The Mail Shirt from Sinigaglia

This mail shirt, which is now in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh and was in the Meyrick and Noel Paton collections, dates from the fourteenth century. A little is known about its more recent history. Apparently it was bought by a Jewish dealer from an ancient family at Sinigaglia, near Bologna, ‘in whose possession it had been beyond any of their records’. It has been published before but because it is in such a good state of preservation, because mail shirts of the fourteenth century are rare, and because something is known about its history, it is important that it should be republished.