Homo bellicus. Ochrana bojovníka v iluminovaných rukopisech doby vlády Václava IV.
Homo bellicus. Protection of the Warrior in the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Era of Wenceslas IV

Summary/Abstract: This work concentrates on a manuscript painted originally at the court of Wenceslas IV and another valuable illuminated manuscripts of clerical and court provenience. Reasons for the work’s aim at the chosen period of time and a type of a source are specified in the work‘s preamble. I deal with the matters of studying of the illuminated manuscripts and I formulate the basic hypothesis of my work. The hypothesis is an assumption of a slight lag in development of the military culture of gentility in comparison with western Europe, which I verify further in my work. My work is divided into chapters which are focused on constructionally differentiated types of protective equipment such as quilted, chain or plate armor. Individual chapters offer, apart from a brief description of functionality of depicted armor parts, a description of individual variations of depicted protective clothes. The frequency of their usage is also mentioned briefly. The equipment depicted in the Wenceslas’ IV Bible is characterized first, followed by similar or different types of protection, described in another manuscripts. In the rest of my work I discuss the ways of combining of different types of protection as they are depicted in the manuscripts and the reasons for an overlay of various kinds of protection. In the work’s conclusion I briefly refer to the possibility of usage of manuscript paintings as a valid source for studying the militaries of the chosen period of time. I answer the question about the topicality of period trends in military clothing in comparison with the foreign countries.

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