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• 1 2024-03-28T13:30:32-07:00 Composite Stechzeug (Armor for German Joust; 2014.1164) 15 plain 1493408 2024-10-22T18:30:06-07:00 49.452, 11.077 The Composite Stechzeug is located in the Medieval Gallery (109).
  
  This Stechzeug -- heavy plate armor made for jousting -- was built to protect its wearer from the powerful impact of an opponent's lance. The suit weighs 64 pounds (without its lost thigh-guards) and is a quarter of an inch thick in the chest and neck. Suits of armor like this one were made in Nuremberg in the years around 1500 CE to prevent injuries and deaths from the joust, one of medieval Europe’s favorite pastimes. Not just a military or chivalric exercise, jousting was a cultural and social activity, too: noblewomen in the stands helped to oversee the event, and there would be feasting and dancing in the evening. Once the jouster was armored up, his attendant would adjust the helmet via a screw mechanism on the backplate to make sure that the knight could see out of the narrow eye slit. The jouster wielded an 11-foot spear, attempting to knock his opponent off of his horse through a strike to his shield. While the danger was real, and men lost their eyesight, limbs, and sometimes their lives during the joust, armorers developed specialized equipment like this to reduce the risks.
  
  
  Zachary Barney, Class of 2025, College of the Holy Cross
• 1 2024-03-28T13:30:31-07:00 What does this Pollaxe tell us about the early global world? 11 plain 2024-10-30T09:47:03-07:00
  
  Pollaxes were effective, multi-faceted weapons. This particular pollaxe was ornate and suited for a nobleman. It witnessed a culture that valued military prowess in battle as well as displays of status, including celebration of noble lineage with all its pageantry. Such values around showmanship would especially be present in sporting events, like the joust, in which competitors would wear heavy plate armor, like the Composite Stechzeug from Nuremberg, which a pollaxe could have punctured. The pollaxe was used in tournaments drawing diverse audiences and participants, including foreigners who appreciated the warlike spectacle as much as the locals did.
  
  
  
  
  Amanda Sopchockchai, Class of 2027, College of the Holy Cross
• 1 media/DP107158.jpg 2024-03-28T13:30:35-07:00 What does this Composite Stechzeug tell us about the early global world? 5 image_header 2024-10-30T09:46:25-07:00 Jousting was not just a European sport. For instance, the manuscript above shows a joust in a manuscript made in Iran c. 1525-30, around the same time as the Composite Stechzeug was made. However, this set of German jousting armor witnesses Europe's transformation in the 1400s and 1500s. Tournaments had been part of medieval European culture for centuries, and this armor is the culmination of hundreds of years of technological development focused on safety in military contexts, with its flexible joints, adjustable sightline, and different strengths of metal carefully modified throughout the suit. Over the course of the previous five hundred years, Europeans had converted armed cavalry charges into tournament spectacles in which nobles and knights could participate at a much lower risk of injury or death than in the past. The jousting armor also shows the wealth and power of the Holy Roman Empire in Renaissance Europe. 
  
  Zachary Barney, Class of 2025, College of the Holy Cross