the opinion of the Baron de Cosson, and we can certainly go to no higher court of appeal, the barbute or barbuta was a bascinet type of helmet furnished with a chin-piece of plate; for the word barbuta must originally have meant something bearded. In this interpretation of barbute, the beard portion of the helmet would signify a plate protecting the beard, and not, as M. Viollet-le-Duc suggests, an open-faced helmet showing the beard; so that what in France would be known as a bascinet à bavière, would in Italy come under the heading of the barbuta, or in the French language, barbute. It requires no imagination to conjecture that, while originally the term barbute was applied to the beard-plate only, it finally came to stand for the entire head-piece, of which the beard-plate was but a part.
Olivier de la Marche uses the term for a defence of the same nature as the bevor. He states that Claude de Sainte Hélène, armed for a fight, appeared "sa teste armée de salade et de barbute"; while Chastelain, describing the appearance of the knight on the same occasion, speaks of him as having a "salade en tête ayant bavière"; so that the word barbute and bavière would appear to be synonymous. In an early XVIth century mention of the barbute, it figures as a portion of the helmet itself; for Hall, giving an account of a mishap to King Henry VIII at a tournament, says in his history of that monarch: "For a surety the duke strake the King on the brow right under the defēce of ye hedpece on the very coyffe scull or bassenetpece whereunto the barbet for power and defence is charneled." Here Hall, in his use of the word barbet, certainly seems to refer to a reinforcing plate applied to the skull-piece of a helmet, as seen on most armets (see post, Fig. 430). To enable the reader to get some idea of the different interpretations which the two great authorities we have mentioned give of the same term, we furnish an illustration of a very splendid Venetian helmet in the Wallace Collection (Fig. 423) which illustrates adequately enough the type of head-piece to which M. Viollet-le-Duc applies the term barbute; while another illustration, that of a bascinet helmet (see vol. i, Fig. 283), will sufficiently depict what the Baron de Cosson means by the same expression. The present writer would have preferred to include his account of the bascinet barbute, referred to by M. Viollet-le-Duc, in those chapters which deal with the history of the bascinet head-piece, since in his opinion the Wallace example is a representative helmet of that class. It differs indeed from certain bascinets represented (see vol. i, Figs. 278 and 279) only in the prolongation of its lower front cheek-pieces and in the outward sweep of its lower back edge. It was, however, almost a matter of necessity to
