"Mail armor continued in general use till about the year 1300, when it was gradually supplanted by plate armor, or suits consisting of pieces or plates of solid iron, adapted to the different parts of the body"
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You can hear Bulfinch doing more than filing an exhibit label for medieval warfare. That calm, clocklike sentence is a Victorian way of making history feel legible: a clean progression from the flexible weave of mail to the engineered certainty of plate, complete with an approximate date that turns messy centuries into a tidy threshold. The intent is instructional, but the style carries a quieter ambition: to domesticate the past into an orderly narrative of improvement.
The subtext is progress, framed as material culture. Mail is “continued in general use” - an almost bureaucratic phrasing that makes tradition sound like standard practice - until it is “supplanted,” a word that implies not just change but displacement, even obsolescence. Plate armor arrives as an upgrade: “solid iron,” “adapted,” “different parts of the body.” Bulfinch is smuggling in an Industrial Age sensibility, admiring modular design and specialization. The medieval knight becomes, in this telling, an early prototype of modern systems thinking: parts optimized for function, fitted to the human machine.
Context matters: Bulfinch wrote for a broad 19th-century readership hungry for the Middle Ages, but not necessarily for their blood and chaos. His medievalism is polished for parlor consumption, where armor can stand in for an entire era without invoking mud, famine, or politics. By focusing on what people wore to survive violence, he also sidesteps the violence itself. The result is history as craftsmanship: a narrative where technological refinement quietly replaces moral complication, and the “about 1300” becomes a hinge that makes the past swing smoothly into modernity.
The subtext is progress, framed as material culture. Mail is “continued in general use” - an almost bureaucratic phrasing that makes tradition sound like standard practice - until it is “supplanted,” a word that implies not just change but displacement, even obsolescence. Plate armor arrives as an upgrade: “solid iron,” “adapted,” “different parts of the body.” Bulfinch is smuggling in an Industrial Age sensibility, admiring modular design and specialization. The medieval knight becomes, in this telling, an early prototype of modern systems thinking: parts optimized for function, fitted to the human machine.
Context matters: Bulfinch wrote for a broad 19th-century readership hungry for the Middle Ages, but not necessarily for their blood and chaos. His medievalism is polished for parlor consumption, where armor can stand in for an entire era without invoking mud, famine, or politics. By focusing on what people wore to survive violence, he also sidesteps the violence itself. The result is history as craftsmanship: a narrative where technological refinement quietly replaces moral complication, and the “about 1300” becomes a hinge that makes the past swing smoothly into modernity.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Chivalry (part of Bulfinch's Mythology). Passage describing medieval armor: mail in general use until about 1300, then gradually supplanted by plate armor (19th-century edition wording). |
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