[Ansteorra] Rapier question
Jay Rudin
rudin at ev1.net
Tue Jun 16 06:54:30 PDT 2009
Albin asked:
> The rapier is a rennaisance weapon, this I know. But does anyone know
> when the medieval sword changed into the rapier? And what the early
> rapiers may have looked like?
The medieval sword didn't "change into" the rapier, any more than radios
turned into television. Television became the dominant medium, but radios
are still here. Similarly, thinner, longer swords intended to thrust first
and cut second started developing when fighting unarmored foes became more
common.
But the "medieval sword" didn't go away. In the 1590s, George Silver
published a book trying to convince the English people that the short sword
was superior to the new, fancy Italian rapier -- akin to trying to tell the
American people to buy American and stop getting imported sports cars.
What did the early rapiers look at? Well, I can tell you what swords
looked like a various times, but what's a "rapier"? For the purpose of SCA
fencing, we assume a late 16th century blade, but the people actually using
them had very different swords that they called "rapiers", so there's no
clear idea of what sword is or isn't a rapier. In fact, one author these
days has decided that it's not a rapier unless it's a seventeenth century
blade with no edge. He thereby concludes that all the blades for which the
term "rapier" was coined, and which were made as rapiers, sold as rapiers
and used as rapiers, weren't "true" rapiers and thus don't "count".
So what an early rapier looked like is a linguistic question more than a
metallurgical one.
You are asking, not about a specific moment of revolutionary change, but
about a long evolution. The best answer will not come from a single post,
or even a five-minute google search. Get a book on the history of the
sword, and plan to spend serious time at it. Somebody in your local group
might have some books to show you. (Serena and I hold Open Library at our
house once a month for that purpose.)
Or grab a Don or cadet at an event (after the tourney) and ask. Bring
beer.
Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin
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