[Ansteorra] Rapier question

[Jay Rudin]

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