How did knights who required glasses to see survive on the battlefield?
score:44
They Didn't Wear Glasses and They were Probably Fine
TL/DR: They didn't wear glasses and all but the blindest of knights were at no more a disadvantage than a guy who was slightly shorter or weaker or slower than average.
As mentioned previously the kinds of glasses available to a medieval aristocrat were essentially impossible to use on a battlefield. But that's not a huge hindrance. A knight's ability too see clearly would not have a tremendously bad effect on his combat capability until you get in the range of near-blindness. You must consider the ranges at which the average knight was fighting. My own vision is atrocious, in the 20/400 range. Anything outside of about 20cm gets fuzzy, and I have difficulty identifying individuals at distances greater than 3 meters unless they're especially tall/short/weird hair color or the only person of a specific race in the room. 20/400 is "legally blind" without corrective lenses. But I can (and have) done ARMA-style fights without corrective lenses. I can still see motion at 3 meters, even slight movements. and I can also perceive objects like, say, a spear or a sword moving at that range. Even from 20ish meters away I can still identify things like "that's a person" and "that person is moving towards/away/sideways as about X speed" and can roughly distinguish the size of a weapon they're carrying. (I can tell if something a spear or a sword, but not really a spear or a halberd for instance) What does that mean for a knight with a similar impairment?
Honestly not a whole lot. Certainly a GENERAL might have problems, as he would not be able to easily identify troop formations or banners at a distance. But your average knight was a close-combat specialist fighting either on foot or mounted. On foot he's coming within a few feet of his opponent, where his vision is "good enough" to allow him to fight with confidence, especially against an armored opponent where subtleties like facial cues don't matter and fights often ended in grappling. Against mounted opponents he'd be at a slight disadvantage, but if his reflexes were good enough he could still get his lance's final aimpoint on target. As he's part of a larger formation somebody else will be able to point him at the enemy. Unlike the movies battles didn't devolve in wild mixed-in melees so as long as he stayed "pointed" the right direction so he didn't go running up to foes he thought were friends until he was 3 meters away he'd be ok!
At the end of the day it certainly is a bit more challenging to fight without good vision than with my contacts in. But I wouldn't rate it much more difficult than fighting a guy who has slightly longer reach or is slightly stronger or any of the other minor advantages that nature bestows on people. A knight isn't trying to see a thin flitting rapier, and catching arrows on your shield is a matter of luck and good positioning rather than seeing the arrow coming. A knight is trying to see fairly large objects at fairly close range, and at that point even the just-barely-legally-blind can do ok!
Upvote:4
In addition to the other posts, I would just like to add that helmets would probably produce a minor pinhole effect which would slightly reduce some optical abnormalties.
Upvote:6
I haven't studied this at all. But common sense would lead someone to one of two conclusions. If your vision was enough of a problem that you had difficulty carrying out your knightly duties, either: a. You didn't become a knight in the first place b. You died quickly in battle
I suppose you might get lucky, become a knight, and never get called to battle. But that strikes me as extraordinary luck...
Upvote:65
According to Wikipedia glasses were invented in 1268 by Roger Bacon. About a century later, the first wearable glasses appear on a painting by Thomasso da Modena in 1352.
Glasses were rudimentary at best, and very expensive to make. The only people who wore glasses were wealthy scholars, because of technical limitations: those glasses were only good enough (barely) for reading. Glasses of this period were only capable of correcting presbyopia (not being able read, common for elderly people). If you accept the distortions, and didn't mind wearing or holding something very uncomfortable for extended periods. A scholar or merchant used glasses in a sedentary environment. Wearing those kind of glasses in any other environment was not practical. Least of all on a battlefield.
That's where your problem lies: a knight didn't need reading glasses, supposing they could read. Many of them couldn't. They needed to cope with myopia, or short-sightedness. That's the opposite of what glasses at the time could assist with.
The technology to create wearable glasses in a helmet or on the battlefield simply didn't exist. Glasses that help with short-sightedness weren't invented during medieval times, but long afterwards. Wearable glasses as we use to day appeared around 1727.
More post
- π Did Turkey invade Cyprus to keep the USSR out? Is there really CIA files that prove this for real?
- π Was there a rational reason for Napoleon to attack Russia while the Peninsular War was still in progress?
- π How do we know baroque art depicted obese ladies because of a different ideal of beauty?
- π Why would some nations want to force Japan to end their isolation?
- π Why did Jefferson have to 'Stretch the Constitutional Breaking Point' for the Louisiana Purchase?
- π What is this household object from early 1900s rural Russia?
- π When the United States Congress passes an amendment, how are its votes counted?
- π What did education look like in occupied countries during WW2?
- π Why was an SS commander dismissed and charged for the mistreatment of Jewish prisoners?
- π How can I date this carved wood sculpture?
- π Why do certain foods (i.e. wheat and rice) dominate our carbohydrate intake?
- π Alexander, Olympias, and Zeus in Giulio Romano's painting
- π What describes the average pre-colonial NA Native American lifestyle (across several tribes)?
- π Was Antarctica a factor in the Falklands war?
- π A question about the definition of heresy (13th. C)
- π Why didn't early modern Christians object to pagan symbolism in art?
- π Why/how did German arms output peak in 1944 when they were running out of oil?
- π How was the political landscape of Tibet during the era of fragmentation?
- π Why wouldn't the South make salt from seawater during the American Civil War?
- π Did the US wage war against the Ottoman Empire in 1917?
- π Who was the first human to survive a vertical launched rocket flight?
- π What type of ferry boats were used in England in the early 19th century?
- π (How) did the Republican Romans refer to previous decades or centuries?
- π Did the US really consider demonstrating the atomic bomb to the Japanese by "blowing the top" off of Mt. Fuji?
- π What reasons did the Confederacy have for believing they would have a quick victory?
- π Why did the French "surrender" all of its troops during the armistice in World War II?
- π How was silver/gold mining done in colonial Americas?
- π Were there German bomb disposal units in WW2?
- π When and who did the Legislative Assembly banish from France during the French Revolution?
- π Did the US government officially apologize for Indian Removal Act and Native American Indian genocide?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- π How did knights who required glasses to see survive on the battlefield?
- π How did 300,000 people survive the 3 1/2 year siege of Sarajevo?
- π How did Medieval armies survive the use of mail armor in the deserts of the Middle East?
- π How did Roman armies survive in the desert?
- π How did the Carthaginians manage to survive three years of siege?
- π Who was 'Viscount Yi' and what did he do to survive in the court of a madman?
- π How did CeauΘescu survive the condemnation of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968?
- π How did the forces required for invading Norway compare to those actually used for invading North Africa?
- π How did the white minority in South Africa see their situation in the apartheid times?
- π How did Germany survive on the Eastern Front of WW2 for so long?
- π How did Yugoslavia economically survive the Cold War
- π How did soldiers in WWI who wore jackboots keep the boots from being sucked off in the mud?
- π How did knights in full suits of armor eventually die in combat? What were the most common causes of death for soldiers in full-body plate armor?
- π How did the generation who elected Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison feel about the electoral college?
- π How did the written Polish language survive in eastern Germany during partition (if it survived at all)?
- π How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- π How did Israel win the Six-Day War?
- π How did the general population of England convert so smoothly to Protestantism?
- π How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- π How did the Romans do division?
- π When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- π How did the authorities not find the speakeasy clubs during the prohibition?
- π How did such a relatively minor event as the assassination of an archduke start World War I?
- π How did the Roman state verify citizenship?
- π Why did Europe not see Roman-era numbers of men participating in battles until the 17th century?
- π How did the Nazis plan to defeat America during World War II?
- π How did the ancient Romans count with their fingers?
- π How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- π How did the ancient Greeks synchronize time?
- π How did early adopters of the automobile fill up their cars?