Patrick Kelly wrote: | ||
We shall simply agree to disagree on that point. |
The problem is that we don't have any good surviving examples from the 11th-12th C, so all we have to go on is the art. Now, by the late 13th we have a few good examples with chapes (the Turin St. M, the sword of King Sancho IV, the Sword of Infante Fernando).
We also do have some examples from the 10th C, but for the most part these seem to show that the chape was not in use in late Anglo-Saxon England or Carolingian Europe. (The chape did continue to be used in Scandinavia.)
So some point between the Carolingian period and 13th C, chapes came back into fashion. If artistic representations can be used as a guide, it seems to be a slow process and they are not ubiquitous in 12th C yet.
For citation purposes see:
Leather and Leatherworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York, by Mould, Carlisle, and Cameron
Entwicklung des Schwertes im Mittelalter, by Alfred Geibig