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Old 17th May 2010, 07:07 PM   #51
Samik
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Slovakia
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Great post Lucian and thank you very much for the splendid info!

Those beautiful frescoes are very similar (I dare to say almost identical) to those found in Kosovo and other places of former Yugoslavia. It appears Serbs similarly (as well as other adjacent ethnicities) to Wallachians used a mix of western and eastern military equipment. For example you'll find a military saint depicted with classic heater shield , lance and a sword on one hand but also a composite bow with a Kipcak/Cuman style quiver as well (in which the arrows are pointed arrowheads up):



Monastery Decani, Kosovo 1330-1350



Church of Saint Kliment , Macedonia cca. 1295

Sabres of both the classic steppe style (riveted hilts and small pommel caps) as well as "paramerions" (essentially weapons with sword hilts and curved blades) are present as well (furthermore Maces are common secondary weapon depicted, instead of the more western European war-hammers).
There are two great websites that host a big number of photographs of the aforementioned "Yugoslav" frescoes
http://www.srpskoblago.org/Archives/ and
http://sankire.narod.ru/Balkani.html

I have looked through most of the wall-paintings on the Srpsko Blago website so if anyone's interested I can point-out the relevant ones (with respect to arms and armour).

Lucian in case you have some more info on the arms and armour from Wallachia/Moldavia etc. feel free to post it , id be very interested myself. It seems there were many similarities between the various south-eastern principalities and kingdoms.

Kind Regards,
Samuel
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