Do we know why cruciform hilts dominated the hilt style for so many centuries in medieval western Europe? There are ways to better protect the hand (e.g. side rings on German bastard swords).

If I were to guess, I would say that hand protection was necessary for the primary battle weapons (lance, poleaxe, etc.), so when the sword was drawn the hand was already sufficiently guarded. But this is pure speculation on my part.

Perhaps a number of factors... Armored gauntlets, ease/expense of making a simple guard, fashion, shield/buckler provided ample protection for style of fighting, simple cruciform provided adequate protection.,

Use of shield for defence, use of sword as a secondary weapon, gauntlets when first longswords appeared...

It's easy to wear - the sword is flat, with no big bulky basket, or sticking-out side-rings. The protection is not as good, but the main point of the cross isn't static protection of the hand. A long cross (as opposed to a stubby Viking or Roman style guard) restricts opposing weapons more. For example, sword parries spear, spear does a little disengage around the guard and hand, and then thrusts into the body. A long cross means that the spear has to travel further and take longer to do this.

I think there were likely religious reasons for the popularity of the shape too. The cross is an obvious symbol of Christianity, which played a much larger role in people's lives back then (for the most part). I would think the symbolism was more important for the earlier swords of this type than the later.

The simple cross piece is perfectly suited towards how a longsword is/was used.

Considering how often you change grips while executing techniques (such as the thumb grip and putting your index finger over the cross) more complex hilts would be a hinderance pretty often.

The cross is also not a static defense, but an active useful part of the sword. Hitting with it, binds while winding, reversing to use it like a hammer are easier with a simple cross.

There's also balance issues,. Complex hilts can add up the weight towards the hilt pretty quickly and away from the blade and a good cutting presence. Not an insurmountable problem, but a cross is simpler to account for. I 'm pretty sure that the move towards more thrust capable swords and development of complex hilts wasn't just about better protection, but that there was more you could add when you were looking for a balance close to the hand. That Renaissance two-handed swords kept simpler crosses seems to bear this out.

Finally, I usually find that people under-estimate the defensive capabilities of the cross piece, usually because they don't appreciate how you defend yourself with one. Simply interposing your sword as a block is a quick way to get fingers hit and start thinking that the hilt is inadequate. But, when you add in stepping, turning the sword while executing beats, winding, voiding, and proper use of the Master Cuts the simple cross easily becomes very adequate protection.

This is an opinion from a fair amount of personal training and sparring with one so I hope its from knowing what I am doing (slightly). But if we look at training manuscripts from the time ( I33, Talhoffer, etc.) We see them training with bare hands seems pretty common, so I think its safe to assume these reasons and more made sense to them back then too.

Heck, considering that simple guards are pretty ubiquitous the world and ages over(such as the katana's tsuba and the Chinese 'cup' guards), maybe a better question should be, why did Europeans switch their guards.

i also believed that gauntlets had a good part to play in the development of compound hilt styles. with a fully armored hand are rings necessary?

if anyone here remembers the attic fire video last year of Peter Johnson and the Secret Seal, there was a ton of good stuff mentioned there about the symbol of the sword - not just the cruciform pattern - but also the harmony of design and symmetry that artists/ craftsman stride for during the time period.

was the sword made in reflection to the christian symbol, possibly, but there's no positive proof of this. the Christian cross in itself was not a popular or even accepted symbol of the faith until the first crusade. so if you look at sword styles before this, if there is an abundance of cruciform swords before this time, then i would say that it is much more likely that the cruciform sword was adopted as a christian symbol - not made to represent a christian symbol.

the cross and the sword seem to go hand and hand, almost like the people who held them. there are period writings of the conflicted nature or men and women from this period of their faith vs. their duty as knight or 'lord'. the people had a double meaning almost like their swords.

Personally, I doubt gauntlets had much to do with the persistence of the cruciform cross, mainly because it would suppose that the sword was only being carried into fully kitted out battle, which isn't the case. And I severely doubt that swords men would routinely carry their gauntlets with them just in case they had to use their sword to protect their hands from their inadequately protective sword guards. It doesn't make sense.

Also, consider that the medieval people were not stupid. Gauntlets are not all that easy to construct, but adding a bar or two to create a simple basket hilt? Well with the abilities of smiths already constructing much harder things like swords. But they didn't. And their customers didn't seem to be asking for them, even though their lives depended on it.

So the most likely conclusion is that the cross was protection enough for proper use of medieval swords. Certainly forces like tradition and inertia played a part in the simple cross' s longevity, but they wouldn't have kept an ineffective design around if it didn't work.

I don't think having the idea to build a complex hilt is nearly as easy as we figure now. As all innovations, when you look at it after the fact it seems logical and obvious...

Ben, although it's possible to use the cross effectively for defence, a slightly more complex hilt such as this one provides much more protection and even more ways to manipulate and hinder the enemy's blade, without being a significant hindrance to grip transitions. With a simple cross, if a blade slides towards your hand along your flat it's often necessary to rotate the hilt to get protection, or even to retract the grip backwards. With a complex hilt, you can just push right through. Any defensive move you can do with a simple cross is also possible with a complex hilt, but it gives more room for errors and even more ways to defend. Just as you observe of the simple cross, its usefulness goes far beyond the obvious.

It seems that as soon as the complex hilt started to develop, nearly all sword forms adopted it. Two-handed, one-handed, cutting, thrusting, single-edged, double-edged... Even on daggers. I think it demonstrates the usefulness of it. There is a tendency to look at swords of a given period as necessarily ideal for the context of the day. I don't think it's true, and I don't think a medieval man would have shunned a later complex-hilted sword if he had come across it.

I certainly wouldn't fancy fighting without a complex hilt if I have the choice, just like I don't think you'd fight without a cross on your longsword...

Regards,

But if a simple ring is so much better, or heck even a little flange coming out, why was it not adopted on longswords even sooner when we know messers had them concurrently ( ie the fecthbooks of Liechtenauer)?

No, it make no sense that something that was fundamentally inadequate would exist for so long in the highly Darwinesque process of fighting when it could be solved relatively easily.

But, if we accept that the methods of fighting had changed which made more complex guards necessary, such as a switch to more thrusting techniques, then we have a more adequate explanation as to why they changed. A longsword is not a rapier or cut-and-thrust and was used differently and each is well constructed for how they are to be used. And I am okay with that.

I'd rather go with an explanation that doesn't include the idea that a culture was fundamentally stupid for half a millenia, especially given the lack of complex hilts across the world even in advanced sword cultures (the katana's tsuba comes to mind).

Relatively sure that Crusaders, Hundred Year War campaigners, and all the other participants in the vast amounts of conflicts in and around those times gave their swords quite the workout. Something fundamentally flawed wouldn't be kept, so the cruciform must have been pretty effective.

I completely agree with you that none of these guard forms is necessarily better than any others. They all reflect how the sword was too be used, cultural norms, and preferences of the wielder. But the original question included a reference to how suposedly inadequate cross couldn't protect the hand, and replies later about them using gauntlets to compensate reflects this basic idea that medieval European swords were inadequate somehow. I'd like to see this idea go away and it seems that first we need to get rid of the idea there was something wrong with them instead of being well designed for their purpose.

And patas are really cool...

As for adequacy of the cruciform guard, I have plenty of swords with no guard. Some of them, many of them, are excellent swords. Yes, the hand is more vulnerable. So don't let the other guy hit you in the hand!

This includes swords from the Philippines, Indonesia, Borneo, SE Asia, Caucasus, Tibet, Afghanistan, Balkans, Turkey, China, and Africa, and replicas of swords from Korea and Japan. And some no-guard fantasy swords which appear, in principle, quite functional and adequate. I have more swords with no guards than swords with complex guards.

If there was something inadequate about cruciform guards, the abundance of no-guard swords would be very mysterious. But, as has been said up-thread, some types of fighting with swords require (or greatly benefit from) complex guards, rather than swords requiring complex guards to be useful.

This also suggests that the long cruciform guard is actually designed to do something that teeny-tiny guards and no-guards don't do. As I suggested above, they're good for stopping quick disengages. Clements discussed the function of the cross at length in Medieval Swordsmanship (though he suggested that the main function is hand protection against impact with shields). If it doesn't actually do anything, all it does is give the enemy more opportunity to disarm, and make it more likely for the sword to snag on clothing.

Using a simple cross-guard, I do get hit on the hand in sparring (and often it's on a spot where my gloves under-protect - ouch!). Not so often, and I would hit the opponent far, far more often in legs, arms, body, or head. Often enough, I will spar with no guard, and I don't get hit excessively in the hands. When I err, my opponent will hit me in my hands (if he/she can). Trains me to do better in the future. Personally, I like knucklebows, especially for sparring, but they're far from necessary.

I wonder if it was a bit of bravado. Look at motorcycle helmets. Clearly it is safer to wear one than not, even more comfortable if you consider bugs and road debris, but some states don't require them, and some riders take the opportunity to go helmet less. Why? It's less "manly" to wear a helmet. Maybe if you were seen with a complex hilt on your weapon it would show a lack of confidence in your skills.

There is an interesting bit about hilts in Girard Thibault's treatise (1628), Table II p.5:

Quote:

...What should be the form of the guard, about which are brought daily so many new inventions and with so little foundation, as if its make was just to serve as ornament of the person, rather than being useful in time of necessity. Some make crooked or curved branches; the pommels big, round, flat on the top; yet others like baskets around the handle; all this to demonstrate I know not what courage, or rather cowardice, as says the Spanish proverb, Cargado de hierro, cargado de miedo [loaded with iron, full of fear].

So there is some truth to what Matthew just said, and this attitude of disdain towards all these protections that do not rely on skill must have existed before. After all, at some point people chose to duel without armour, which is clearly not done for reasons of safety. Thibault still recommends a rather complex hilt (this form), and not a single cross, but that attitude that the new inventions are unnecessary must have existed before. Thibault's hilt form is at least 50 years old at the time he is writing...

Quote:

I severely doubt that. Smiths just throwing ideas out there about how swords should be and the swordsmen struggling to figure out how to incorporate these new features in? Considering that it is very much like it was in the early days of modern HEMA where smiths who built knives and never even seen an actual historic sword were trying to tell us how swords were supposed to work. It didn't usually work too well. Now were smiths and cutlers experimenting? Certainly, but probably in adapting what customers were asking for into real life. It would fit what we know about human nature and the basic evolutionary trends we see in swords.

What I'm saying is that what customers probably asked for (i.e. more protection for the hand against cuts) had practical consequences that the customers did not foresee (i.e. increased viability of point forward positions, further possibilities to manipulate the opposing blade), and that fencing schools needed time to fully realize the potential.

But let's agree to disagree. As I said most of my own practical experience is without a guard at all. Yet the few times I have handled a complex hilt I saw the benefits immediately. Even a simple ring on a parrying dagger probably saved my fingers twice in a short time span, at no practical cost at all.

Regards,