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Byzantine Metalworking
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Samurai
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Posts: 120 		  Quote BlindOne Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Byzantine Metalworking
    Posted: 14-Jul-2006 at 17:39
I have also got introdused to Byzantine History from Age of Empires Tongue but i still believe that AoE was a bad game in the aspect of Historical accuransy (hey even the muslins had knights and Cavaliers with plate armor, when the muslims never reach the plate armor Tongue).
 
 I am not an expert in metalworking but i believe that Blast Furnance was knowen from roman time ( ok i don't make an oath on that). It seems that in the AoE Byzantines didn't get that feat for gameplay balances issues Tongue (although AoE was really bad at balancing factor LOL).
 About the Armor factor now. I believe that the Byzantines produced armor until the late 13th century. In the 14th and 15th century the Byzantines didn't accually have an army so there was no need for them to produce any armor of weapons. It is a fact i believe that they actually buy armors for the Italians (venetians and Genuats). So the really few Byzantines soldiers of the 2 last centuries perhaps looked like the ittalians soldiers. (Well the Church in the east part made a good work by senting the young boys to Monasteries rather than in the military........).
 Perhaps that's why as you mentioned before the Byzantines smiths was highly paided in europe, they didn't lack on teckniques, there was not just needed to produse Plate armors or weapons. Btw where the Nobles repair their armors if that tecknology wasn't knowed?.
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Posts: 4664 		  Quote rider Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Jul-2006 at 05:38
I told you I was wrong.
 
Where did the Romans then make their swords if not in furnaces? Definetly, not in owens..Tongue
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Kastrophylax kai Tzaousios

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Posts: 1800 		  Quote Byzantine Emperor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 18:23
Originally posted by rider

I am quite sure that there were large furnaces in larger cities such as Nicaea, Thessalonike, Chersonesus, etc...
 
Blast furnaces, really?  I was under the impression that after the blast furnace was developed in Scandinavia, the technology slowly spread to Germany, Hungary, and eventually west to the British Isles.  It stayed in these places and the first plate armor was manufactured and shipped out to other continental European kingdoms.  I have yet to come across anything in the later Byzantine sources that describe anything like a blast furnace, much less detailed descriptions of metalworking period.
 
Originally posted by rider

Ofcourse I am not a blacksmith nor an expert in those areas but I might suggest NOT TO look for any major things being right in the AOE series...
 
LOL Well, yes, I said that it was amusing to me!
 
Late Byzantine Military
Ottoman perceptions of the Americas
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Posts: 4664 		  Quote rider Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 15:50
I am quite sure that there were large furnaces in larger cities such as Nicaea, Thessalonike, Chersonesus, etc...
 
Ofcourse I am not a blacksmith nor an expert in those areas but I might suggest NOT TO look for any major things being right in the AOE series...
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Kastrophylax kai Tzaousios

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Posts: 1800 		  Quote Byzantine Emperor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 00:16
In playing Age of Empires II: Conquerors, it has always amused me the extent to which the Byzantines can upgrade in armor. One can upgrade them all the way up to the second-to-last option, Plate Armor. Granted the game does not allow the Byzantines access to the final Blast Furnace option but correct me if I'm wrong: wasn't plate armor produced on a large scale using the blast furnace? There seems to be no evidence to support that the Byzantines were able to make plate armor in the late period (14th-15th centuries).

In reality, the Byzantines had the technology and ability to make sophisticated chain and scale armor, specifically scale. However, although it is close, the heavy Byzantine klibanion was not the same as scale armor in Western Europe. It is different (and unique) in a couple ways: the klibanion did not have a leather backing (it was laced together by thongs, not nailed by rivets), and the individual pieces (lamellae) overlapped upwards instead of downwards.

If one examines the military manuals and strategika of the early and middle periods, as well as icons and manuscript illuminations, one can get a good idea of what Byzantine armor looked like. Some archaeological evidence clues us in on the metallurgy of the armor, which was mainly iron. Metallurgy texts that they used were ones from their ancient Greek predecessors.

Of course, the imperial government tightly controlled precious metals and their mining like other commodities/resources, but as time wore on, mining operations devolved into the hands of private owners. As far as the tradition of mining and armor-making, the Byzantines followed the methods of their Roman predecessors very conservatively.

In the late period, the imperial government did not have the funds, or possibly even the interest, in harnessing the new technology that Western Europe was using, like the blast furnace. The ones who could afford plate armor, such as the nobility, probably imported it from the northern Balkans or from the Italian Republics.

As for work with precious metals, the Byzantines still continued to put out masterful pieces, especially for ecclesiastical use. There is evidence of Byzantine gold and silver smiths taking high-paying positions in Western Europe after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
 
As you see it, how did Byzantine metalworking change or remain the same through out its long history (284/330-1461)?

Does anyone else know anything about Byzantine blacksmith and metalworking techniques in the late period? Where there any blast furnaces installed in any of the major cities?
 
Some secondary sources if anyone is interested:
 
Warren Treadgold, Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081
 
Eric McGeer, Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Byzantine Warfare in the Tenth Century
 
John Haldon, Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World, 565-1204
 
Mark C. Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204-1453
 
Maria G. Parani, Reconstructing the Reality of Images: Byzantine Material Culture and Religious Iconography (11th-15th Centuries)
 
E-texts in PDF format of the excellent reference work The Economic History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou (includes articles on Byzantine metallurgy and mining):
 
 


Edited by Byzantine Emperor - 13-Jul-2006 at 00:51
Late Byzantine Military
Ottoman perceptions of the Americas
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