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 the point. It has usually been spoken of as a variation of the word heaumet, the diminutive of heaume, just as helmet is the diminutive of helm; but the two former names are clearly given to two distinctive helmets in Le Challange de Phillipe de Bouton (1467), the combatants being expected to fight "portant armet ou heaulmet ou choys et plaisir dunch'un de nous." Littré has found a passage in a writer of the XIVth century from which he deduces the conclusion that armet was not derived at all from heaumet. He quotes Girard de Ross, who says: "Li ars [l'air] resplendit touz les splendissours des armes, des armez, des aubers, des lances, des jusarmes," and observes that it is strange that this earliest form of the word should not show any traces of the transformation from heaumet, but appears to be derived from arme. As the Baron de Cosson remarks: "The passage in no way indicates what kind of head-pieces were described as armez in the XIVth century, and the word may have no connection with the armet of the XVth; besides which the orthography of that period is not a very safe guide to the derivation of a word."

Executed about 1445 by Vittore Pisano

One of the first mentions of the armet is made in 1443 by Olivier de la Marche in his description of a passage of arms between two mounted knights, the less fortunate knight, Bernard de Béarn, receiving a blow