Yes, PanMan, I think it comes from exhausting all possible angles of a given subject… for example, The Lord of the Rings. Ooops, was that blasphemy?
Tar Elenion, thanks for clarifying NOI. Being somewhat internet forum illiterate, I was wondering what that meant.
Records of the Medieval Sword is on my bookshelf as well, along with
Sword in The Age of Chivalry. These are important books for those who collect swords (or like me, collect historical re-constructions) or are just interested in the history of the sword. Oakeshott takes up the discussion where Jan Peterson’s typology of the Viking sword left off. Most useful is Mr. Oakeshott’s typology of the European medieval sword, a rough guide designed to help the collector and historian identify a sword according to time and place. The typology, in a woefully abridged manner, can be found at the
Oakeshott Institute's webpage.
Your enthusiasm, One Axe, is commendable, and I’m always delighted to share with those who have this particular enthusiasm.
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Tch... I find your view a touch romantic. For the most part, swords are just great big knives that you can stab people with. *sniff* Weapons of war. If they'd had guns, they'd have used them instead.
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True, if they did, they would, but they didn’t. That really misses the point, anyway. The sword will always be an indelible symbol of something for which our modern world strives, something that on the surface is a weapon of war, but contains layers of meaning built upon by generations of men and women who envisioned a set of ideals that were both utilitarian and transcendental.
It’s so interesting how many of my students have come to be interested in European medieval history via JRR Tolkien, a path I had taken myself a long time ago. The enthusiasm for Tolkien’s vision of a world governed by principles of chivalry embodied by characters such as Aragorn and Boromir, and an otherworldly wisdom embodied by characters such as Gandalf inevitably draws people to that mysterious world of medieval Europe. It was no accident that Tolkien placed his mythology in a quasi-medieval world.
Norman F. Cantor, in his
The Making of the Middle Ages devotes many pages to the Oxford Fantasist, such as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They were inspired by the work of a previous generation of medievalists, such as the groundbreaker of Harvard, Charles H. Haskins, who were beginning to dispel the myth that the medieval world was simply a middle time between the two great ages of western progress, the Classical and the Italian Renaissance and “Enlightenment”. Instead of Gibbon’s vision of drudgery and stagnation, the Oxford Fantasists were able to appreciate medieval man’s noble visions, his technological marvels, and a continuity of enlightenment and progress from the Classical period that was now being analyzed more critically and honestly. The Oxford Fantasists, instead of former opinions of darkness, superstition and bent backs over plows before the feudal lord with whip in hand, read depictions of May Day festivals, the carnival atmosphere of the fairs, the pageantry of the tournament, the erudite and exhaustive accomplishments of medieval philosophers and theologians, the cross-cultural diffusion of ideas and trade, and the dignity medieval people instinctively gave to both men and women. In other words, the Dark Ages were much less dark.
Tolkien’s depiction of the Shire, while no doubt inspired in large part by his own rustic roots, contains more than a little appreciation for turn of the century medievalists who were delving enthusiastically into the daily lives of medieval peasants, discovering that they, far from being mere chattel, were men and women living, working, playing and loving with as much contentment and suffering as peoples of other times and places.
More poignant, is Tolkien’s portrayal of Aragorn. He is the embodiment of, to use the words of William Caxton in his preface to the
Le Morte D’Arthur: “Doo after the good and leve the evyl, and it shal bryng you to good fame and renommee.” Doing after the good was the principle precept of the man of arms according to a code that made the ideal of honor from below reciprocated by benevolence from above.
This principle precept, most of the time called chivalry, is portrayed by moderns as a comedic relic of a backward past, a minstrel’s fancy. This is unfortunate. Medieval chivalry, the actual notion as espoused by those who attempted to live by it, hinges on the notion that the welfare of man is man’s responsibility, especially those of means, who lived with sword in hand, not poor houses, church charities or systems of institutional welfare. So indelibly is the mark of our western heritage hinged on medieval Europe, that the symbol for this lofty vision will always be the sword.
So, how about them swords? An enthusiasm for swords and medieval martial arts, inspired by Tolkien or Lewis, is more than just whimsical romanticism. It’s a symbol of taking up one’s responsibilities to one’s fellows in a dangerous world. Like many medieval men and women, no doubt, we will fail in many ways to live up to this notion, but at least we can strive for a life of doing after the good.