“Arriving at his house, he took a knife and, taking his concubine, cut her
by its members into twelve parts
and sent to all the borders of Israel."
(Judges 19:29)
Museum collections of knightly armor and weapons. The topic of armor and edged weapons of the Tudor era aroused considerable interest among VO readers, and many spoke in favor of continuing the topic, so to speak, "auxiliary edged weapons" such as the dagger dagger. By the way, dag is nothing more than a derivative from the English dagger - "dagger", a word that is just pronounced like "dag". But here we got a little ahead of ourselves. Since it was the "Dagi" who appeared so dear to the hearts of many of our regulars, it was rather late.
But what came before them?
What, shall we say, did they finish off the commoners on the battlefield (what could be taken from them)? And the commoners, the "armed people", how did they finish off the knights, from whom they could not take a ransom according to their rank? And just today we will talk about such a weapon. And again, “our dear effigies” and artifacts from the Wallace Collection - the London museum about which (and the armor in which!) We have already talked about, the Royal Armory and (already traditionally) the Metropolitan Museum of Art - will help us to get to know him. Today we will talk about the daggers in their collections …
Well, let's start … with criticism. From the criticism of such a solid source as the book of Vendalen Beheim "Encyclopedia of Weapons". For years she regularly served the reader as a source of information, and suddenly - bang - practically at once outdated. That is, quite a lot has been written there about daggers - in the St. Petersburg edition of 1995 from pages 218 to 226. But we will not see either the system or the terminology adopted today on them. Everything is "heaped up". And it turns out that it is almost impossible to get any complete impression from these pages. So history, yes, is developing, and this development is bearing fruit.
Now you can actually talk about daggers. They are not mentioned in the Bible, only knives. They are also not always found on miniatures in manuscripts. Rather, let's say this: the dagger is depicted in the hand, but the scabbard on the belt is not visible from it.
Now let's turn to the effigies. And … we will see that the earliest of them do not have the slightest hint of daggers!
By now, in contrast to the era of Vendalen Beheim, the study of edged weapons of the Middle Ages has gone so far that we can systematize dagger samples by type and characteristic time of their use. So, it is believed that the first type of dagger, known since the beginning of the XIII century, was the quilon. Ephesus of Quilona completely repeated the hilt of the sword, that is, these daggers were, in fact, reduced in size swords. The name is believed to be associated with a characteristic crosshair and the same pommel. Most often, this dagger can be seen in miniatures of the "Bible of Matsievsky", and this time is 1230-1240. But their service life was very long!
But, be that as it may, the next effigy, already in England, received the dagger only in 1325!
The second was the baselard dagger, known from the end of the 13th century. Its name is believed to be related to the city of Basel in Switzerland. Daggers of this type had a recognizable shape, thanks to their handle: it resembled the letter "H". The blade had a diamond-shaped cross-section with two lobes.
In the collection of the Wallace Collection there is, by the way, a very long baselard that looks more like a sword. Why such a length? Here's why: city magistrates used to prohibit citizens from wearing swords. But daggers were allowed. This is how the townspeople tried to get around the law!
Since the first third of the 14th century, the dagger of the beams has been spreading in Europe. And this is what Sir William de Gorgues is armed with. It differed from all the other unusual shapes by the handle and not even by the handle itself, but by its crosshair, from which it got its rough name "dagger with eggs", although in the Victorian era a more decent name was invented for it: "kidney dagger".
It is believed that it was very popular and was used from the 14th to the 16th century by all segments of the population. And in Scotland, where time passed especially slowly, it persisted in the 16th century.
It is believed that the traditional Scottish dirk (remember, it was also used by General Monk, who was kidnapped by D'Artagnan for the restoration of King Charles II in the novel "The Viscount de Bragelon") originated precisely from the ballock, which can be clearly seen if you compare their photographs.
This concludes our today's story. But this topic itself will certainly continue.
