The Falchion or Malchus, the rarest medieval sword

[J.G.Elmslie]

Originally Posted by Swordfish

The description Templars Falchion is pure nonsense! The inlaid cross is a simple cross potent, which can be found on dozens of sword blades and pommels.

Agreed.
I'd have used a phrase significantly more offensive than "nonsense" myself. But then I am scottish.

But that's what the Reichsstadtmuseum Rothenburg one now has attributed to it on the information card beside it...
(edit: And I've love to know where/who the idea that it identified it as such came from. and then slap them round the back of the head!)

Originally Posted by Swordfish

Falchions have not been so rare as you believe, see the dozens of depictions in illuminated manuscripts.

Hundreds of medieval European swords in not excavated condition exist in Museums or private collections. Why should there be no Falchions?

I'm under no illusions on the rarity or lack thereof - As part of my own work, I went through almost 3,000 manuscript illuminations, noting how many were applicable to the research: I found a little over 180 of those to contain depictions of falchions, unidentifiable messer forms, or what could potentially be single-edged swords that were of falchion form.

Given that there was a slightly raised incidence of depiction of Goliath bearing a falchion among biblical or devotional illumination was a fairly common motif among those manuscripts, I'd say it was acceptable to say that a conservative estimate of incidence of depiction of the falchion ocurred in at least 1 in 20 manuscript images.

Not common, but certainly not rare.

Why should there be so few falchions in museums and collections today, if that ratio were accurate, is one of the real puzzles which I've been trying to look at and work out what's happened. What in the falchion's nature has made it less likely to survive, not just in terms of finely preserved specimens, but in terms of the archaeological record? Much like the munitions harness, it is horribly under-represented in the archaeological record, and therefore we need to look at working out what the cause for that is.

That's a question that needs to be looked at in a great deal more detail.

Originally Posted by Swordfish

The blade of #3 has no fuller and is never too thick, the weight of the whole sword is 1.19 kg, which is relatively light for a sword with such a broad blade.The thickness of the blade of the Conyers Falchion is extremely thin. Nearly every sword blade I know has at least a thickness of ab.3 mm(not measured on corroded ones) at the center of percussion. A back edge is by no means unusual, see the attached photo with a blade without fuller and a back edge.

The fact that three swords originate from the same source does not indicates that these are fakes.

About 20 or mores words from the Alexandria Arsenal are known in western collections, many of them like peas in a pod, Oakeshott said. Are these therefore fakes?

As I have pointed out in my last post, examining a sword on the basis of photos or specific dimensions is useless without having examined it in reality. Not only theory is essential, but experience, experience!

As pointed out before, Falchion #3 is in the collection of an experienced collector of medieval arms and armour (all not excavated,except a few very early ones) who`s advice is asked around the world. If he is not able to discriminate genuine swords from fakes, no one would be able!

Best

Regarding the attached photo, that one has rather puzzled me - after all, for a production date of 1480, it features a falchion of a type that fell out of fashion the better part of 150, maybe even 180 years earlier. its a fascinating depiction.

Regarding #3, I have a dozen examples that spring to mind immediately that are much thinner than 3mm, some corroded, some not, including a pair of examples marked from alexandria (in the care of Dean Castle, the former collectin of Howard De Walden), whose distal profiles were quite astounding to me. So I'd say that is no proof whatsoever one way or the other...

If it is indeed in the hands of a collector who is so experienced, the immediate question is, is this collector infalliable? Has he never made a mistake? I cant help but wonder what the opinion of that collector is on the odds of three samples all coming from one source, and particularly if he has any doubts about not only the one in his collection, but the other two. If you can show me one expert in any field who's never made an error, I'll show you an expert who's not done much work in thier lives. No-one should be afraid of making fools of ourselves by making errors, particularly in a field where such judgements are one of opinion. (and lets face it, by querying these three, I'm more than likely the one making the error! ).

If #3 is absolutely watertight, on the weight of opinion of one individual, then that still leaves #2 and #1 open to debate. Furthermore, what are the opinions of other experts? is one person's opinion utterly infalliable and enough? I've handled enough swords in "records of the medieval sword" and been able to spot mistakes Oakeshott made. I've handled bits in glasgow museums and been able to spot that Tobias Capwell made a mistake in the cataloguing numbers in "The Real Fighting Stuff", for instance...
We all make mistakes by being human.

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That said, I'm in absolute agreement, that to consider the provenance by photograph alone is entirely insufficient.

But we have little record if its previous owners, its auction history, which collections it has passed through over time. Were #2 and #3 paired together 80-odd years ago by a collector? Were they paired together 90 years ago by an auction house and then sold together? Which auction house? Were they in the armoury of a castle, much as the Churburg harnesses were? did they just appear in the catalogues of a collector? We all know the story of the words of Louis Marcy in Paris, after all, and his workmanship still continues to appear in museums, auctions and collections - and often identified as genuine items.

I dont know the details of origin. I'm fairly sure you dont have them. Who does? Anyone?
Without this data to hand, we cannot even begin to make assumptions on origin of each one in turn. It is solely speculation, with no more academic worth than the Reichsstadtmuseum's 'templer'[sic] attibutation.

We have no metalurgical analysis of blade or cross; nor do I expect we ever will get such a destructive analysis.

we have no x-ray studies of these items, we have no neutron diffraction study of them, we have no carbon-dating of the organic components.

we have virtually no actual evidence to corroborate their likely date.

All we do have are photos that link it to a set of remarkably similar-proportioned items, in a field where finding one is rare enough. and all in excellent condition.
and those co-incidences just seem a little to good to be true.


Regarding the Alexandria swords - or the Castillon swords, for that matter - I do not doubt them, because their provenance is well-recorded. and while many are findamentally simiar, there's enough difference between them to make the clear distinctions. in the alexandria swords, a great many of them can be traced back not just through their inscriptions, but through photographic evidence of their storage in alexandria when they came to the attention of collectors.

on the other hand if an identical alexandria or castillon sword arrived on my doorstep with absolutely no provenance attached to it... I'd be selling it fast, before any troublesome bugger like me starts asking where it came from, and the price dropped!