This topic caught my attention at the time, as I read many comments about how small medieval armor was, putting it alongside the common ones used by people today, although unfortunately I was unable to locate descriptive photos.
Strictly speaking, for the average age, we use
as an estimate for males an average height of
1.60 m. However, this was by no means a general rule. Let’s talk, for example, of Sancho VII el Fuerte de Navarra, king between 1194 and 1234. And brother-in-law of Ricardo Corazón de León, for more details:
It is said that he was about 2 m tall and weighed 100 kg.
The surprising thing is that before that, there were much better times. It is estimated that at the height of his empire, the average height of the Roman population was 1.66 m. It was customary to recruit soldiers from Holland, 1.76 m tall, as the emperor’s special guard (ha ha, they weren’t very short…).
Reading a little about some heroes of the 19th century, it seems that Napoleon and Simón Bolívar were 1.69 m tall. So they weren’t as small as they say.
However, in the case of Simón Bolívar, frankly, I find it hard to believe. Just pay a visit to the Bolivarian Museum of Caracas and see his clothing exhibition. In particular, boots that always impressed me for being small.
I don’t know if I’m a neophyte, and it could be that all these things dehydrate and shrink over the centuries, but it’s a childhood memory that I reconfirmed in my adulthood.
Cheers!!!