Swords and Documents in the Sixteenth Century

This chapter studies the documentation of swords in the sixteenth century. The relative silence concerning swords existed in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources too, but it persists in sixteenth-century records, when more and more family records survive. The fact of this silence always reflects lacunae: a document is missing, such as an inventory after death; some documents are created only for limited and immediate purpose. Another reason for the information missing, now, was confusion about what category of goods swords constituted at the time. “Arms,” however that was understood, can appear in multiple places. Armor for man and horse can be found in trunks within a chateau or, as the century wears on, in rooms labeled “armory,” though the contents are not always detailed in an inventory of the residence. Swords, in short, were a category unto themselves, consistently neither furnishings nor clothing nor arms nor ornaments; even their mere presence, much less any detail of their appearance or value, can elude written records.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter explains that if swords remained firmly and richly expressive of warrior identity, it was in part because they had already served as a vehicle for change and adaptation through time. Throughout, the material characteristics of the sword were always central to its significance. Thus, the construction of a sword meant it could convey immediate, personalized messages and yet have a longevity celebrated and recognized across generations. Swords did not mean just one thing, ever, but they were always good for thinking with, good for representing the timelessness of warrior identity and the security of one warrior's stature, and good for appealing to some imagined past for purposes of any present. But it is important to realize that swords became a focal point for warrior identity only gradually, over time. As it developed its power in elite culture, “memory” of earlier times when swords were larger than life grew also.

Swords, Clothing, and Armor in the Late Middle Ages

This chapter explores warrior families and their material surroundings in the late Middle Ages, the late thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, set in the contexts of the politics and warfare of the age as well as in that of the changing conditions of material life and the documentation that recorded it. It first considers changes in clothing and its ripple effects in the creation and use of other belongings and then treats the changes in metallurgy that permitted new varieties of armor as well as the production of swords in much greater number. The significance of swords must be weighed against the importance of and attention to these other goods that warrior bodies also carried and displayed. Often overlooked is the importance of tournament life for the way warriors invested in, and how they valued, armor. Finally, the chapter argues that written records barely capture the continued importance of a warrior's signature swords. Amid more belongings, and more swords, elites demonstrated their capacity to make a commonplace accoutrement, as swords increasingly were, into a signature belonging emblematic of their special status, by means of special decoration, deliberate collecting, or calculated display.

Swords and Chivalric Culture in the High Middle Ages

This chapter examines the relationship between swords and chivalric culture in the high Middle Ages. It brings together the implications of literacy with the symbolic meaning of material objects to build an understanding of the cultural shaping of warrior identity. At the same time, as the economy expanded, new material means were available to represent a man and advertise his status in public ways. In other words, more swords came into a world where signs of identity were needed that could represent a man in his absence, and where documents but also other objects — seals, coats of arms — proliferated. The question is: what role did swords have; how were swords unique among such signs? Now required for knighthood, swords were both more and less than a weapon, but in ways rather different from swords in earlier centuries. It is the political valence of swords that dominated their use in ceremony and image in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. Thus, knights' swords existed on a continuum with swords imagined as symbols of rule.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of swords. If the sword was the most symbolically potent of all of a warrior's weapons, as most scholars of material culture and aristocratic life believe, and perhaps the most potent of all his belongings, one should pause to look at the change in the design and use of swords more closely. How could an object so important, with such symbolic valence — not to mention usefulness in combat — change in appearance and function so quickly? Historians of warfare have argued that the rise of gunpowder weapons was dramatic, in fact traumatic for elite warriors, but have not asked as much about the mutations of swords. A number of scholars have also studied the prescriptive literature about swordsmanship and dueling, which began to proliferate in the sixteenth century after the spread of print technology. Few, however, have examined material culture. The book presents evidence about swords in the possession of aristocrats and more humble fighters, as well as royalty, found in records generated by their households or from contemporary observers. It investigates the practical and symbolic uses of swords as weapons, as gifts, as markers of authority, and as talismans of identity.

Swords and Oral Culture in the Early Middle Ages

This chapter discusses the relationship between swords and oral culture in the early Middle Ages. It sketches the history of the manufacture of early medieval swords, then looks at evidence of those swords' symbolic lives revealed by archaeological finds, namely grave goods and the reconstruction of rituals that accompanied their deposit. The chapter then considers written evidence of swords, particularly in early wills that record both the bequeathing but also the prior circulation of a sword among allies and kin. Finally, it turns to literature, to Beowulf and its near-contemporary, The Battle of Maldon, to explore the roles those poems ascribe to warriors' (and monsters') swords. Early medieval literature is filled with references to the aesthetic qualities and the mysterious origin of swords and their constituent parts, as well as to their power to strike fear, to wound, and to kill.