Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Ships and Boats

650

joints contributed to the strength of the hull, as there was no continuous

line of joints across the ship. A third wreck from the estuary of the Po River

was dated to about 1300 and was 65 feet long. A new method made the

ship strong enough to hold two masts. They used frames attached to ﬂ oors

that crossed the keel and were then secured to a timber bolted to the keel

for extra strength.

In the years after 1000, the role of the ship changed dramatically. Com-

merce was increasing, merchants were becoming wealthy, and ships were

increased in size to hold more cargo. After Crusaders set up a Christian

kingdom in Jerusalem, there was a great surge of Christian pilgrims want-

ing to visit Jerusalem. All these factors created demand for larger ships.

The Crusades spurred a great deal of shipbuilding to transport knights

and horses from Marseille or Venice to the Holy Land. At ﬁ rst, Crusad-

ers rented any ships they could ﬁ nd, but by the Third Crusade of the 13th

century, more were required. King Louis IX of France contracted with mer-

chants in Genoa, Venice, and Marseille to provide custom-built ships for

his two Crusades, in 1248 to 1254. These were substantial vessels, several

with three decks. The horses were led into the ship through a door that was

then caulked shut to keep water out when the ship went out to sea.

In the 15th century, the Baltic and Mediterranean traditions began to

mix. The Hanseatic League had extended its reach into ports in the Medi-

terranean, and Venetian galleys were trading directly in Flanders. One early

hybrid was the buss, a wide, carvel-built cargo ﬁ shing ship built in the

Netherlands. Using the buss, Dutch sailors could stay out at sea longer.

The buss sailed with the ﬁ shing boat; it was a ﬂ oating ﬁ sh-processing plant.

The pair of vessels could stay out for several weeks and return with its catch

salted while fresh.

The ultimate round ship of the late Middle Ages was the three-masted,

full-rigged, ocean-going carrack. The carrack’s precursor was the cog, the

clinker-built cargo carrier of the Hanseatic League. In Mediterranean ship-

yards, the cog had been modiﬁ ed and reﬁ ned; it was no longer clinker-

built but was now carvel-built. Its sails also blended the best of north and

south.

The carrack was large and heavy. Huge ribs formed the hull and sup-

ported multiple decks, a high sterncastle, and an even higher (though

smaller) forecastle. The ship’s tiller passed through a port to move the

sternpost rudder. The edge-to-edge planking of the ship was caulked with

oakum and tar or pitch to help keep seawater out. For the same reason, the

ship was constructed with few hatches and no companionway (a stairway

leading from the deck to the cabins below). Its three masts were the main

mast and foremast, both square rigged, and the lateen-rigged mizzenmast,

which rose from the sterncastle. Later versions of the carrack included an-

other small sail—the spritsail on the bowsprit. Improvement in managing

Ships and Boats

651

Ships were integral to the Crusades. Most Crusaders gathered on the coast of

southern France and embarked at Marseilles. Since their warfare was dependent on

horses and they could not easily buy or train them on the other side of the journey,

they had to get ships with stables built below the deck. Travel was uncomfortable;

knights traveled with retinues of servants and squires, and the ship was too crowded

to afford sleeping quarters for all of them. Although this 15th-century painting

imagines the voyages in a cheerful way, the actual conditions must have been squalid.

Horses needed some rest periods on islands in order to regain their health. (The

British Library/StockphotoPro)

the ropes made the huge sails easier to handle, and multiple sails gave ver-

satility to managing the course of the ship.

A large merchant carrack could carry 1,000 tons of cargo in its hold as it

moved around the whole length of the Mediterranean and to and from the

Baltic. Its great size made it an expensive ship, and it was expensive too in

that it required a large crew. There were smaller carracks, too, such as the

100-ton Santa Maria, the ship that carried Christopher Columbus to the

islands of Central America.

Ships and Boats

652

Columbus’s other ships, the Niña and the Pinta, were caravels, not

carracks. The caravel was a fast sailing ship developed in Portugal around

1440. It carried two or three masts, with either lateen sails or a mixture of

square and lateen. The caravel had excellent sailing characteristics and did

not need the large crew that was necessary on a carrack. It could move at

a relatively fast pace; records show that on the return trip from America in

1493, the Niña and Pinta had at least one day when they covered nearly

200 miles of ocean. Caravels were generally the ships of choice for the voy-

ages of exploration that marked the end of the 15th century and continued

into the 16th century.

War at Sea

Ships were at times used for direct warfare, not just for military transport.

Naval warfare was most important in the Mediterranean; both Muslim and

Christian kingdoms kept naval ﬂ eets of galleys. Northern Europe’s foray

into naval warfare was delayed, although merchant vessels began carrying

crossbows to defend against piracy. Piracy was the ﬁ rst reason to create mili-

tary vessels to support merchant shipping, more than foreign warfare.

In the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt, Constantinople, Venice, Genoa, and

other regional powers maintained galley ﬂ eets with both rowing benches

and a lateen sail. The galleys were armed with a platform that ran the length

of the vessel—so that men could pass easily from end to end—and with

freestanding pavises (shields) and crossbows. Some had a forecastle, per-

haps armed with small catapult weapons.

A naval battle typically began with distance shooting. Crossbows were

increasingly the largest part of naval battles. As the ships rowed closer, each

crew would try to board and master the other. Ships usually had a board-

ing platform of some kind, something that stuck out and could be touched

to the other ship. They also threw grappling hooks out, attached to iron

chains. Poleaxes could reach out to cut the enemy’s rigging. Some crews

threw soap on the other ship’s decks to make ﬁ ghters slip. Others threw

lime at the enemy to blind them. Most devastating, those who had access

to its formula ﬂ ung Greek ﬁ re, catching the enemy’s ship on ﬁ re. Noth-

ing but ammonia, in the form of stale urine, could douse Greek ﬁ re. There

was a great deal of hand combat, although crews were lightly armed. Plate

armor had no place at sea, but hardened leather or light chainmail could

help in close combat.

During the 14th century, the countries of the North Atlantic built up

their stock of ﬁ ghting ships. France and England both acquired some gal-

leys. During the Hundred Years’ War, French galleys harassed English ship-

ping and attacked English ports and English-owned ports in France, such

as Bordeaux. English galleys, often hired as Spanish or Italian mercenaries,

Shoes

653

tried to defend shipping. Germany’s Hanseatic League was often armed,

and there was an order of oceangoing Crusaders in Germany to protect

shipping against inﬁ del attacks.

See also: Fish and Fishing, Sieges, Weapons.

Further Reading

Fagan, Brian. Fish on Friday. New York: Basic Books, 2006.

Grohskopf, Bernice. The Treasure of Sutton Hoo: Ship-Burial for an Anglo-Saxon

King. New York: Atheneum, 1970.

Hattendorf, John B., and Richard W. Unger. War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2003

Haws, Duncan. Ships and the Sea: A Chronological Review. New York: Thomas Y.

Crowell, 1975.

Haywood, John. Dark Age Naval Power: A Reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-

Saxon Seafaring Activity. Norfolk, UK: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1999.

Hutchinson, Gillian. Medieval Ships and Shipping. London: Cassell, 1997.

Konstam, Angus. The History of Pirates. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 1999.

Lewis, Archibald R. European Naval and Maritime History, 300–1500. Blooming-

ton: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Meisel, Tony. To the Sea: Sagas of Survival and Tales of Epic Challenge on the Seven

Seas. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2000.

Milne, Gustav. The Port of Medieval London. Stroud, UK: Tempus Publishing,

2006.

Morrison, John. Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Vessels since Pre-Classical Times.

London: Conway Maritime Press, 2004.

Pryor, John H. Geography, Technology, and War: Studies in the Maritime History

of the Mediterranean, 649–1571. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1992.

Rose, Susan. Medieval Naval Warfare 1000–1500. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Unger, Richard W., and Robert Gardiner. Cogs, Caravels, and Galleons: The Sailing

Ship 1000–1650. Seacaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 2000.

Woodman, Richard. The History of the Ship. London: Conway Maritime Press,

1997.

Shoes

By the Roman era, shoe making had the basic elements we recognize: soles

and uppers that tied or buckled around the foot. In places with greater tra-

ditions of craftsmanship and more wealth, shoes were made by professional

shoemakers using lasts—carved wooden models of feet. Medieval shoemak-

ers worked within an unbroken tradition from Roman times.

As with other aspects of European culture, the Roman traditions were

best retained in the Mediterranean region, while the Franks and other

northern peoples began with their own methods, usually more primitive,

Shoes

654

and gradually adapted to blend the northern and southern styles. Careful

excavation in London, in recent decades, has amassed a large collection of

shoe styles from the Middle Ages. Since styles in the north usually lagged

behind styles in Italy, innovations in the Italian cities probably took as long

as 25 years to catch on in England.

Goatskin was called cordwain, and shoemakers were commonly called

cordwainers. This was true even in England, where goats were a less im-

portant part of the economy than they were in the Mediterranean coun-

tries. Goatskin must have been one of the most common shoe materials in

the early Middle Ages. After cow and sheep leather replaced it in England,

cordwain continued to be the most common shoe leather in Italy, southern

France, and Spain. Late medieval shoes for the wealthy were made of the

most delicate calfskin or various kinds of woven fabric.

Although shoe styles changed from century to century, and different

kinds of fasteners were developed, some general principles were constant.

There was always a great difference in footwear between rich and poor,

court and country. In every time, shoes were used by nobility at court to

convey their status and wealth. Shoes wear out, and they are in contact

with the ﬂ oor, often with dirt. Anyone who can afford to have tooled

leather, embroidery, or silk velvet even on his (or her) shoes must surely be

wealthy.

Men’s and women ’s shoes did not look much different, if at all. In any

given century, illustrations show us the same shapes, colors, and decora-

tions. When rounded toes were fashionable, both sexes wore them, and

when pointed toes came back in, both followed. In modern times, when

shoes, especially men’s, are relatively plain, the elaborate and gaudy styles of

medieval men’s court shoes make little sense. In Constantinople, fashion-

able shoes could show the toes or sides of the feet, as women’s dress shoes

do today. They could have embroidered bands around them or include

sections of silk. When they laced, they usually laced along the side, leaving

the top plain. These styles were all copied at European courts during the

Middle Ages.

Boots came up around the ankles, while shoes ended at the anklebones.

Some boots came up to the knee, while others enclosed the ankle and no

farther. High boots were too expensive for common people, and most im-

ages of shoes show low-cut shoes or ankle boots. Boots to or above the

knee were not much used until the Renaissance period, following the Mid-

dle Ages.

In all times, the poor were lucky to have shoes at all, and theirs were

patched and plain. They kept to old, practical styles and often wore rags

wrapped around their legs instead of hose. They used sturdier, thicker

leather when they could afford it. Peasants’ shoes were made from rough

Shoes

655

or untanned leather. If they were working in the ﬁ elds, they often removed

their shoes to keep them from getting too muddy.

People of all classes wore wooden platform sandals as a type of over-

shoe to lift the leather shoe up from rain and snow. These were variously

called clogs, pattens, or galoshes. They typically had a leather band the shoe

slipped through, and some had a sandal-like strap at the back. The sole was

made of wood, and it had arched pillars to support it. In some cases, the

thickness was built up from layers of leather, but most often the whole clog

was carved from wood. During the time that long points, called poulaines,

were in fashion, these pattens or galoshes had extensions in front to hold

the points up. In England, pattens were only in fashion during the 14th and

15th centuries, so many of them did have poulaine supports.

Shoe Styles

The story of shoe fashions in Europe seems mostly to be about the toes’

points growing and shrinking. The earliest Viking Age shoes found in graves

were simple shoes or boots with round toes, no decoration, and ﬂ at soles.

The soles were made of thick leather and wore out quickly. They were cut

off and replaced as long as the upper shoe lasted. By the 11th century, just

before the Norman conquest of England, some shoes had pointed toes, but

not as extreme as they became later.

Shoes found in excavations of Norman London in the 12th century

mostly have drawstring ties around the ankle. The slots for the drawstrings

were made of small parallel slits in the leather. The upper part of the shoe,

the vamp, was cut from a single piece of leather. The shoes were simple,

more like moccasins than like modern shoes. Some had a triangle of leather

attached inside, at the heel, to stiffen it. They opened at the front, with

overlapping tabs.

A common way of embellishing shoes for well-to-do townspeople was to

sew a band of embroidery on the top of the shoe, from the toe to the shoe’s

throat. Most often, it was a stripe of plait stitch, an overlapping series of

X ’s that formed a solid, smooth, thick line. Colored silk stood out from the

leather with a high sheen. Many illustrations show saints and kings wearing

shoes with these vamp stripes.

The 12th century brought many new fashions as Crusaders and their

retinues traveled and observed each other. After a distinguished Crusader

wore shoes with elongated, pointed tips to hide the corns on his toes, a new

fad caught on in France. Shoes were made with impractically long pointed

tips, and sometimes they were shaped like tails of ﬁ sh or scorpions. Aristo-

cratic shoes were often heavily embellished with gilding and embroidery.

As wearing hose caught on, hose could sometimes replace shoes. Some

Shoes

656

pictures show men wearing hose alone; they may have been reinforced with

a leather sole stitched to the cloth.

Shoe construction slowly became more sophisticated. Instead of large

single pieces being cut and wrapped, moccasin like, 13th-century shoes

used more separate pieces of leather. The heel sections, called quarters,

were cut separately, and the vamp came in several pieces. It was more work

for the shoemaker, but it used leather more efﬁ ciently and controlled the

shape. The upper part of the shoe, the vamp, was more often made of ﬁ ne

calfskin in the 13th century. Shoes often had a cord stitched on the inside

of a cut edge, to reinforce it. This permitted ﬁ ner, softer leathers to be used.

Most shoes came only to the top of the foot, but some had ﬂ aps that ex-

tended partway up the ankle.

Shoes in 13th-century London began to have side laces, as Byzantine

shoes had for some time. The shoe opened only at the outside; it was solid

across the top of the foot and on the instep. At the side slit, the shoemaker

bored a set of holes similar to modern shoelace holes. They did not have

metal grommets like modern shoes, but sometimes they were reinforced

with a cord stitched around the inside of the hole.

In the mid- to late 13th century, shoes in London were often closed with

buttoning toggles. The opening was again at the front. At that opening, a

leather thong came about an inch or more out of the tongue. It had been

folded back through a slit in itself, to make a knot, and then its free end

was stitched inside the vamp. Around the ankle, two straps came to meet

this toggle, with slits for it to button through. In shoes where the toggle

has survived, some appear to be so long that they did not fasten the shoe

tightly. There were fancier variations on the toggle fastening. In some cases,

leather toggles came out of one of the straps and buttoned through slits in

the other.

Toe points were not extravagant during the 13th century, but shoes for

the wealthy were often embroidered and styled in various ways. One tech-

nique was to make decorative slits and cutouts in the leather so that the

colored hose would show through. Since the slit was often at the side, the

top of the foot was available to be decorated. The cutwork could be very

elaborate, and it often covered most of the surface of the shoe. Excavated

shoes have patterns of stamped circles, diamonds, squares, slits, and combi-

nations of stars, triangles, and diamonds.

There were some tall boots that had pairs of straps up the ankle; one side

had a toggle, and the other had a buttonhole slit. Other boots laced up the

outside, with a side slit. The boots did not go up to the knee, but stopped

just under halfway up. Boots were not fashionable; they were worn in cer-

tain professions, such as hunting. Royal huntsmen needed to wear fairly

tall boots to protect their clothing and legs from brambles as they rode

through forests and parks.

Shoes

657

During the 13th century, the most popular kind of shoe decoration was a ﬁ ne

repeating pattern cut out of the leather. The design allowed the wearer’s hose color to

show through. Such shoes were only for indoor use; they were impractical outdoors

or in muddy weather. (James Robinson Planche, An Illustrated Dictionary of Historic

Costume , 2003)

Children’s shoes were similar to adult shoes, but they tended to come

higher up the ankle so that they could be laced securely. They more often

had front fastenings, whether toggles or ties. They did not have pointed

toes, but were practical and simple.

The 14th century was a time of rapidly changing fashion in clothing

and hairstyles. In shoes, it was the age of pointed toes, sometimes to an

extreme. The pointed tip was called a poulaine. It was usually stuffed

with moss or fur to make it stand out or up stifﬂ y. Most illustrations

of 14th-century shoes show poulaines that were between two and six

inches long.

London shoes were either very low-cut shoes or very tall boots, with

little in between. Shoes were fastened with toggles, and boots laced at the

side. Shoe construction was more standardized, probably reﬂ ecting the

better organization of the cordwainers’ guild. The top of a 14th-century

boot was higher at the front, forming a point. A leather band was folded

and sewn around the top to strengthen it. It was made of three or four

pieces of cut leather, in addition to the sole. In some late 14th-century

shoes, the sole was made in two pieces, with a separate heel. Soles had to

be replaced and patched frequently, so perhaps this made it easier to replace

a worn heel.

By the late 14th century, shoe styles became fancier and more extreme.

They were cut low, and the area of the shoe’s tongue was cut away to ex-

pose the colored hose. The shoe’s tip became more extravagantly pointed.

The shoe was held by a thin strap that came from the inner side and fas-

tened on the outer side. There were two ways to fasten this strap. One

was the buckle, the newest and most expensive fastener. The other was the

Shoes

658

latchet, in which the strap split into two thinner thongs at the end and tied

through holes at the strap on the shoe.

Expensive 14th-century shoes had decorated leather. The leather was en-

graved with a sharp tool so that its top surface was scraped away to expose

a different texture and color. Shoes had a wide variety of ﬁ nely engraved

geometric or ﬂ oral patterns. Since more and more of the vamp had been

cut away to show the colored hose, the long poulaines had to carry on the

decorative patterning.

Shoe buckles became almost universal during the 15th century. The price

of buckles must have come down as the craft became more widespread.

Shoes were often fastened with straps and buckles, either at the side or in

the front, and sometimes a shoe style used more than one buckle. Boots

opened at the front, fastened with buckled straps, and had a tongue.

Shoe points were modest at the beginning of the century, but by the

later years, they had become so excessively long that the English Parlia-

ment made a proclamation forbidding cobblers to make points longer than

two inches. Citizens with long, padded poulaines, especially when wearing

wooden pattens with poulaine extensions, were tripping other people in

the streets.

Shoe Making

Shoemakers were a skilled craft from early times and an organized guild

in the 12th century. Originally, cobblers were a separate trade; they ﬁ xed

old shoes and sold them at a discount. Cordwainers made new shoes, but

they also repaired these shoes for customers. The trades gradually blended

until cobbler became the standard word for a shoemaker. Around 1300,

shoemakers developed a means of measuring shoe sizes. In England, the

measurement was the barleycorn, about one-third of an inch. A system of

measurement allowed merchants to sell shoes at fairs, ready-made.

Shoemakers worked at a bench and used special leather-cutting tools.

One was a curved half-moon knife with a sharp point; it resembled the

top of a pike, and it was often stuck in the bench by its point. Another was

a large pair of shears that had long blades and were formed from a single

piece of metal. Shoemakers used awls to punch holes and long needles to

stitch together multiple layers of leather. To size and shape their shoes,

they had carved wooden feet called lasts. In a time when pointed shoes

were fashionable, the lasts were also pointed. Shoemakers also had patterns,

probably made of cloth, to guide their cutting.

Soles were cut from the toughest leather, usually in one piece. The shoe’s

upper pieces were cut from ﬁ ner leather or cloth, and the shoe was stitched

on the wooden last, inside out. This kind of shoe construction was called

Shoes

659

A late medieval woodcut shows the

look of a shoemaking workshop. As in

most medieval shops, customers could

stand outside in the street and look

into a window. One shoemaker could

tend the counter, working as he waited

for customers. The others sat close

enough to the window to have some

natural light. On the table, their

cutting and stitching tools are piled up;

they are stitching soles and uppers on

their apron-covered laps. While some

shoes were made to order, others were

made in advance and hung for display

in the window. By the late Middle

Ages, there was a rough standard for

sizing shoes, so that peddlers could

take shoes out to distant fairs. (Paul

Lacroix, Moeurs, Usage et Costumes

au Moyen Age et a l’Epoque de la

Renaissance , 1878)

“turn-shoe” because the shoe then had to be turned right side out. Spe-

cialized stitches had to be used to attach the sole to the upper so that the

stitches weren’t exposed to the friction of wear and tear. Some shoes were

lined with cloth.

When a shoe’s sole wore out, it was repaired with patches called clumps.

These were stitched onto the outside of the shoe and often had separate

heel and foreparts. Cobblers had methods of stitching these clumps on so

that the stitches were entirely on the inside of the leather’s layers. A re-

paired medieval shoe more closely resembles a modern shoe with its hard

sole and separate heel.

Heavily embroidered shoes often had cloth uppers, since it was difﬁ cult

to embroider on leather. Shoes could also have embroidered cloth strips

stitched onto them. Embroidery on shoes was always in silk and used bright

colors. The designs ranged from animals and ﬂ owers to decorative scrolls

and moons. Leather strips could be gilded and stitched onto shoes, in com-

bination with embroidery.