Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Weapons

720

standing behind each other in rows in the formation of a square. When a

pike’s end was jammed into the ground, it was strong enough to impale a

charging horse.

In the 14th century, the halberd was developed in Switzerland as a spear

with a unique defense against knights on horseback. In addition to a long

spearhead, the halberd had an ax blade and a hook for pulling men off their

horses. In two key battles, the halberd was able to defeat knights in chain-

mail. In Flanders (1302) and in Switzerland (1315), peasants and town citi-

zens with halberds used terrain conditions to defeat larger forces of knights.

The development of the halberd was one reason plate armor began to re-

place mail.

Swords

The sword was always the weapon of the aristocracy. Commoners were

allowed to have long knives, but the true sword was forbidden, as well as

too expensive. European swords were sharpened on both edges, whereas

the swords used by Arab and Turkish armies were curved and only sharp

Polearms combined spear and ax, then added hooks that could pull a man from

the saddle. There were many variations and names; pike and halberd are among

the best known. Halberds like these pictured were used in decisive battles

around 1300, when private citizens defended themselves against attack by knights.

(Dreamstime.com)

Weapons

721

on the outer edge. Sword design evolved during the Middle Ages as metal-

working improved and ﬁ ghting conditions changed.

Early medieval swords were very ﬂ at and had elaborate pommels and

guards to block the user’s hands from blows. We have many swords from

pagan graves, in Sweden, Denmark, and England, from early Anglo-Saxons

and from later Vikings. The wood and leather handgrips on these swords

have rotted away, so the remaining grip is just the tang, the iron bar be-

tween the blade and the hammered-on pommel. The guard is a short bar at

the end of the sword’s blade, but the pommel is often enameled, jeweled,

or gold. Naturally, common warriors had less interesting swords, but the

sword was always viewed as the king of weapons, and craftsmanship was lav-

ished on it. Only aristocratic Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and Swedish warriors

carried swords, so swords tended to be expensive and elaborate.

During the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, swords came in many sizes

but were basically grouped into war swords, used with one hand, and very

long swords called two-handed swords. War swords were not small; they

averaged about 36 inches long and weighed about three pounds. The grip

added another 7 or 8 inches. A war sword like this was used most often

when ﬁ ghting on horseback, since it was long enough to reach away from

the horse but light enough to use in one hand.

Two-handed swords had blades averaging 50 inches, and the grips were

12 inches, allowing room for two large hands in armored gloves. The two-

handed sword could be used to cut and stab, but also to block an op-

ponent’s blows. Its pommel could be used as a small club. Although the

sword was so heavy, it was carefully balanced to make it easy to wield. The

Swords were the highest-class weapon

in early medieval Scandinavia. The

pommel and hand guard were usually

decorated. The pommel’s elaborate

designs could include enamel,

engraving, and inlaid precious metals

or stones. The end of the tang that

formed the hand grip was encased in

wood and leather handles that have

broken and decayed over the centuries.

(Statens Historiska Museum,

Stockholm/Werner Forman Archive/

StockphotoPro)

Weapons

722

heavy pommel acted as a counterweight to the blade. Knights had trained

with these weapons since they were young and could handle them with

dexterity.

In the late Middle Ages, swords to ﬁ ght against plate armor had to be

shorter, thicker, and reinforced. They were used more for thrusting than

for slicing. Slicing swords tended to be long and heavy. The 14th and

15th centuries saw a trend toward smaller, lighter swords in many parts of

Europe.

Sword construction was basically the same for all types. A sword’s blade

was made with a long tang—that is, the end of the blade sticking down

to where it will become part of the grip. A guard for the hand was slipped

over the tang, and then a wooden grip, and then the end pommel was ham-

mered into place, holding it together. The wooden grip was often wrapped

with cloth or leather, sometimes decorated in ornate ways.

The steel used for swords was very hard and not easily scratched. The

sword’s blade was kept razor sharp. Although steel making had not yet

been fully developed, blacksmiths had learned how to use charcoal and

a second ﬁ ring to add carbon to the iron as an outer coating. This case-

hardened steel was stronger than wrought iron, and it could be polished to

mirror smoothness.

Swords were hung from a girdle, a belt around the waist, or a baldric, a

strap over one shoulder. In battle, swords may have been hung with bare

blades, ready to pull, but in training and for travel, scabbards protected the

blade from rust or from hurting anyone. Scabbards were sometimes at-

tached to the leather belt directly but also could be clipped to it with rings

and hooks. The sword was not carried high on the waist or strapped tightly.

Sword belts hung lower so that the sword’s handle hung at the upper thigh,

not the hip. The sword’s pommel could also have a chain or leather strap

that wrapped around the knight’s wrist.

The early medieval Saxons had been named for the characteristic long

knife they carried, which they called a seax or sax. From this long knife, a

humbler sword developed, called the falchion. It was only sharp on one

edge of the blade, which was curved. The other side was straight and dull.

It was more like a kitchen knife.

Daggers were long knives that were more like small swords. The Latin

word for a dagger was cultellus, from which the word cutlass developed.

Some daggers had both edges of the blade sharp, like a sword, and others

had only one edge sharp, like a falchion or saber. While daggers were widely

used, knights did not carry them until the 14th century. Until then, they

were the weapons of peasants. Daggers were also easier to hide and were

more often used for assassinations than the great long swords.

In the Muslim regions, swords had always been curved; they are known

to us as scimitars or sabers. They were sharp only along the outer curve of

Weapons

723

the blade and were used for slashing. They were used somewhat in Euro-

pean areas that had greater contact with Muslims, such as in the Byzantine

regions, and among the Huns who had migrated from Central Asia with sa-

bers. The Huns became westernized and stopped using sabers during most

of the Middle Ages.

Axes and Clubs

The Franks were named for the throwing ax they used when they ﬁ rst in-

vaded the Roman Empire. The Romans called the throwing ax a francisca.

The Franks also carried larger axes for ﬁ ghting at close range. These axes

must have been similar to what they used to cut wood and were about the

same size and shape as a full-sized modern ax.

Battle-axes were a main weapon for the Vikings who invaded England,

France, and Russia in the ninth century. The ax heads were not broad, and

they were forged to have a hole through the back so that a wooden handle

could be attached. By the 11th century, their axes blades were broader and

were known in Anglo-Saxon records as “Danish axes”—the largest kind.

During the Middle Ages, some knights used axes while on horseback.

The axes were not large and could be carried easily as an adjunct to other

weapons. By the close of the Middle Ages, these horsemen’s axes often had

a sharp pick on the other side.

Axes developed into longer and shorter variants. The long ones, pole-

axes, merged with spears. Another ax development was the war hammer,

which had a short shaft closer to the size of a modern hatchet. The war

hammer had a point on the end, a pick at the back, and a two-pronged

hammerhead.

The mace was a club, sometimes with a rounded end and sometimes

with short blades or prongs. A mace with sharp spikes could put a hole in a

knight’s armor, but it could also get stuck. However, there were maces with

sharp spikes all around an iron ball, and some maces had the ball attached

to a chain for greater force. Maces were knights’ weapons, although they

were less elegant and chivalrous than the sword.

Bows

The longbow was originally from Wales but was adopted as the national

weapon by the English during the Hundred Years’ War with France. Long-

bows had been the chief hunting weapon of early medieval Europe. They

became weapons of war during the 10th century. Hunters did not use

barbed arrowheads, but otherwise their bows were the same as those used

for war.

Longbows were sized to each individual archer and were around six

feet long. They were either straight or somewhat curved forward. They

Weapons

724

were most often made of yew wood, and the strings were hemp or ﬂ ax,

rubbed with beeswax. Arrows for a longbow were about three feet long.

The wooden shafts were made of aspen, ash, and other woods and were

carefully cured so that wetness in the wood would not cause warping. They

had forged-iron arrowheads, and different types were used for different

military purposes. Many arrowheads for war were barbed. Goose feathers

were glued and sewn onto the notched ends by professional arrow mak-

ers, called ﬂ etchers. Three rows of feathering, each six to eight inches long,

constituted typical ﬂ etching.

The secret of the longbow lay in the bowmen’s lifelong training to use the

weight of their bodies, not the strength of their arms, and to shoot quickly

and accurately without needing to take visual aim. Boys were trained with

small bows from the age of seven. A good archer could shoot a dozen ar-

rows in a minute, and all would hit their target, at 400 yards. Bowmen went

into battle with only helmets and swords, sometimes shields, and some-

times with less. Some bowmen fought in bare feet so that they could better

grip the ground. Because bowmen shot so fast, they needed to carry many

arrows into battle. At a rate of 12 arrows per minute, 60 arrows would only

provide ﬁ ve minutes of shooting.

In the Mediterranean and Byzantine regions, bows could have been

shorter and more like Roman bows. They were composite bows made

of several materials laminated together, perhaps wood strengthened with

bone. They were probably recurve bows, in which the wood curves away

from the archer and stores more tension than a single piece of wood that

has been bent into a longbow. Short bows were more useful for ﬁ ghting on

horseback, so they were also used by invading Mongols, Huns, and Turks.

The crossbow, also called the arbalest, had been used in Roman times,

and it continued to be used as a hunting weapon in some places. During

the 11th century, it appeared again as a weapon of war. The Bayeux Tapes-

try records crossbow use at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Although the

Normans used it in their conquest of the English, the crossbow was never

as popular in England as the native Welsh and English longbow. The cross-

bow was most popular in Germany and Italy, where it was used for hunting

as well as for military purposes. In some German and Italian cities, cross-

bowmen formed shooting guilds. After the 13th century, its use spread

north again; the crossbow began to be used by even the primitive warriors

of Scandinavia.

Crossbows were powerful, but slow, compared with the longbow. The

crossbow was often used by the defenders in a siege, since they could slowly

pick off attackers at a distance while staying out of sight behind a parapet.

Crossbows were made larger, and sometimes stationary, for siege defenses.

Personal, portable crossbows continued to be very numerous and were al-

ways being improved.

Weddings

725

The crossbow was a short, powerful bow mounted on straight wooden

stock with a tough bowstring pulled back and locked with a latch that had

a lever trigger under the stock. The bowman did not have to pull the string

and aim at the same time; he could span (load) the crossbow, take aim,

and ﬁ re a trigger when ready. The arrows were short and were called bolts.

They ﬁ t into a groove on the wooden stock in front of the bowstring. Early

crossbows required the user to put his feet on the bow and pull hard on the

string to put it into ﬁ ring position, and later crossbows added a stirrup to

the end to make this easier.

During the 12th century, crossbows were made with composite materials

such as horn, sinew, and wood. As crossbows became more powerful, they

required a mechanism to pull the bowstring back. At ﬁ rst, this was a hook

that required powerful body strength to use, but in the 14th century, cross-

bows used a windlass and ratchet to crank the bowstring into place.

See also: Armor, Gunpowder, Hunting, Knights, Sieges.

Further Reading

Clements, John. Medieval Swordsmanship: Illustrated Methods and Techniques.

Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1998.

Edge, David, and John Miles Paddock. Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight: An

Illustrated History of Medieval Weaponry. New York: Crescent Books, 1993.

Fliegel, Stephen. Arms and Armor. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art,

2008.

Nicolle, David. Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era, 1050–1350. 2 vols. Me-

chanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1999.

Nicolle, David. Medieval Warfare Source Book: Warfare in Western Christendom.

London: Brockhampton Press, 1999.

Oakeshott, Ewart. The Archaeology of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory

to the Age of Chivalry. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996.

Oakeshott, Ewart. A Knight and His Weapons. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour Edi-

tions, 1997.

Payne-Gallwey, Ralph. The Crossbow: Its Military and Sporting History, Construc-

tion, and Use. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007.

Pollington, Stephen. The English Warrior: From Earliest Times till 1066. Hock-

wold, UK: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2002.

Reinhardt, Hank. The Book of Swords. Riverdale, NY: Baen Publishing, 2009.

Weddings

European marriage customs differed less by region than by social class. All

across the continent, the aristocracy who owned land followed customs of

inheritance and family composition that were dramatically different from

the peasants and artisans of country and town. Aristocratic families needed

Weddings

726

public, legally defensible weddings because large amounts of land and au-

thority were at stake. Peasants and townspeople could form private mar-

riages since their property was sometimes not more than a few kitchen

utensils.

Marriage and Divorce

The heartland of Europe—France and Germany—was settled by the

Franks during the early Middle Ages. After the Franks converted to Christi-

anity, there was a long period when their marriage customs did not change

and were in conﬂ ict with Christian teaching in Rome. Frankish kings had

always been focused on producing an heir, whatever it took. They could be

polygamous, or they could have a legal wife and concubines. Frankish kings

could marry a pair of sisters, and some could have been in sexual relation-

ships with their own sisters. Divorce was easy; a Frankish noble just had to

repudiate a wife and send her home, and any reason would do: lack of chil-

dren, illness, misconduct, or just changing his mind.

The traditional Frankish wedding ceremony began with betrothal and

a formal agreement on terms of property transfers. The man gave the girl

a ring when this was concluded, and he gave the bride’s family a sum of

money—a token brideprice. The wedding consisted of giving the bride to

him with a public ceremony and feast, but we know little about the cere-

mony. The morning after the wedding, the man gave his bride an additional

sum, the “morning gift.” These gifts could be money or land. The custom

of the morning gift persisted until the 12th century, when new inheritance

laws made it impractical.

In Charlemagne’s time, both boys and girls married in their early teens.

However, even during that period, the normal age of marriage began to

shift later for men. The marriage age for girls went up from 12 to 15, and

some men were not married until their late 20s. This remained the average

in Europe through the Middle Ages.

The church in the early Middle Ages viewed divorce as a real fall from

the ideal of lifetime monogamy but did not forbid it. There were valid rea-

sons to divorce, and, in some cases, remarriage was permitted. Those who

divorced were given penances. Increasingly, as the church’s power grew,

not the secular nobles but the bishops ruled on contested divorce cases, and

they were less and less likely to uphold the divorce. Since wives were often

repudiated in an abuse of power by the husband, this protected the rights

of women to some extent.

When Charlemagne became the Pope’s military defender and was

crowned Holy Roman Emperor, it became important to force the Franks

to follow traditional Roman Catholic marriage customs. The church pro-

claimed stricter rules about marriage and divorce than they had previously

Weddings

727

enforced. No man could have more than one wife. That wife could not be

a relative closer than a cousin in the seventh degree. No divorce was per-

mitted, unless the wife had been grossly at fault, and that divorce must be

approved by the church. Charlemagne himself set an example of following

these rules. In his quest for heirs, he married ﬁ ve times, but never more

than one woman at once. He repudiated one wife before he was crowned

emperor, but he persevered as an example of ﬁ delity after that.

When the church made these rulings, there was a cultural mistake that

had grave results for centuries. Romans had counted degrees of relation-

ship differently from the Franks and other Germanic nations. In the Roman

system, a fourth-degree relative was a simple cousin; a seventh-degree rela-

tive would be a somewhat more distant cousin. But the Germanic method

of calculating relationship was different: a cousin was only a third-degree

relative, and a seventh-degree relative was anyone descended from the per-

son’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather. This degree of relationship

often included everyone in a village, as well as most of the aristocracy. The

church also barred people from marrying the widow of a blood relative or

someone related to a godparent.

These consanguinity rules were so restrictive that most people had to ig-

nore them, or else they would never marry. They provided a loophole for

marriages to be annulled when divorce was not permitted. King Louis VII

and Eleanor of Aquitaine had their marriage annulled after 15 years and

two daughters because they were related to the fourth degree. The truth

was that they had come to dislike and distrust each other, and Louis needed

a son. Once their marriage was annulled, Eleanor married Henry of Anjou,

who was related to her in the same degree as King Louis VII.

The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 rolled back the consanguinity laws

to forbid relatives of the fourth degree but permitted the ﬁ fth, sixth, and

seventh degrees to marry. It maintained other aspects of these laws, and

degrees of relationship continued to provide a means of annulment for the

rich and powerful. Medieval Popes usually granted these annulments.

Before the Second Lateran Council of 1139, many priests were married.

If a priest was elevated to a bishop, he was expected to set an example of

celibacy, like a monk. Bishops had to place their wives in convents. It was

not a period of strict enforcement, though. Some nobles and kings still had

concubines, and unmarried men often kept a concubine they did not plan

to marry. Since commoners could live together without any real ceremony

and be considered man and wife, it was unclear what it meant to have a

concubine. What rights did she have, when many legitimate wives did not

have wedding ceremonies?

Church law, trying to grapple with what legal status to give a man’s

concubine, ﬁ nally came to rest with the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

Private weddings were no longer to be legally upheld. Weddings must be

Weddings

728

public, and they must be preceded by a priest’s reading of the banns, the

statement on intention to wed. The banns must be read on two successive

Sundays, so anyone had time to object if the person was already married

or if they were too closely related. From this time on, medieval weddings

began to develop into a standard form all across Europe.

Difﬁ culties of Consent

The primary concerns in weddings were personal consent, proper wit-

nesses, and a proper distance of family relationship between the bride and

groom. The community could ensure witnesses to the degree of relation-

ship and to the ceremony itself. Ascertaining consent was more difﬁ cult. In

a proper ceremony, both individuals had to say, clearly, that they consented

to take the other person as a spouse. The two chief problems were child

marriages and family coercion, when one party was forced to give consent

that was not real.

Children of the aristocracy married much younger than commoners’

children. Parents were concerned about establishing the correct family al-

liance in case they suddenly died and left the task to a guardian. Betrothals

between small children took place, as did actual weddings; royal marriages

could involve infants. Even when the marriages were arranged as though

the individuals were adults, the girls were often no older than 13. It was not

possible for such young children to give real consent. When small children

were married, adults had to say the vows for them.

The church disapproved of child weddings, since the children could not

consent. There were cases of young people who had been betrothed or

married as small children but who refused to fulﬁ ll their obligation when

they were old enough. The church upheld their right to refuse consent

when they were of age. A general consensus developed in England, though

it was not applied to royalty, that there should be no betrothals of babies

under the age of seven. After the age of seven, betrothals could be con-

tracted by the families, but the wedding itself must wait until the young

people were fully of age to consent.

Commoners’ children were traditionally well into their teens and 20s be-

fore they married. By the late Middle Ages, most marriages took place be-

tween young adults in their 20s. However, coercion could be just as much of

a problem even when the property was relatively small. Many marriages were

still more about money than about love. Love came after, if the couple treated

each other well. Before the wedding, it was all about getting the best deal.

At the lowest level, even in the 13th century, English serfs who were

considered unfree had to pay a fee, called the merchet, when a daughter

married. The merchet was probably higher if the girl married a man outside

the lord’s manor, since he was losing a worker, so there was an incentive

Weddings

729

for the girl’s family to persuade her to choose someone else. The fee was

paid with goods such as chickens or bags of oats. A peasant girl’s dowry at

this time was her share of the inheritance and was usually household goods,

animals, clothing, and, less commonly, money.

Middle-class marriages involved complicated negotiations over property,

even if the property was not very valuable. Personal liking was a factor,

but it was not the biggest one. The man’s family was shopping for the best

dowry they could ﬁ nd; they might have low-level negotiations with more

than one girl’s family. A girl with few siblings could receive a larger share

of property and could make a better match. The families negotiated openly

and bluntly, raising their requests on each side as they bargained for the

present and future ﬁ nances of the couple.

Because social hierarchy was such a very important part of the medieval

world, young people often agreed with their parents’ interest in the ﬁ nan-

cial standing of the other families. If the young man or young woman did

not know any of the individuals under discussion, or had only met them

once, then the most exciting prospect of the match might be to live in a

stone house or to have ﬁ ve cows. These advantages promised solid beneﬁ ts

of health and friendship in the future; girls married into a station in life, and

this was the only moment of choice.

There were two halves to the negotiation, since both families were ex-

pected to contribute. The dower was the contribution of the man’s family,

Until well after the close of the Middle

Ages, a couple did not wear special

clothes to their wedding. They wore

the ﬁ nest clothes they had, but

expected the garments to be worn on

many later occasions. This folk painting

commemorates a medieval wedding in

Sweden. (Uppsala University

Collection, Sweden / Giraudon / The

Bridgeman Art Library)