brayette

plural brayettes

1. historicalAn item of armor (mail or plate) protecting the groin.

   European chain mail was rarely made after 1600 figures suits of plate armor from the Maximilian period (1500-1540) in which mail was used for brayettes or groin defenses (op. cit., figs. 65, 67, 72, 75, 91).

   1942, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections

   5 more examples

   30071 Black Armor with Embossed White Stripes, about 1540 : Burgonet with upraising helmet-shade; gorget with pauldrons attached; breast-plate with tapul and great brayette; back-plate with loin-guard. ' Nuremberg mark.

   1895, Golden Gate Park Memorial Museum (San Francisco, Calif.), Guide to the Halls and Galleries of the Memorial Museum ..., page 87

   Among the detached pieces of mail are nine hauberks, to all of which a European origin is assigned, a fine standard of mail of the late fifteenth century, and a mail brayette similar to that on the effigy of Count Otto IV. of ...

   1925, The Connoisseur

   These have been denoted the garde rein or culet. Usually a skirt of mail or at least a mail brayette was worn under these defenses. The shoulders were protected by pauldrons of lames, overlapping from the bottom up. These lames were carried well around over the back and breast ...

   2000, Harold Leslie Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526-1783, Courier Corporation, →ISBN, page 120

   The body itself is defended also by plate armour so that instead of the jupon, gambeson and hauberk-of-mail we find the cuirass now covering breast and back with the brayettes or taces which form a short petticoat or skirt of steel ...

   2012, Mary G. Houston, Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries, Courier Corporation, →ISBN, page 337

   ... covered the armpits or the crooks of the elbows and were attached to arming jackets, garments specially tailored to be worn under armor; and mail breeches, called brayettes or pairs of paunces, could be worn by men fighting on foot.

   2017, Donald J. La Rocca, How to Read European Armor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, →ISBN, page 11