Great Helm

Origins

The knights of the The Crusades began the twelfth century in conical helmets with a nasal bar, the helmets worn with the Norman Kite Shield. As the century closed, armorers added a face plate pierced with eye slits and breathing holes to a cylindrical, flat-topped cap, and by around 1220 that face-guarded helm had closed completely at the back and sides into the great helm. It was a response to the couched lance and to crossbow and arrow fire: a mounted knight charging in close order needed his face protected more than he needed to see widely. Over the next century the top rose from flat to rounded and then to the pointed 'sugarloaf' form, which deflected blows better than the flat crown.

Design & Construction

A great helm was built of several iron plates — typically a crown plate and two or more side plates — riveted together and reinforced at the front by a vertical strip that carried the cross-shaped breaths and the horizontal sights. It rested on the shoulders and head together, worn over a mail coif and a thick padded arming cap, and from the later thirteenth century often over a close-fitting steel skullcap, the cervelliere or early bascinet, so that the knight could take off the great helm after the charge and still keep a steel defense on his head. A great helm weighed two to three kilograms. It was often secured by a chain to the breast so it would not be lost if knocked off. Crests of boiled leather, wood or parchment, painted with the owner's arms, were fixed to the top for tournaments and, less often, for war.

Combat Use

The great helm was a horseman's helmet built for the first shock of the lance. Its narrow sights were placed so that a knight leaning forward in the saddle could see ahead while the slits were tilted away from an oncoming point, and it withstood lance, sword and Medieval Mace blows that would have crushed an open helmet. Its drawbacks were serious: limited vision, heat, poor ventilation and near-deafness made it difficult to command or to fight on foot for long. It was the helmet of the Barons' Wars, of the later crusades to Egypt and Acre, of the warrior monks of the Knights Templar until their suppression in 1312, and of the knights of the early Hundred Years War, by which time many men preferred the visored bascinet.

Legacy

By the mid fourteenth century the great helm had retreated to the tournament, where its descendant, the heavy frog-mouthed jousting helm, remained in use into the sixteenth century. Surviving examples are rare and valuable; among the best known are the Pembridge helm in the National Museum of Scotland and the helm hung above the tomb of Edward, the Black Prince, in Canterbury Cathedral. Its most lasting legacy is heraldic: the helm and crest drawn above the shield in a coat of arms is the great helm, and its silhouette still stands for the medieval knight, often shown alongside the Longsword that fought beside it.