I'm looking for resources on the right kind of dagger a communal northern italian foot soldier or urban knight could carry and fight with.

I'm actually forging one for myself with the help of a part time smith, so I would like to build a corect historical example, with special regard to balance.

Any help will be appreciated

I also have read here that daggers did not start to be worn in addition to the sword until the early 1300s.

Brian M

Great!

I will have the freedom to build a renaissance dagger for myself, while sporting it on my hunting trips!

Actually I love renaissance arms and armor more than any other but in my area the only re-enactment company focuses on the XII century.

To allow for some speculation:
I would think that a decentant of the seax would be appropriate. The Longobards were strong in Italy and they used sturdy seaxes.
In the 13th C we see single edged daggers with thick backs and narrow pointy triangular blades.

Going backwards from this (anf this is very speculative) we could imagine a narrow dirk shaped seax, perhaps.
I would assume the grip would basically be a knife shaped grip. It can be made plain or rather elaborate, but I don´t think you would see much in the way of pommel and guard.
The blade would probably be thick in the back, perhaps some 6-8 mm with a cros section that would be triangular.
You could add a narrow grove along the back.
The blade could possibly be patternwelded, as knife blades and spear heads continued to be patternwelded after that swords were being made with other methods.
The scabbard would enclose most of the grip and could have bronze clips to seal the "seam". If that feels too much like migration era, you could go with a sewn seam and tooled leaherwork in 12th C style (either geometric or floral).

This is just speculation, as I have not seen any 12th C Italian daggers/knives that I am aware of. The weapon I described would along the lines of plausibility.
In the 13th C we have clearly dedicated daggers that are different from hunting knives/utility knives or seaxes. These first daggers are normaly sinlge edged. What the situation was in the preceding century I am not so sure.

Thank for the suggestion Peter but pattern - welding is way out of my present capabilities ....

I'm just starting to make some blades for fun in my spare time so I guess I have a lot of polenta to eat (as we say in Northern Italy) before becoming a pattern - welder!

Anyway, I have found some illustartions in the Maciejowsky bible that I could like, such daggers are from 1250 while we are portaayng infantry soldiers at the time of the Lega Lombarda's battle of Legnano, which occurred A.D. 1175, seven decades before the maciejowsky knights.

I have found a wealth of daggers in the Maciejowsky bible as the website www.medievaltymes.com provides a complete webedition of the Maciejowsky bible.

I suggest everybody interested in this thread should visit the website, which is pic intensive, minding to type in the browser's addres bar the word tymes instead of times , so it will be medievaltymes .

Here I have made a link with an already made google search of that website that will yeld the right pages where dagger images are present



LINK