Obviously i have to eat a lot of bread before i have your guys knowledge on weaponry and all i can do is trusting the lines i have at hand or what i can read out there.
Through deep controversy i discern a difference between two hand swords and great swords (montantes in portuguese), admiting that the great sword was an evolution of the two hander.
I can read in more than one source that the montante was 'popularized' much after the middle ages, this not impeaching that two hand swords were eventually used before, even considering that middle age warriors fought with a shield, therefore with only one hand free for the sword or other device; that with the increased use of solid armour the shield became obsolete and from then the more generalized appearance of the two hander and the later great sword. Montantes were well in use when our nobles fought in the discoveries period (1500's). Obviously they used these things for first dismantling enemy troops formation, before unsheathing the current sword for close combat.
But speaking of authencity when comes to miths envolving a determined weapon having belonged to a certain King or hero, let me tell you this one.
We have in exhibition in the Oporto Millitary Museum, after after having being transferred from a rather prestiged museum in the same city, the sword alledgely owned by King Dom Afonso Henriques, the first Portuguese monarch (1128-1185).
It happens that a couple of serious specialists do not have any doubt in assuring that the sword belongs to a typology used at a much later stage and, assuming that it had actually belonged to a Portuguese monarch, which seems to be consensualy accepted, that would be Dom Afonso V (1438-1481).
This evidence was naturally brought to the consideration of the authorities, from whom no action was taken towards deying the false pretension that the sword belonge to our first King, apparently in order not to dismantle a mith that has been cultivated for so long, thus not facing general frustration.
Period.
Fernando
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