Bascinet

The bascinet – also bassinet, basinet, or bazineto – was a Medieval European open-faced combat helmet. It evolved from a type of iron or steel skullcap, but had a more pointed apex to the skull, and it extended downwards at the rear and sides to afford protection for the neck. A mail curtain (aventail or camail) was usually attached to the lower edge of the helmet to protect the throat, neck and shoulders. A visor (face guard) was often employed from c. 1330 to protect the exposed face. Early in the fifteenth century, the camail began to be replaced by a plate metal gorget, giving rise to the so-called "great bascinet".

The first recorded reference to a bascinet, or bazineto, was in the Italian city of Padua in 1281, when it is described as being worn by infantry.

It is believed that the bascinet evolved from a simple iron skullcap, known as the cervelliere, which was worn with a mail coif, as either the sole form of head protection or beneath a great helm. The bascinet is differentiated from the cervelliere by having a higher, pointed skull. By about 1330 the bascinet had been extended lower down the sides and back of the head. Within the next 20 years it had extended to the base of the neck and covered the cheeks. The bascinet appeared quite suddenly in the later 13th century and some authorities see it as being influenced by Byzantine or Middle-Eastern Muslim helmets. The bascinet, without a visor, continued to be worn underneath larger "great helms" (also termed heaumes).

Unlike the cervelliere, which was worn in conjunction with, often underneath, a complete hood of mail called the coif, early bascinets were typically worn with a neck and throat defence of mail that was attached to the lower edge of the helmet itself; this mail "curtain" was called a camail or aventail. The earliest camails were riveted directly to the edge of the helmet, however, beginning in the 1320s a detachable version replaced this type. The detachable aventail was attached to a leather band, which was in turn attached to the lower border of the bascinet by a series of staples called vervelles. Holes in the leather band were passed over the vervelles, and a waxed cord was passed through the holes in the vervelles to secure it.

This illustration shows a bascinet with a type of detachable nasal (nose protector) called the bretache or bretèche made of sheet metal. The bretache was attached to the aventail at the chin, and it fastened to a hook or clamp on the brow of the helmet. According to Boeheim, this type of defence was prevalent in Germany, appearing around 1330 and fading from use around 1370. The bretache was also used in Italy; one of the first representations of it is on the equestrian statue of Cangrande I della Scala, who died in 1329. It is also shown on the tomb of Bernardino dei Baranzoni in the Museo Lapidario Estense in Modena, created c. 1345–50. An advantage of the bretache was that it could be worn under a great helm, but afforded some facial protection when the great helm was taken off. Use of the bretache preceded and overlapped with that of a new type of visor used with the bascinet, the "klappvisor" or "klappvisier".

The open-faced bascinet, even with the mail aventail, still left the exposed face vulnerable. However, from about 1330, the bascinet was often worn with a "face guard" or movable visor.

The "klappvisor" or klappvisier was a type of visor employed on bascinets from around 1330–1340; this type of visor was hinged at a single point in the centre of the brow of the helmet skull. It was particularly favoured in Germany, but was also used in northern Italy where it is shown in a Crucifixion painted in the chapter hall of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, c. 1367. Its use in Italy seems to have ceased around 1380, but continued in Germany into the 15th century. The klappvisor has been characterised as being intermediate between the bretache nasal and the side pivoting visor. Sources disagree on the nature of the klappvisier. A minority, including De Vries and Smith, class all smaller visors, those that only cover the area of the face left exposed by the aventail, as klappvisiers, regardless of the construction of their hinge mechanism. However, they agree that klappvisiers, by their alternative definition of 'being of small size', preceded the larger forms of visor, which almost exclusively employed the double pivot, found in the latter part of the 14th century.

The side-pivot mount, which used two pivots – one on each side of the helmet, is shown in funerary monuments and other pictorial or sculptural sources of the 1340s. One of the early depictions of a doubly pivoted visor on a bascinet is the funerary monument of Sir Hugh Hastings (d. 1347) in St. Mary's Church, Elsing, Norfolk, England. The pivots were connected to the visor by means of hinges to compensate for any lack of parallelism between the pivots. The hinges usually had a removable pin holding them together, this allowed the visor to be completely detached from the helmet, if desired. The side-pivot system was commonly seen in Italian armours.