Komanche O_o
Será en Octubre
- Desde
- 1 Jul 2014
- Mensajes
- 69.833
- Reputación
- 77.477
The Curious Case of the Weapon that Didn’t Exist | The Public Medievalist
Just about everybody interested in the Middle Ages, who has played Dungeons and Dragons, or read historical and fantasy novels knows what a military flail is. It’s one of these:
A one-handed military flail (modern reproduction)
A military flail is a medieval weapon consisting of a short handle attached to a chain, at the end of which is a metal ball. This is not to be confused with a two-handed variant, often also called a flail, which derives from the threshing implement of the same name. Varieties of the one-handed version have multiple chains or spiked heads. They have appeared in a range of medieval movies and books, and they are held in the collections of museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Only problem is: they never existed.
Despite the weapon’s popularity in pop cultural depictions of the Middle Ages, the flail was almost certainly an invention of the imaginations of later people.
But, of course, it’s much harder to prove a negative- that something did not exist – than something did. Military Historians Kelly DeVries and Robert Douglas Smith demur on the question in their book Medieval Military Technology:
Let’s look at the evidence.
Firstly, as a weapon of war, the flail is not a good design. The element that makes a flail unique—its chain—is the biggest drawback. The chain and swinging ball make this theoretical weapon extremely difficult to control. In a tightly packed formation, a swinging weapon would be as likely to brain your fellow soldiers as it would your enemies. If it were to rebound, say off a shield or even a successful strike, it would be likely to hit you. God help you if you miss, and hit yourself or the thing flies out of your hand.
And in terms of physics, the swing certainly gives the metal ball a higher speed than the head of, say, a similar mace. However, the mace, being rigid, allows the fighter to ***ow through the swing with their whole body. Any ***ow-through with a flail would just make the potentially disastrous rebound hit you even harder. Also, the chain is a weak point that could break or be broken by your enemy, or find itself wrapped around their sword, or the handle of a larger weapon.
“But wait,” you may ask, “what about those flails at the Met that you just mentioned?” This is where the story gets interesting. My working hypothesis is that all the flails at the Met, and those in similar collections occasionally found elsewhere in the world, are, as Warner asserted so bluntly, fakes.
I call this a hypothesis because I have not (and likely will never) examine every single one. And, the possibility that fakes can exist in museum collection sets many curators’ teeth on edge. The art world has acknowledged (and even occasionally celebrated) the fakes in their museum collections for decades now. But history museums have been far slower, generally quietly correcting their catalogues rather than taking this particular bull by its horns. To their credit, due to the questions over their provenance the Met no longer displays their flails in the museum.
I looked at the Met’s flails with the help of Dr. Nickolas Dupras, an expert in medieval arms and armour.
This one, Dr. Dupras, says, takes its form from a horsewhip (a “goad”) instead of a military weapon.
Military Flail, 15th century (?)
German, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of William H. Riggs, 1913 (14.25.1366)
“The chains look relatively flimsy,” Dr. Dupras said, “these three-ball flails are based on manuscript illustrations depicting early ‘cat-o-nines’ or whips, also depicted as instruments of torture in Passion and martyrdom illustrations.” It’s important to note as well that a real goad would have been made of wood and rope—why this one, a copy of the form, is made of steel is unclear.
The next one in the Met’s collection is very different, with very fine workmanship.
Military Flail, ca. 1500 (?) German, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1904 (04.3.48)
Just about everybody interested in the Middle Ages, who has played Dungeons and Dragons, or read historical and fantasy novels knows what a military flail is. It’s one of these:
A military flail is a medieval weapon consisting of a short handle attached to a chain, at the end of which is a metal ball. This is not to be confused with a two-handed variant, often also called a flail, which derives from the threshing implement of the same name. Varieties of the one-handed version have multiple chains or spiked heads. They have appeared in a range of medieval movies and books, and they are held in the collections of museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Only problem is: they never existed.
Despite the weapon’s popularity in pop cultural depictions of the Middle Ages, the flail was almost certainly an invention of the imaginations of later people.
But, of course, it’s much harder to prove a negative- that something did not exist – than something did. Military Historians Kelly DeVries and Robert Douglas Smith demur on the question in their book Medieval Military Technology:
Philip Warner, writing in 1968 in his Sieges of the Middle Ages was more blunt, calling all existing examples of this weapon “fakes.”
Let’s look at the evidence.
Firstly, as a weapon of war, the flail is not a good design. The element that makes a flail unique—its chain—is the biggest drawback. The chain and swinging ball make this theoretical weapon extremely difficult to control. In a tightly packed formation, a swinging weapon would be as likely to brain your fellow soldiers as it would your enemies. If it were to rebound, say off a shield or even a successful strike, it would be likely to hit you. God help you if you miss, and hit yourself or the thing flies out of your hand.
And in terms of physics, the swing certainly gives the metal ball a higher speed than the head of, say, a similar mace. However, the mace, being rigid, allows the fighter to ***ow through the swing with their whole body. Any ***ow-through with a flail would just make the potentially disastrous rebound hit you even harder. Also, the chain is a weak point that could break or be broken by your enemy, or find itself wrapped around their sword, or the handle of a larger weapon.
“But wait,” you may ask, “what about those flails at the Met that you just mentioned?” This is where the story gets interesting. My working hypothesis is that all the flails at the Met, and those in similar collections occasionally found elsewhere in the world, are, as Warner asserted so bluntly, fakes.
I call this a hypothesis because I have not (and likely will never) examine every single one. And, the possibility that fakes can exist in museum collection sets many curators’ teeth on edge. The art world has acknowledged (and even occasionally celebrated) the fakes in their museum collections for decades now. But history museums have been far slower, generally quietly correcting their catalogues rather than taking this particular bull by its horns. To their credit, due to the questions over their provenance the Met no longer displays their flails in the museum.
I looked at the Met’s flails with the help of Dr. Nickolas Dupras, an expert in medieval arms and armour.
This one, Dr. Dupras, says, takes its form from a horsewhip (a “goad”) instead of a military weapon.
Military Flail, 15th century (?)
German, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of William H. Riggs, 1913 (14.25.1366)
“The chains look relatively flimsy,” Dr. Dupras said, “these three-ball flails are based on manuscript illustrations depicting early ‘cat-o-nines’ or whips, also depicted as instruments of torture in Passion and martyrdom illustrations.” It’s important to note as well that a real goad would have been made of wood and rope—why this one, a copy of the form, is made of steel is unclear.
The next one in the Met’s collection is very different, with very fine workmanship.
Military Flail, ca. 1500 (?) German, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1904 (04.3.48)
