How Long Were Medieval Swords Used For? Fashion & Development

[Music] hey folks matt easton here scholarly choice so we're going to talk a little bit a relatively simple topic and i'll try and keep it concise about fashion and swords particularly in the 15th century but you could take this back to the 14th or slightly later into the 16th so what's interesting when we talk about the development of medieval tools and you can also extrapolate this slightly to armor but this particularly applies to weapons particularly swords but you could you could take this out to apply to other arms and armor of the period as well is that we absolutely do have fashions and trends developments and changes and i talk about them an awful lot on this channel but we also have to remember that some of these um swords so this is a 15th century star longsword this is the albion ring incidentally um did have a period of life and that period of life sometimes could be generations but we have to be careful about not over exaggerating that point because it varies with period and we have to concede that there was a very rapid development of both technological developments but also fashion styles that moved forwards and changed when we go from say about the early 14th century through to the early 16th century so despite the fact we're only really talking about 200 years there there was a lot of change and movement development in military hardware and even you know civilian clothing of course during that period you might think well matt 200 years is a long time but actually is it that long in generations um if we go back we go back further into history into the bronze age for example we find that there isn't such a rapid development of changes in things like swords and probably there wasn't a such a rapid development in things like fashion or you know certainly jewelry and other things that survive from that period as well but by the time we get to the late middle ages shall we say and into the renaissance we see we see an acceleration of development so that kind of means that when we come to dating obviously originals this is a made circa what probably about 2010 if i remember correctly but the originals that these are based on would have had a kind of date whereby they definitely couldn't date before that but they certainly could have remained in use after that but the question is how long after that and that is very very very problematic subject in the study of arms and armor and it touches on how we date items of armor or swords from things like funeral effigies and brasses obviously manuscript art as well um and of course archaeologically when we actually find the real artifacts whether it's from the ground or rivers or in collections or whatever sometimes even in tombs and we do know that swords could remain in use for several generations and we also know this i mean we know this from various different um various different evidence we have one of those is actually the um the period artwork but another one is the actual text the written text from the period where sometimes we have wills which and sometimes even just inventories of stuff that's held in arsenal's but also in people's houses that show us that in some cases particular single objects like grandfather's sword or grandfather's bassinet were actually handed down now we don't know of course whether they were necessarily used so in some cases just like today i mean i personally know obviously i work in the world of antique swords and anti-calms and armor but i personally know people that own their grandfather's sword from world war one for example and and i'm still looking for for my great grandfather's sword for world war one it's out there somewhere i'll find it one day um but the fact is that sometimes things are handed down but that doesn't mean they're still used so if i still have my great grandfather sword from world war one i i wouldn't still be um carrying it certainly in a military sense or in a kind of service sense but if i was a serving officer in the appropriate regiment which was the royal army medical corps in his case then i could potentially wear his sword for parade purposes and again i know people serving in the british military in some cases foreign militaries as well actually and some of those i've actually sold swords to and they do wear antique swords so in some cases it could be that in the 15th century someone who owned say this is grandfather's sword they might still wear it around because it was grandfather sword and maybe he carried it you know in um in the battle of pate for example and i i'm now living in the year 1500 but you know 50 years ago oh when he in the hundred years war um he was a he was a fantastic leader he was and i love the fact that i've still got his sword so it could be that in the year 1500 there were people wandering around wearing swords from the year 1450 um but their sword would look to some degree a bit antiquated so if i'd grab another albion here this is this has certain stylistic differences so this is a it's a modified version of the mercenary it's a little bit complicated but the grip is actually by todd todd cutler and they are stylish stylistically different swords now whilst the blades actually both of these blades had a very wide um period of use they're sort of type 15 blades i suppose some people might call them a type 80 and i think they're type 15. um and um this type of blade was actually in use for from about the i guess the middle of the 14th century ish right the way through and well into the 16th century so the blades themselves could be re-hilted and in fact you could stick the um you could shorten the particularly well in fact either of these blades you could shorten them and stick them on grab another sword here this is the windlass munich you could stick stick them on a later swept hilt uh military sword shorten the tang and everything and no one would necessarily ever know that the sword you were carrying was actually your great great grandfather's blade that he'd carried in 100 years war because you could still be wearing it in the year 1550 which is quite incredible when you think about it so the blade could have a very long period of life and no one would know that it was an old blade there might be for those of us who study things for example um armor a sword makers blade makers markings you might recognize that the stamp on the blade is a 15th century stamp but the hilt is a 16th century hilt so you might be able to say well look this is a reused blade and there are many examples of these in collections but the hilt tells us a little bit more now you'll notice partly by accident actually that i ended up with these two swords they actually share some very similar health characteristics they both have what are called scent stopper pommels uh quite similar pommels and they both have curved guards that flare out at the end and each of these features could have been around in the late 14th century they could have been around in the late 15th century and they were still around in the 16th century but there are tendencies so you'll notice that the grip on the ring egg here is flared at the middle and that has the practical benefit of keeping your right hand in place when you're using the sword one-handed say for example you're using a pavis shield or you were on horseback then this is quite ergonomic and it helps keep your hand in place we don't generally see that feature there are some 14th century hints of it but we don't generally see that feature becoming common until fairly far into the 15th century the kind of let's say the first second quarter of the 15th century generally what we see before that are grips more like this that are smoother so it's not a definite point of dating but generally speaking the look of this mercenary looks a little bit earlier than this ring act by virtue of the grip and there's one example of a development that changed as we went forward in time so this sword wouldn't really fit if i was doing a 14th century impression if i was wearing armor from um you know the battle of sempac or something like that late something even even agincourt actually this so even into the early 15th century this sword wouldn't really look right whereas this sword would because of the grip um this sword would look appropriate for the the end of the hundred years war the wars of the roses this kind of period so this is more mid 15th or late 18th late 15th century purely because of the grip so just that one thing now if we start to add features like side rings okay or perhaps fingerings now fingerings did actually appear for the first time quite early around 1400 but side rings don't appear until very very late in the 15th century so if you have side rings on a sword you absolutely wouldn't expect to see that um at the beginning of the wars of the roses or the end of the hundred years or this kind of period middle of the 15th century so there are relatively small functional changes to swords which happen across time which stick them in a certain point so the question is coming back to what i think's my original point um is how long were swords kept in use at this time in the late medieval period and early renaissance and i think the question has i think the the answer to the question probably you can summarize it in that blades could be in use for quite a long time and we do know of examples of 13th century blades in 16th century longsword hilts we do even though of one example and i don't know how historically uh trustworthy it is but there is an example of a viking era blade type 10 blade in a lance connect um double ring katz balga hilt so and so that's 16th century that's 600 years difference more or less so it does happen that blades sometimes have an incredibly long period of use because a good blade is a good blade but also because it might have uh family significance it might be a blade that's been in the family for a long time it may be a blade that belonged to a famous person or was carried at a famous battle or whatever but hilts did move on and then sometimes as i've shown in quite subtle ways sometimes just a slight change in the grip shape and we do certainly grips or something which evolve quite a lot in the 14th and 15th and 16th centuries but also especially in the guard pommels not so much but there are pommel types which are fit within certain time periods as well is it possible that sometimes someone had a 14th century longsword or circa 1400 longsword that they were still carrying completely unaltered unadulterated still carrying a hundred years later yes it is possible and we occasionally see this in art and obviously we have to add all the caveats about how much we trust historical artwork and how we have to be cautionary with it often historical artwork isn't showing a photograph of the time it's telling a story often it's a biblical story set two thousand years earlier sometimes it's an old testament story set two and a half thousand years before sometimes it might be an ancient world ancient greek so often you see the the stories about troy um or alexander the great in medieval art and so they the artist will deliberately show things sometimes that are supposed to look old-fashioned sometimes that are their idea of what the people then wore or just they're supposed to look outlandish because they're showing foreigners or infidels or whatever so they give them some weird kind of scimitar type falchion type sword when that wasn't a natural sword that existed all of these sort of caveats but we can nevertheless learn a lot from historical artwork and we do occasionally see weapons which clearly could have been from 100 years or even 200 years earlier shown with no reason for an old weapon to be shown in a later period so yes i think sometimes medieval swords did have a long period of use but usually if you had some money to spend you would i mean even if it was just changing the grip shape even if it was just getting the the guard replaced maybe with the side ring or fingering or whatever they would make small changes because fashion and technology did move on quite rapidly in this period and just like now i think people wouldn't want to be seen to have something which was horribly out of date and unfashionable and we have to accept that swords weren't just pointy sharp objects for killing people they were also statements of your wealth your place in society your intention your seriousness and everything else they were symbols they weren't just weapons i hope that's been thought provoking and interesting give us a like and subscribe and i'll see you really soon again for another video about swords or something else on school of gladiatoria channel cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 25,804

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Id: 3ayTOkoYafw

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020