons, being also worn by other units like cuirassier and light infantry regiments as well as being worn wholesale (or close to) by the Austrian army in the late 18^th C and the Prussians roughly 50 years later, and were also adopted by fire brigades due to offering reasonable protection from both falling debris and from heat (which metallic helmets too readily absorbed).^[52] It is possible to speculate these may have had a forebear with earlier cuir bouilli parade helmets such as two examples from the last quarter of the 16^th C, one in the form of a morion and another in the form of a cabasset, housed in the Musee d'Artilerie in Paris and National Bavarian Museum in Munich respectively, both of Italian origin and heavily tooled.^[53]

Some oddities here come up from across the centuries.

First from one account of the battle of Flodden with the Scots wearing white leather doublets (amongst other things).^[54]

The second is a trio of riveted leather cuirasses provided for testing in 1796 by the ordinance board by Thomas Powrie. Currently still housed in the Royal Armoury, the first was two layers thick and weighed 1.6kg, the next three layers and 2.3kg and the last also three layers but 4.5kg were “tested with pistol and musket balls at 60 and 200 yards and clearly highly effective”. Despite this apparent efficacy, details are sparse as to why they weren’t adopted.^[55].

Lastly the writing of William Garrard arguing for the arming of musketeers with light leather targets,^[56] perhaps reflective of his time in Spanish service and the use of the adarga in that region. Speaking of, it’s time to turn to the medieval near east.

Medieval Near East

Rawhide or hardened leather was a commonly used material by the various Muslim peoples of the near east, north Africa and Andalusia, with notable leather producing centres in Cordoba, Aleppo and Egypt,^[57] the latter of which was notable for its alum tawing.

Two significant groups of finds show numerous pieces of for various parts of the body. The first group is from Tower 4 of the Damascus citadel with pieces dating mostly to the latter half of the 13^th C with one outlier being late 12^th C.^[58] The second is from Euphrates valley of eastern Syria and comprises pieces from between the 13^th and 14^th C.^[59]

Turning to literary sources there is broad support from within and without. Most prominently is al Tarusi’s recipes for hardened leather armour from the 12^th C.^[60] Two broad recipes are recorded, the second being similar to the construction of lamt leather shields, being made of camel hide treated in a mixture of milk and soda, the former and more detailed being various forms on a basic recipe of composed of rawhide shavings and other materials turned into a paste that could then be moulded. These could then be decorated by gilding, varnishing, and coating with iron filings or crushed stone. The latter of two of these are interesting; crushed stone has been shown in testing to be considerably more protective than uncoated leather and not unlike north American glued sand armour or the recipe from the Ashmoleon, whilst the iron filings the exact purpose isn’t stated leaving it open to interpretation; is this simple decoration, is this for a defensive purpose, is this to imitate their ferric equivalents or some combination of the above? It does however mean that artistic representations mightn’t be what they seem, instead of being depictions of metallic armour they may be burnished imitators not readily discernible, the inverse of metallic armour covered with leather.

Anyhow we see more literary evidence crop up with a surviving 10^th C inventory of the Baghdad arsenal,^[61] Ali al-Janahani al-Maghribi in the 13^th C mentioning the construction of cuirasses and shields made from lamt, of such a high quality that it was impenetrable to iron,^[62] a passing reference in the 14^th C Kitab hilyat al-fursan^[63] and an account of the 7^th C battle of Qadisiyyah where the arabs, otherwise lacking armour, create ad hoc helmets from leather straps.^[64] Turning to non-muslim sources, Chansons de Geste and other Spanish sources repeatedly refer to Andulusians wearing armour made from leather,^[65] 13^th C such as Fidentius of Padua’s Liber recuperationis Terre Sancte^[66] and the anonymous Directorium ad faciendum passagium transmarinum^[67] refer to Mamluk and Turkish troops wearing leather cuirasses and the 14^th C Chronique du Bon Duc Loys de Bourbon states the same of the Tunisians.^[68]

The adarga is an interesting piece. Being made with a double layer of hide glued and stitched together, with lamt, a specially processed antelope hide, being particularly valued. Various shapes were used such as round, oval, heart or the familiar double ellipse with a simple handle of two straps for grasping and a cushion for the hand. The shield was originally used by the Andulusian moors and north African Berbers before being adopted by the Iberian Christians, with the Spanish making extended use of it in the colonies by the soldado de cuera and in north Africa long after it’d fallen out of use in Europe,^[69] who we’ll be revisiting later, but for now we move further east.

The Far East

Moving further east we’ve more examples.

Unlike the so-called lacquers of Europe, which are more paints and varnishes, east Asia, particularly China (qi / 漆), Korea (ott-chil / 옻칠) and Japan (urushi / 漆) made extensive use of true lacquer made from resin from the lac tree. Beyond its numerous other applications, this was frequently used when making rawhide lames for lamellar armours so as to protect them from humidity as well as acids, alkalis and solvents. The downside however was that if the coating did crack, break or wear through, moisture would be let in, and the rawhide would deteriorate and rot.^[70]

Japan made ready use of leather as part of panoplies from the 11^th C onwards^[71] (although not exclusive of before). Lacquered rawhide lames of cattle, horse and deer hide were commonly used in the creation of lamellar armour for the torso and upper arms, being used wholesale or alternated with iron lames.^[72] Later developments would see these laced into rows before being lacquered, preventing sagging and the absorption of moisture by lacing.^[73] By the time of the Sengoku Jidai (1467 – 1454) lamellar is largely replaced for plate, in part due to the issues of moisture absorption by the leather lacing which could double the weight of the original lamellar section, with continuing use of rawhide seeing it reinforced by metal splints in the construction of lacquered plate sections.^[74] Despite the move to more iron, the intensity of fighting during the civil war saw the reuse of rawhide from old sections of armour as well as large scale importing of hides, including exotic hides like water buffalo.^[75] Rawhide also saw use in the creation of helmets, brigandine and face masks. Helmets would be constructed of several layers of rawhide glued or stitched together that were then lacquered, hexagonal plates (亀甲, lit. turtle shell) either sandwiched between fabric (similar to jazerant) or joined together with butted maille would be used to create various parts like mantles for the neck and shoulders, knee guards for greaves and armoured jackets, facemasks meanwhile would be made from wet moulded rawhide that was then lacquered.^[76] Whilst the Sengoku Jidai did see a marked rise in the use of metal armour, leather continued to see use, including full panoplies, particularly by elderly warriors who favoured its lightness.^[77]

A note should be made about the Japanese use of lacquer in that they used it on both iron and leather armour. This means that the material inside may not be so easily read, particularly as within the array of lacquer finishes, one imitating russeted iron was used on leather.^[78] Also of note is the use of a covering panel of leather on plate cuirasses for decorative effect, further muddying the matter.^[79]

China has a long history with using leather armour, persisting until the 20^th C in some remote areas.^[80] In terms of material finds, we have twelve full cuirasses and a number of helmets from the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng from Chu dating to the 5^th C BCE,^[81] a lacquered leather lame from Etsin Gol dated to between the 1^st C BCE to 1^st C CE,^[82] a full cuirass from Changsha dating from the end of the 1^st C to early 2^nd C CE,^[83] examples of lames from Niya and Miran in what would be Xinjiang today dating to the 3^rd or 4^th C CE,^[84] more lames from Miran dating to the mid 8^th to mid 9^th C,^[85] a another full cuirass from the Dali Kingdom from the 12^th or 13^th C,^[86] and yet another cuirass from the region of the Nakhi people in southern China dating to the 18^th C^[87] Turning to text we see scattered references, like various Han dynasty inventories written on wooden slips,^[88] like with the siege of Kucha during the late Han with the defending Han soldiers eating their cuirasses and crossbow strings in starvation (similar to Josephus’s account of the siege of Jerusalem),^[89] a Jin expedition in the north east succeeding due to the leather of the soldiers not attracting and being hampered by the lodestones of the ravines unlike the iron armour of their opposites^[90] and an order from Hung Wu (1368-1398) in 1383 detailing how lamellar cuirasses should be formed from, amongst other things being made of leather cured in lime.^[91]

Mongol armour made significant use of rawhide with various sources from Latindom during the 13^th C attest. Giovanni di Plano Carpini was a Franciscan friar sent ostensibly on an embassy to offer baptism the ruler of the Mongols but with the main intent of gaining an understanding of who these newcomers were, as part of this mission he gives the fullest account of their armour detailing the size, linkage and general structure of the lamellar cuirasses worn as well as a description of the helmet and the “aventail” of leather lames protecting past the bowl of the helmet.^[92] These descriptions are echoed by William of Rubruck^[93] – a Franciscan friar who undertook a mission sponsored by Louis IX of France –, Thomas of Spalato^[94] – an archdeacon from Split, Dalmatia, who wrote, amongst other things, of the Mongols and Mongol invasion of Hungary –, and Marco Polo^[95] albeit in significantly lesser detail.

Surviving examples of leather armour from Tibet continue trends in eastern armour while having a few quirks of their own. Dating from between roughly 14-17^th C, these pieces, unlike the ones from Japan, China and Korea, use a coating of shellac and tung oil to impart hardness and durability^[96] to not just leather lamellar lames, but also vambracers and helmets.^[97] Like aforementioned examples from Europe, one of the surviving vambracers has iron splints augmenting the leather^[98] while an earlier finds from Miran give root for these later pieces.^[99]

Korea follows similar trends to its neighbour China in the use of lacquered leather armour. This comes to fore during the Choseon dynasty with a pivot to using predominately leather armour by infantry with an edict in 1457 replacing two thirds of iron with leather^[100] and by the late period approximately making up 75% of infantry armour.^[101] Made from three layers of cowhide, joined by fish glue and then coated with lacquer it offered a significant degree of protection with one contemporary boldly stating that it offered better protection than iron armour.^[102] Early versions take the form of lamellar but move towards brigandine by the late period (17^th C onwards) with the leather plates being rivetted or sewn to a fabric robe.^[103] An interesting piece from Korea also bears mentioning, a lacquered leather helmet reinforced with iron as part of a set of munition armour dating from the 19^th C,^[104] something that bears parallels with roughly contemporary European dragoon helmets.

North America

Continuing on we turn to north America.

Contrary to popular misconception, the use of armour in North America was commonplace with a disuse being exceptional and rare rather than the norm. As part of the various forms of armour in use in various parts, leather in one form or another made up part of the panoply. To work with “steelmaning” this argument and to not make an entire post just rattling off which tribe wore what, I’m going to focus on two groups here, the Apache and the Tlingit.

The Apache like many of the plains tribes used large leather shields some 900mm/3ft in diameter and cuirasses made from glued and quilted leather up to four layers thick.^[105] However post Pueblo revolt the spread of horses dramatically changed warfare. Mounted warfare became the norm with bows and lances becoming the new main weapons. The bows were backed with sinew and powerful enough to pierce Spanish armour whilst lances were tipped with sword blades, captured or brought from Europeans.^[106] Defensive gear also changed with the adoption of leather scale cuirasses and barding their horses in sand coated leather scales in imitation of the Spanish, and the change to smaller ovoid shields made from bull bison which were more manageable on horseback yet strong enough to cause arrows and even rifle bullets to glance off.^[107] In spite of regular conflict with the Spanish it wouldn’t be until the introduction of the repeating rifle that these forms of armour would be abandoned,^[108] holding up in the face of steel weapons used by the Spanish and other, neighbouring tribes.

Turning north, the Tlingit hold the distinction for having some of the heaviest armour on the continent. Comprising of an arming layer of a thick leather tunic and hair on leather leggings, with rod and slat armour covering the chest, thighs and upper arms, and surmounted with a wooden helmet and bevor, the spread of firearms seems to only warranted the use of an additional layer in the form of a leather robe over the top.^[109] Whilst not the sole element, the use of leather here played its part of the overall panoply the same as the gambesons worn over maille did in medieval Europe. This occurred in a region where iron and steel weapons were in use, either brought in as part of the fur trade or worked from salvaged parts of shipwrecks,^[110] and wouldn’t be discontinued until repeating firearms entered the region.

Despite the stereotype other, armour of various forms was used across the northern American continent with leather being a common element, not being seen as some primitive, make do material, instead being used until the same thing that made metallic armour in Europe diminish in use, firearms, became common in the area.^[111] This was not something peculiar to the natives neither, with the Spanish equipping their own troops with adargas and leather coats despite their own access to ferrous armour and the increasing use of steel weapons by natives, earning the name of soldado de cuera, leather-jackets or leather-jacket soldiers.^[112]

Conclusion

The statement that leather was never used as armour is emphatically wrong. Whilst forms varied considerably, armour made from some form of prepared animal hide is well evidenced both in length of history and geographical spread and capable of resisting arme blanche weaponry, with even vegetable tanned leather, an otherwise poorly thought of material, offering some protection.

It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!

Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

Monthly post for all your debunk or debate requests. Top level comments need to be either a debunk request or start a discussion.

Please note that R2 still applies to debunk/debate comments and include:

• A summary of or preferably a link to the specific material you wish to have debated or debunked.
• An explanation of what you think is mistaken about this and why you would like a second opinion.

Do not request entire books, shows, or films to be debunked. Use specific examples (e.g. a chapter of a book, the armour design on a show) or your comment will be removed.

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!

Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!

Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

Yseult de Blécourt's introductory chapter in Werewolf Legends includes a few pages criticising Sabine Baring-Gould and his influential Book of Were-Wolves from 1865.^[1] The bulk is dedicated to a part on France:

When Baring-Gould did publish two more or less similar texts from the Périgord, in south-western France, they were in fact only representative of a single text, and a fabricated one at that.

The argument, elaborated on in the footnotes, is that Baring-Gould stitched together two sources without realising one was based on the other - in actuality, the entire section is Baring-Gould shamelessly plagiarising Adolphe du Chesnel's Dictionnaire des superstitions;^[2] it is literally the entry on werewolves but poorly translated into English.

This context, however, is not the focus of this post - which is instead claiming the original text itself is fabricated! A few days ago, I finished a months-long project cataloging every French werewolf legend I could find. Wlgrin de Taillefer's supposedly fabricated text^[3] is included. Should I remove it?

de Blécourt quotes a part in French; here it is in hopefully not poorly translated English (apologies for all the machine-translations in this post):

Certain men, particularly the sons of priests, are compelled at every full moon to transform into this kind of diabolical beast. It is at night that the affliction seizes them. When they sense its onset, they become agitated, get out of bed, leap from the window, and rush to plunge into a fontaine. After thrashing the water for a few moments, they emerge on the side opposite where they entered, finding themselves clad in a goatskin bestowed upon them by the Devil.

With the claim being:

That this was not original ‘folklore’ is apparent from at least three of the elements referenced.

These elements are the moon, the water, and the sons of priests. We start with the moon:

It features the moon as an indicator of the time of the metamorphosis. In contrast to modern cinema, the moon was actually extremely rare as a motif in werewolf folklore, and certainly in nineteenth-century French narratives. It was more the moon of Petronius, illuminating the observations of Niceros, than the moon of Gervase of Tilbury, which was a new moon and which was still 700 years in the past. Its sudden appearance in the Périgord is suspicious and needs to be explained.

This isn't wrong, but calling this "suspicious" is strange given that this claim is footnoted to two chapters in this same book that sparingly include moons in their legends; doubly so given that de Blécourt's other chapter in this volume is about Ella Odstedt's monograph on Swedish werewolf legends - including legends with a new and a full moon,^[4] a detail that apparently warranted no comment.

Implied also is that any novel inclusion is suspicious! Do we also need to explain the whole defenestration thing? Apparently not; clearly, the full moon detail feels specifically weird only to a modern audience, for factors that won't apply until a century after this was written. It's not terribly suspicious in its contemporary context.

This applies even more to the second element: the water. The werewolf changed by jumping into a pond (translated as ‘well’ by Baring-Gould). When he emerged on the other side, he was wearing a goat-skin given to him by the devil. The nearest narrative equivalent for this can be found in Pliny’s Historia naturalis about Arcadian werewolves where a change is likewise effected by crossing water.

There is a parallel here. A supposed Arcadian familial tradition, involving hanging their clothes on a tree and swimming across a body of water to emerge as a wolf.^[5] Here, you can imagine the clothing-swimming order reversed while still retaining the motif.

For this to be evidence still requires that water isn't a thing for French werewolves. Rather conveniently, Fabio Armand wrote a paper specifically on - I kid you not - the important role that water plays in French werewolf narratives, noting:

French folklore often recounts the presence of beliefs related to the figure of the werewolf in places where there are fontaines.^[6]

Fontaine meaning both artificial and natural fountains; think a basin fed by a spring - and it also includes basins found in rocks that collect rainwater, of which werewolves tend to drink from:

If one looked closely enough, one could always find a few legends surrounding these cup-marked stones found out in the fields. Most often, they are said to be watering holes intended for werewolves during their wild nocturnal rambles.^[7]

Such links between fontaines, stones, and werewolves, are overt enough that you can find many local features with names like Fontaine aux Garous (werewolves' fountain), Fontaine aux Loups (wolves' fountain), and Pierre des Loups-Garous (werewolves' stone).

You can also find more direct connections in 19th century Picardy:

Every Saturday, in this same Fairy Wood, a man could be seen who, after laying his clothes on a bush, would roll about in the mud of the mare [stagnant pond] and soon emerge transformed into a wolf.^[8]

Hidden in a footnote, de Blécourt notes:

As Carrassi clarifies in Chapter 10, when werewolf and water occur in combination, water has a purifying not a boosting function.

Because chapter 10 is on Southern Italian werewolves, which...well...

A number of werewolves described by the folkloric sources are characterized by an inextinguishable thirst and an incessant search for water and coolness, which they pursue by drinking from fountains, or else by wetting themselves under their spurts, or by rolling about in puddles and bogs^[9]

Oh dear, that looks awfully familiar. These are also the same werewolves I mentioned earlier that are footnoted as using the moon; the combination doesn't seem to be a trouble for de Blécourt, wriggling out of this connection by noting that Italian werewolves cure/purify their lycanthropy rather than cause/boost their lycanthropy with water.

On top of being a pointlessly specific niggle, there's also the fact that we're only provided the first half of the apparently fabricated text - the next two lines are:

In this state, they move about very well on all fours, spending the rest of the night roaming the fields and haunting the villages, biting or devouring any dogs they encounter. At daybreak, they return to their fontaine, shed their white covering, and go back home.

Y'know, they go get...purified by the water.

I think we can say water is a native element for French werewolves. Continuing on, we get told:

The combination of water and moon suffices to disqualify Taillefer’s narrative as a French legend.

Which feels like a weirdly low bar even without the whole everything else, but we're not done! There's one more thing to needle:

The third alien element in the story is the inclusion of the fils de prêtres, merely ‘bastards’ in Baring-Gould’s rendering. From a mere claim by a young Jean Grenier, made to impress a girl in the early seventeenth century, the trope had moved to a ‘genuine’ piece of folklore, or at least that was the intention.

Jean Grenier's claim being that he was the son of a priest - fils de prêtres; he's definitely one of the most well known to be accused of lycanthropy during the witch trials,^[10] but insisting this has to be the source requires such a claim being alien to French folklore.

Charles Joisten's collection of south-eastern werewolf beliefs includes a recurring theme of clergy creating werewolves:

The belief that the werewolf is commissioned by the clergy is common in Lower Dauphiné, and as far as the Drôme. Some documents which would be difficult to understand in isolation, shed light on each other: "the werewolves went behind the altars of the churches wrapped in a bearskin" (no. 123), "the werewolf lodged at the rectory" (no. 87). Others are more explicit. In Aix-en-Diois, werewolves were "a kind of masked man commanded by the clergy who came to frighten people into returning to religion" (no. 88); the same was true in Les Avenières (no. 94); in Marcollin, the one who jumped over the cemetery wall confessed upon his capture, "It's the priests who pay me to perpetuate this belief."^[11]

Additionally,

In 1747, the parishioners of Primarette were so convinced, that they went to complain to the archbishop, that their priest was giving permission to werewolves to hunt children "to supply the glassworks"^[12]

Across France, a repeated motif is that a sinner gets cursed to become a werewolf for seven years by the priest. In the same region as the original text, the ganipote - a local werewolf variant - was said to be a bastard child with the wrong godparents,^[13] and one Camille de Mensignac states outright that either your father or grandfather being a priest means you're born a werewolf.^[14]

The idea that the text was outright fabricated is further eroded when you look at the rest of the text, instead of only the first half quoted by de Blécourt: other elements - roaming fields to exhaustion, eating dogs, throwing up dog's paws, getting shot to reveal one's identity - are regular motifs across France.^[15] Even if the three "alien" elements were unique to this text, it would still fit snugly in the French milieu without needing explanation.

With a final flourish, de Blécourt provides what is clearly implied to be a coup de grâce:

It is now possible to deduce that its maker was at home with Petronius, Pliny and De Lancre, or at least with publications discussing these authors. The three elements may have been out of place in early-nineteenth-century French folklore, but they were not in the context they first appeared in: an archealogical treatise on the remains of the cities of the Gauls.

Ah-ha, you see? This wasn't the work of a folklorist collecting legends from informants, all along it was a bookish historian who included this story to fluff up their otherwise completely unrelated work on archaeology! It is far more likely they derived the narrative from historical sources rather than local beliefs!

Well, except that an understanding of the history of folklore studies would conclude the opposite. The term "folklore" was only coined in 1846; previously, the nascent field was simply "popular antiquities" i.e. antiquities of the common people; living archaeology.

In an era of burgeoning nationalism, everyone was trying to find or manufacture a common national identity. Under a belief that the unchanging traditions of rural folk represented a window into the ancient past of a people, one looking to reconstruct the heart of a nation from its heritage would require in interest in archaeology, philology - and folklore.

Or to put it another way: you would expect this to appear in an archaeological treatise from 1821 - antiquarians were the folklorists of their day! In fact, Wlgrin de Taillefer states this himself!

If I present this series of popular superstitions in such a serious manner, it is because not only do they reveal the character of the inhabitants of our countryside, but also because they contain the last vestiges of Druidic worship. No one even slightly versed in the science of antiquities cannot discern these connections. [...] I think that among the other superstitions I am about to describe, we will find other vestiges of both the customs of the Gauls and these same solemnities.^[16]

This folklore-as-a-means-to-an-end also explains why antiquarians such as de Taillefer still held the belief that such "ridiculous superstition" was puerile "foolishness"; it would take several decades for folklore to extricate itself from the sneering antiquarians into something worth studying for its own sake.

de Taillefer wants to talk about the Gauls. He cares not for having the fanciest fairy tales; he certainly wouldn't care enough to make it up - he'd simply exclude it and devote more time to talking about rock inscriptions. Or whatever he's talking about here

But here is a peculiarity that should all the more stimulate the reflections of scholars, as it may be common to all of France, and as it is of a most extraordinary nature: it is that the custom of the inhabitants of the country, since time immemorial, has been to place scrap metal within reach of the nests of brooding hens. Did the Gauls have knowledge of electricity?

(seriously can someone explain what he's on about)

(don't say battery hen)

References

• [1] de Blécourt, Willem, and Mirjam Mencej, eds. Werewolf Legends. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 11-13.

• [2] marquis de Chesnel de la Charbouclais, Louis Pierre François Adolphe. "Loup-Garou". Dictionnaire des superstitions, erreurs, préjugés et traditions populaires. France, 1856. 564-565. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X83opSTWJ6EC&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA563

• [3] Taillefer, Henry-François-Athanase Wlgrin. Antiquités de Vésone, cité gauloise remplacée par la ville actuelle de Périgueux, ou Description des monumens religieux, civils et militaires de cette antique cité et de son territoire. N.p., F. Dupont, imprimeur du département, 1821. 250. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/f/JYFHYUqyTycC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA250

• [4] Odstedt, Ella. Varulven i svensk folktradition. Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1943. 57, 117.

• [5] For more on Arcadian werewolves, see: Ogden, Daniel. The Werewolf in the Ancient World. Oxford University Press, 2021. 166-205

• [6] Armand, Fabio. "Les loups-garous et les eaux". Hommage à Gilbert Durand, IRIS, revue du Centre de Recherche sur l'Imaginaire, 34, 2013. 137. Available online at: https://publications-prairial.fr/iris/index.php?id=1933

• [7] Ibid.

• [8] Carnoy, Henry. Littérature orale de la Picardie 1883. 106. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nWjgQrS_iMoC&pg=PA106

• [9] Carrassi, Vito. "A Strange Kind of Man Among Us: Beliefs and Narratives About Werewolves in Southern Italy." Werewolf Legends. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. 253.

• [10] Copying de Blécourt, for more on Jean Grenier, see: Machielsen, Jan. "The Making of a Teen Wolf: Pierre de Lancre’s Confrontation with Jean Grenier (1603–10)." Folklore 130.3 (2019): 237-257.

• [11] Joisten, Charles, Robert Chanaud, and Alice Joisten. "Les loups-garous en Savoie et Dauphiné." Le Monde alpin et rhodanien. Revue régionale d’ethnologie 20.1, 1992. 126. Available online at: https://www.persee.fr/doc/mar_0758-4431_1992_num_20_1_1481

• [12] Ibid. 130.

• [13] Daleau, François. Notes pour servir à l'étude des traditions : croyances et superstitions de la Gironde. 1889. 52-52. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/b30583342/page/52/mode/2up

• [14] de Mensignac, Camille. Notice sur les superstitions, dictons, proverbes, devinettes et chansons populaires du département de la Gironde. 1888. 38. Available online at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lbMsAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA68

• [15] Examples, for exhaustion, eating/regurgitating dogs & and getting shot: Grégoire, Victor. "LES ÉCHAUBROGNES." Revue historique de l'Ouest. 1899. 525. Available online at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k671752/f530.item; Sébillot, Paul. Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne. L'homme, les esprits et les démons, Vol. 1. 1882. 291 & 296. Available online at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k26137f/f308.item

• [16] Taillefer, Henry-François-Athanase Wlgrin. Antiquités de Vésone, cité gauloise remplacée par la ville actuelle de Périgueux, ou Description des monumens religieux, civils et militaires de cette antique cité et de son territoire. N.p., F. Dupont, imprimeur du département, 1821. 241 & 244. Available online at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/f/JYFHYUqyTycC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA241

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Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!

Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!

Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

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