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Originally Posted by Jim McDougall
... If I may, I wanted to return to the original topic on the morion, and its actual appearance in the America's with them...
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By all means, Jim; as such theme is in fact fully related with this Andreas thread. Concerning the 'variant' of the morrion first entrance in America that you first raised in post #27 i, for one, take it as no valid to further refute your documentation in that it has only showed up by late XVI century; hence i say, so be it.
Not only for keepng to persist with the (academic ?) perspective of some fourty years span in all history of the morrion and its variants, but also for the devious appearance of these exuberant helmets being depicted as equipping, from the simplest soldier to the most famous knight, who were around in times that the morrion didn't even exist; not only by artists of modern days but also,which i found hard to swallow, by contemporary authors.
I would again stick to experts in the subject and will here show and tag the evolution of the morrion, incuding its predecessors and relatives, extracted from a
WRITTEN WORK by Juan Molina Fernadez, a Spanish expert in XVI century military history.
1 - Capacete (helmet) with gusset from the end XV century, of Aragonese origin.
2 - Borgoñota (burgonet) from circa 1540, possibly German, with a characteristic peak on the skull top. The burgonet added from the salade mobile parts in the neck and ears as also a visor.
3 - Borgonet “hybrid” from 1540, already with a high resemblance to soon coming morrions. Practically a morrion with 'earmuffs'. It has a crest and wings/visors both in the front as in the back.
As from 1545 experimental versions of the morrion start to appear, and in 1550 a significant number started to be seen in all Western in Europe.
4 - Early morrión, of conical body and without crest (comb), from around 1550. We see here the baisis of its desing, two warped brims that protect descent blows but, different to burgonets, don't protect the sides.
Despite their popularity, burgonets didn't disappear, due to their better protection features.
5 - Italian morrion possibly of an officer, circa 1580-1590. Morrión italiano, posiblemente de oficial, de 1580-1590. The warping of the wings visibly exagerated and it becomes usual the crest to reinforce the structure.
6 - Capacete for an officer dated 1550 y 1560. Different from the morrión,
has a completely flat basis and the brim is a sole circular piece.
7 - Morrión (originally blued) from 1570 with cheek pieces, belonging to the Saxony electors from 1570. This model became very popular, due to the improvement of sides protection. As from the XVII century, the morrion tends to simplify, due to indreasing military production, specially with the arrival of the thirty years war. The major change was the progressive loss of the crest (comb), this becoming no more than a sagittal brim, to reinforce the structure for the year 1635.
8 - Morrión of an English pikeman from 1640. We may observe the progessive simplification of then lines, eliminating the crest and rounding up the superior section of the casket; and the cheek pieces are made of only one piece.
This search for the simplification makes capacetes being more common in the XII century that in the XVI at being more simple to produce. Therefore, the progressive design of the morrion makes it that both models come around a version of "morrion-capacete", as from the 1650 decade. As from then, the morrions fell in disuse, giving place to capacetes.
9 - The morrión-capacete from 1650 of the English infantry. The simplification of the construction drove to the unification of casket models, which will last until the end of XVII entury.
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