Средневековый визир: Защита лица в бою

Armored covering for the face
A visor was an armored covering for the face often used in conjunction with Late Medieval war helmets such as the bascinet or sallet. The visor usually consisted of a hinged piece of steel that contained openings for breathing and vision. Appropriately, breaths refers to the holes in the metal of the visor. Visors protected the face during battle and could be remarkably durable. One surviving artifact was found to be "equivalent in hardness to cold worked high speed steel." FORCETOC

The first recorded European reference to a helmet's visor in the Middle Ages is found in the 1298 will of Odo de Roussillon, which speaks of a heume a vissere. Whether this statement refers to a pivoting visor or a fixed faceplate is not clear; but by the early fourteenth century artistic depictions of moving visors appear quite frequently. As such, the visor may have led to the design of more complex forms of livery. In addition to material artifacts, written accounts provide some evidence for the effectiveness of visors. Mounted jousters appear to have benefited particularly from the use of visors. In his account of peacetime jousts at Saint Inglevert, French chronicler Jean Froissart provides an example of visored helmets being used in tournament. Froissart describes the visors as being durable enough to withstand a blow from a couched lance, writing that "the steel tips struck the visors of [the jousting knights] so strongly and directly that the two were unhelmed." The style of visor employed in the joust is not clear from Froissart's account. When wearing an open faced helmet, some knights would utilize the top of a shield to create a visor like defense. Castilian chronicler Fernao Lopes describes such a situation taking place in a 1387 joust, wherein one knight held his shield "so that only his right eye was visible." Whether the literary usage of visored helmets corresponded to actual battlefield practice is less clear. For instance, the word beaver is sometimes used interchangeably with visor, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, when Prince Hamlet and Horatio are discussing the Ghost. Hamlet says: "Then saw you not his face?" to which Horatio responds "O yes, my lord. He wore his beaver up." This may be misleading, however, as the term "beaver" can also refer to a piece of plate armor which protected the neck. In contemporary media, many films portray knights in visored helmets, such as the 2001 feature film A Knight's Tale.