The glamour associated with knights in shining armor, colorful
tournaments, and heroic deeds appeal strongly to the modern imagination.
However, few pieces of military dress and equipment have survived, so
for a comprehensive view of the nature of medieval warfare we rely on
written documentation and the information preserved in paintings,
sculptures, carvings, and other pictorial sources. The most numerous of
these are the miniatures and drawings found in manuscript books, partly
because books tend to survive better that other artefacts and partly
because many individual volumes contain multiple representations. Pamela
Porter presents a variety of evocative manuscript illuminations and
reveals them as a source of information about military dress, equipment,
and practices.