Welcome to the Company of Saynt George website

The Company of Saynt George is a living-history association. For twenty-five years we have been bringing to life a small artillery company dating back to the period of Charles the Bold (1467-1477). These pages contain information about our group including many pictures of previous events, numerous research articles and how to get involved. Furthermore, you can access the public mailing list.

Any comments and feedback is greatly appreciated. Please contact us via contact@companie-of-st-george.ch.

 

 

News from the Company Blog

Making a reproduction of a late 15th century cranequin

In this blog post Jokum Lind Jensen describes how he has tried to recreate a cranequin from the time of the Company of Saint George. The work was made almost exclusively by hand, using methods as close to traditional ones as possible.

After months of work, with plenty of trial and error the cranequin resembles the originals in idiom and function, and now awaits the making of a crossbow to prove its worth.

Download the whole article (8 MB)

Reaching the inactive and former members

The Company of St. George will celebrate its 25th anniversary at the end of August 2013 with a big feast on Saturday August 31. We will return to Vallerois-le-Bois, where we enjoyed a wonderful week last year. This is a private event for members spiced up with an invitation to museum partners to share this moment with us.

To make a bread oven

Since a quite long time from now, Alain-Gilles started to turn his mind around bread. Generally in the castles we go, when it's possible, he uses the kitchen oven. Unfortunately lot's of them have been modified for modern reasons and don't give us an optimal medieval way for cooking bread. Sometimes ovens are too small, sometimes they have a modern extraction for the smoke.

Strike-a-lights, flints and tinders: which historical sources?

This is a guest piece by Andrea Carloni

When talking about lighting a fire, especially for domestic use, modern man automatically thinks of matches and lighters, because collective memory actually ignores that, for thousands of years and at least up to the end of 19th century, this task had been invariably performed through strike-a-lights, flints and tinders. The longevity of this outdated custom is confirmed by many historical literature quotes, even from worldwide known works, such as I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni (1842) which reads in a passage: «...cava fuori esca, pietra, acciarino e zolfanelli ed accende un suo lanternino» (transl. «...takes out tinder, flint, strike-a-light and sulfur sticks and lights up his little lantern»).

The Ursula Shrine Linnen Armour (Padded Jack Series I)

The Saint Ursula Shrine, painted by Hans Memling before 1489, is one of the best known works of the Flemish art of the 15th century. This liturgical shrine is not very big. In fact, the painted panels are only 35cm high. The paintings depict the martyrdom of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins in Cologne and feature a wide selection of arms and armour. Among them are two pieces of thick linnen armour, both worn over mail.


Three of the side panels of the Ursula shrine by Hans Memling.


Haut-Koenigsbourg, France, March 31 - April 2, 2006