Effectiveness of Medieval weapons

[Mike W.]

Various scenes in the Maciejowski Bible depict people being hacked apart. In this one particular scene (my favorite I might add) a guy is being cut in half and another is having his head cut open. I'm assuming this is merely an artistic representation of battle, but it makes me wonder if a sword in the right hands could really hew a spangenhelm, or cleave a man in chainmail.

[Sir Wolf]

i dunno........ sir edward i think has one, who wants to wear a helmet and lets try this out....

[Sir James A]

Nope and nope.

I do have a junk 16 gauge mild helmet I'm going to show how effective a mace / war hammer / pollaxe is on, with video, at some point this summer.

But steel won't cut through steel unless it's a fabled anime katana.

[Ian]

Most of the crazy feats of strength and martial prowess in illuminations are depicting heroes and biblical characters.  So just like today when we depict superheroes doing things not possible, they were most likely doing the same thing, showing a hero or villain in a story doing something a normal person knows to be the stuff of heroic fantasy.

A lot of these things have been tested out to various levels of accuracy and the general consensus is armor is very effective.  Don't expect to ever cleave a helmet in twain or cut someone clean in half (especially through maille and padded armor). 

[Sir Wolf]

hm that is a good point Sir Ian.

I have exerts from my 6th great grandmother's diary that stated that her husband split the drunkard land lord in half with a shillelagh after the guy had shot into the house killing my grandfather's brother and shooting her in the arm.... what would that mean? lol

[Stanislaw]

I agree with Ian's sentiments here.

Even though a lot of helms made these days are made thicker for reenactment battles, you still wouldn't be able to cleave through 16 or 18 gauge steel, let alone maille.

[Sir James A]

hm that is a good point Sir Ian.

I have exerts from my 6th great grandmother's diary that stated that her husband split the drunkard land lord in half with a shillelagh after the guy had shot into the house killing my grandfather's brother and shooting her in the arm.... what would that mean? lol

Sounds like more than the land lord was drunk

[Sir Nate]

I agree with Sir Ian.

[Sir Edward]

We also have to remember that descriptions can be highly exaggerated in general, and it's possible that some artwork might follow a similar pattern to make a clear point.

For instance, if someone were hit in the head with a sword, right in the middle, it might be described as being "split in half" even if the sword only penetrated an inch or two. Linguistic exaggeration I suspect has been common throughout human history.

[Stanislaw]

A short scientific video on the "cleaving" of steel and iron:

[Aiden of Oreland]

Well, these also may have been drawn by people who don't know what actual war looks like and only knows of the stories and has seen other pictures.

[Mike W.]

I love how the artist chose to illustrate the intestines spilling out. They just don't illustrate Bibles today like they used to.

[Ian]

Disembowelment is my fav

[Sir Wolf]

never ever eeeeeeeeeever an epic war....... unless theres impalement. there has to be impalement or its crap

[Aiden of Oreland]

never ever eeeeeeeeeever an epic war....... unless theres impalement. there has to be impalement or its crap

Other wise it looks like an SCA battle