Armoury of the Knights : a study of the Palace Armoury, its collection, and the military storehouses of the Hospitaller Knights of the Order of St John

Abstract

n his introduction to J F Verbruggen 's The Art of Warfare ill Western Europe during the Middle Ages, Manhew Bennen remarks that it is unusual in any discipline for four decades to pass by without any scholar contributing to a field of study. Had he known that a century has elapsed since Laking produced the only book ever to appear on the Palace Armoury, he would have had to rephrase his sentence. Indeed, the one critical problem that has plagued the Palace Annoury from the day it was first e tabli hed as a mu eum way back in 1860 ha been an unfamiliarity wi th it hi . torical p~ t; a situation that hru condemned it to the lalU of a gallery of curio itie ever since. This inability t depict the rmoury beyond the c mmon notion ofa mere antiquarian collection tem primarily from an a toni hing lack of hi. torical research. Until very recently. no seriou efr It wa ever hanneled toward, understanding the real significance of the Pala e Annoury. Basic que ti n of when and how th i Aml0ury was set up. of how it wa administered and equi pped with weapons. and of how it functioned and developed within the overall Hospitaller military organization were ne er ever raised, let alone answered. As a result. the whole corplls of knowledge on this subject remained dependent on a few isolated facts draped in much specul ation and myth. [excerpt]