While the term "Gothic" in art history covers the 12th to 15th centuries, Gothic plate armour develops only during 1420–1440s, when the technological development of armour reached the stage where full plate armour (including movable joints) was made, and national styles of "white armour" began to emerge, specifically German ("Gothic") and Italian (Milanese). Centers of armour production in the period included Augsburg, Nuremberg and Landshut.

The Gothic style of plate armour peaked in a form known as Maximilian armour, produced during 1515–1525. High Gothic armour was worn during the later 15th century, a transitional type called Schott-Sonnenberg style was current during c. 1500 to 1515, and Maximilian armour proper during 1515 to 1525. Towards the late 16th century, so-called half-armour (Halbharnisch) would become increasingly common, eventually diminished itself into the early modern cuirass of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Gothic armour was often combined with a Gothic sallet, which included long and sharp rear-plate that protected the back of the neck and head. Maximilian armour of the early 16th century is characterized by rounder and more curved forms, and their ridges were narrower, parallel to each other and covered the entire armour.

Methods of single combat in this type of armour are treated in the German fencing manuals of the period, under the term Harnischfechten ("armoured combat").

The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were intended to conquer Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organised, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century.

The Teutonic Order is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society c. 1190 in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Its members have commonly been known as the Teutonic Knights, having a small voluntary and mercenary military membership, serving as a crusading military order for the protection of Christians in the Holy Land and the Baltics during the Middle Ages.

The fraternity which preceded the formation of the Order was formed in the year 1191 in Acre by the German merchants from Bremen and Lübeck. After the capture of Acre they took over a hospital in the city to take care of the sick and began to describe themselves as the Hospital of St. Mary of the German House in Jerusalem. Soon Pope Clement III approved it and the Order started to play an important role in the Outremer (the general name for the Crusader states), controlling the port tolls of Acre. After Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East, the order moved to Transylvania in 1211 to help defend the south-eastern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary against the Cumans. The Knights were expelled by force of arms by King Andrew II of Hungary in 1225, after attempting to build their own state within Transylvania and Pope Honorius III's papal bull claiming the Order's territory in Transylvania.

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