[J.D. Crawford]

There is an interesting sword drawn in Figure 49 of Oakeshott's Sword in the Age of Chivalry (see below). It is said to be drawn from original art in 'The Gospels of Otto III' and depict the beheading of John the Baptist. Does anyone have the original image?

Its interesting to me because of:

- the two piece pommel - maybe intentionally anachronistic to look like 'biblical times' (the original art dates to 998).
- otherwise the long Ia cross and wide blade are consistent with other swords drawn in the book
- except, the fuller is drawn to be very narrow, which could make this an early depiction of a type XIa (assuming the drawing is accurate to the original art and the original art is an accurate depiction of a real weapon, which seems to be the case for other art in the book).

Again, would be nice to see the original art but I can't find it on-line.

-JD

[Mart Shearer]

That would be BSB Clm 4453, which has yet to be fully digitized. Clm 4452 and 4454 are available as an example of the style, but not much use for your specific search:
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0008/bsb00087481/images/
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00...index.html

[Luka Borscak]

In my opinion, the artist wanted to picture a type Y sword. It is the right period for them and the looks are right, he maybe just missed a bit of the concavity of the pommel... They even have the line separating "upper guard" and pommel. Maybe some of them are even two piece.

[J.D. Crawford]