The Renaissance EDC! Cinquedea Short Swords with Royal Armouries Curator Iason Tzouriadis

I was recently at the Royal Armouries in Leeds in the UK with the curator of European edge weapons Yassin Souriadis and so I had the rare opportunity to talk to him about Cinque Terre which is particularly appropriate because the new replica collaboration between the Royal Armouries, me and Windlass, is now available for pre-order. Links down below, check out those links down there. So let's see this interview and find out more about the amazing late 15th and early 16th century Italian short sword family known as the Cinque Terre. Hi folks, Matt Eaton here of Scottleg Gladiatorium. Now I'm at the Royal Armouries with Yassin Souriadis. Hello Matt, I am the curator of European edge weapons here at the Royal Armouries in Leeds and I'm glad to be joining you with these amazing weapons that we have here. Yeah so we've been doing some filming today which you either will have seen or will in the future see the outputs from and we've been looking at the replicas that we have been working on together with Windlass, so Royal Armouries, Windlass and me and these are the three swords which are the first three swords from the second batch. Now we've decided to take this opportunity to make a couple of extra videos for my channel on some topics that we didn't cover in the videos for the Royal Armouries. So first up we're going to be looking at the Cinque Terre. So this is the new replica Cinque Terre from Windlass and the Royal Armouries and this is the original that it's based on. So first up Yassin, you are a fan of Cinque Terre aren't you? I am, I love them, I do love them Matt. Yeah so how did you get interested in them and what have you done and what have you discovered about them? I'm not entirely sure how I first got interested in them. I think it's because of certain excellent examples that are wonderfully decorated often you know they have all these incredible etchings and engravings and even guild decorations on them. I always liked them aesthetically and I found them a bit absurd as a shape it does not conform to what you usually expect from late medieval and early modern swords and there was something really weird and attractive about them. I ended up doing research on and off on them and unfortunately there's very few things that have been done about them scholarly. Yeah so they're absolutely characteristic aren't they? They don't really look particularly like anything else. So for those of you who don't know the Cinque Terre is called that because... Well it was anachronistically called that because of possibly because of the allusion to Cinque Diti, the five fingers in Italian, which refers to the width of the blade at its base. However the term is anachronistic. Most mentions of that are from quite a bit later from the period of the heyday of the Cinque Terre which is the sort of late 15th early 16th century but we can talk about its dating and the dating of the group in general more if you'd like to. Yeah so just before we move away from the name for these so the name Cinque Terre is essentially a modern name for it? Later, not just modern like you do find in sources but they're not from the first half of the 16th century. So we don't know what they called this? No like I think we speculate based on descriptions of other things in their context that terms such as sword or blade or even dagger would be used for something like this and the same is applicable for many other weapon categories of the periods because nowadays we care more about typologies and terminologies in order to discuss things and we like because of how our brains work we want to put things into boxes but historically somebody who would use this I don't think that they would care about if you'd call this a sword the same thing with something larger if you call you know in the 15th century a longsword, two-handed sword, hand and a half sword interchangeable terms people would know what do you mean even if you call it a sword if you went to a maker and you describe what he wanted I want like one of this type and you described it that I think that would be the way historically forward. Cool and you know I guess like with all historical research you and other people are continually finding new sources finding new things it's possible we might find some names for these that yes or maybe there are names that have been used that we don't necessarily realize yet that they're referring to these we don't. And imagine now that as well like in the in the conversation for Modern Arms and Armour we're conducting this discussion in English and then we also alluded to this with the Italian known name so you have to consider the typology and terminology in several languages a in the original context of the use and also in the modern context yeah so you get and I think swords are not that bad for it I think notoriously staff weapons are the absolute worst for this yes but it is something to bear in mind and in the name that we attach to something we need to understand that it's more important for us discussing them today but for historical reasons it's interesting to see maybe the variety with which people refer to an object and it might be more than one word. But in the modern world Cinque Terre so you might not have known about this type of sword before or maybe you've seen them in museums and didn't know what they were called but hopefully you now are completely clear that we refer to this as a Cinque Terre but it probably was known by various other names during the period. Now so who was using these and when and where? Well let's start with the when and the where because that's sort of easier I think isn't it? Yeah yeah the where I think predominantly swords of the type originate in Italy and I think specifically in central and particularly northern Italy. The when is a bit trickier we can go into why northern Italy a bit later if you'd like to but the when we can look into it based on pictorial evidence frescoes, paintings, some sculptures, some sketches and illuminations of manuscripts. Now I think the hardest thing is first how willing are we from a scholarly perspective to go as to when we define a Cinque Terre as a Cinque Terre. So you're holding this object so what makes a Cinque Terre a Cinque Terre? And it is that very broad blade that meets to the end to a rather mostly acute point and sometimes it like it tapers suddenly. Yeah that triangle essentially and a very broad blade. And also straight edges I'd never really thought about that before but they they never have curved edges do they? That's true yeah yeah I'd never even thought about that before but many triangular shaped blades do have bowed out edges but the Cinque Terre is always straight thinking about it. I think we have exceptions to we have at least one in the collection but I think you're right again you cannot define a group from its exceptions yeah you always have exceptions but I think as a rule of thumb yeah yeah they have straight edges. But then also of course there's the hilt which is very very characteristic. That is the other thing that is worth going into later which is this very sculptural handle you can see in the original and replicated wonderfully in the Windlass replica which is very like there are variations in it into into shape but I think a common denominator in Cinque Terre is this multitude and combination of different shapes you get as well as decorative elements. Now for the dating the if we we keep these two things the some hugely complicated handle and the triangular blade I think we can trace swords like this all the way back to the 13th century. I think these earlier examples are a bit a bit of a stretch to culture in Codares or to place exactly the same group but they are I think definitely a precursor to this. Relatives as I've told you before like I don't like the idea of evolution yeah this this has been perpetuated by scholars like that have been very influential in the study of Amsterdam or like Bashford Dean that created these amazing sort of family trees of weapons that they go in a very linear fashion this comes from that this comes from that but yeah this this parallel development of these as well and so I think these early and 13th century swords definitely form this this form and as we've discussed behind the cameras and on another video before as you suggested these might have also been influenced and they might allude to a Roman past a more Italian past and that's why that's another reason they develop in Italy. The answer is we cannot know however it is I do not think it's a coincidence that the Hay Day also coincides with that incredible surge in art and classicism in art in northern Italy you know what is what conventionally we know as the Italian renaissance which lasts for much longer than it does in the rest of Europe really yeah one of one of the weird just on that topic one of the weird things I find about the design of this hilt which to me sort of seems like it sprung from nowhere but as you point out it might have you know ancestors which which survived but the weird thing is that you would expect northern Italians to hark back to a Roman past and therefore to emulate a gladius and yet I think they had a look like and it doesn't look like this and the weird thing is that actually in the ancient or yeah in the ancient world the closest parallels to this are actually in certain Celtic and even Middle Eastern like even Hittite type designs of hilt that aren't particularly associated with the Italians so I find it a real mystery well again like I think you're right and the the coincidence and coexistence of all of these types and technological choices I guess I think more than often is it does not have to do with with influence but people coming to the same solution and designs by necessity or because simply something works very well I do find it interesting and I do not have a clear answer to this and I think it is one of the reasons where we can highlight why more research is needed on them yeah to go back into the dating and to bring it to these specific examples because these are from the early 16th century yeah um the earlier objects that we can definitely define as string but it's not appearing in the 14th century and and usually they they go back to the idea of who used them like you you asked we find them on representations of soldiers there's a couple of depictions of the crucifixion that you occasionally see Roman soldiers but Romans are depicted with usually their contemporaneous equipment of the period so not necessarily classic stuff yeah um cinquedeas as represented in the 14th century in the early 15th century they often have proportionally because again iconography is not a photograph um has a more acute triangular shape and possibly a shorter blade yeah so it's close closer to a broad I don't know if we can call it a big maybe we can call it a big yeah uh but I mean it should be pointed out for viewers that this is a pretty large cinquedea yeah most cinquedea are not quite as long as this yeah like you get you get like you definitely have a spectrum you have some that are longer but they are an abnormality and some are like approximately like this that long and maybe some even shorter from the same period and we're talking about variations in the same period in the it ties in with all the reasons I like these and we've spoken about this before um whereas you see this in in the iconography of military context in the 15th century like all the way to the end of the century from the late 15th in the in the early 16th century you see these represented in iconography that relate is related to a martial non-military context so with civilians um or even the martial elite by a civilian context uh wearing them um now why this happens I cannot answer like others might be able to other students of these might be able to and Italy has some amazing scholars that have looked into these more um and I am trying to make their research more accessible but my speculation on this has to do with the size of the blade because it lends itself as a shape as a size both the blade and the scabbard as a canvas to to demonstrate both decorative techniques and various decorative motifs so in the Royal Irish Collection we have examples I don't know if you want to put any links of these I can send you the links um examples of Cinque Terre's with incredibly etched engraved ends or gilts designs along the blades or with even more complex fullers on this um we can talk about a bit later but this one has three fullers merging into two later on yeah but we do have a very popular design of 16th century Cinque Terre's where on the base it has five or even seven fullers and then progressing into less and less like five into three into two into one yeah so the fuller itself becomes part of the design and it is it still serves the function of making the blade lighter and stiffer but at the same time is decorating it with a shape of it the other thing is that the decorative sculptural handle of the Cinque Terre even when sheathed even when an object does not have that amount of heavy decoration on it it can act as a sort of demonstration of of sculptural elegance because you can see this the form of this it's it's absolutely wonderful it's very subtle it has both curves and angles and they're blended all wonderfully together and you can see this in the replica as well where of course the missing material from here with time have been smoothened out and you can see this and it's a very elegant object in general and this ties in with the various aspects of decoration that you would have on the handle in the case of this the hollow rivets that hold together the the two plates on the tang are decorated with these like motifs i don't know how this geometric yeah you describe them nearly architectural yes they kind of look like church windows yeah they do they really do they're a bit like mosaic pins found in modern they are modern knife making yeah yeah and but you do have Cinque Terre from the same period again from the early 16th century that decorated either with precious stones or even some coins that we briefly discussed behind the cameras as well and the coins are particularly interesting because we have sources that talk about the replacement of precious stones in the 16th century with coins so somebody plucks out the the stone inserts a coin and in our discussion and i think that's an interesting thing that i hadn't really considered as a duality the coins inserted in some cases are ancient the roman and some others they are contemporary to the sword um but that use of an ancient coin plays back to that idea of identity and allusion yeah to something older that we do have a parallel there don't we that some wheel pommels have a have a coin inserted in them uh you know there's a couple of famous italian examples which have old coins inserted in the wheel yeah um so yeah i i am um discussing this and the reproduction of both the handle and the fullers in this replica i as i i know i'm biased with this but i i was impressed seeing this um and the other thing that um it's worth mentioning as well that we've seen the replica about about the construction of these things uh has to do with the structure of the of the whole sword together where the quillons are made of two sandwiched um pieces yeah so the shoulders of the blade can be seen um i don't know we can do a close-up later the shoulders can be seen out here uh projecting uh right at the at the base of the quillons and this of course have been bound and um polished together yeah so it's a very interesting uh almost box-like construction for that um cross guard um so i don't even want me to round up like the the question because that was a very long winded answer so uh possibly most likely um early 14th century into the 15th century into a full this form reaching and becoming a thing into the 16th century so this form as you're used to seeing it is really an end of the 15th yeah into the early 16th century so and what about 1490 through to about 1540 something like that yeah i would say so and then and then the origin i would say uh without a doubt uh very popular in northern and north central italy but they were used and exported in other places as well we know that that's england buys things from northern italy at the time um so we're not entirely sure when when this arrived in in britain however the the maker it was from northern italy um now if if as a shape originated in northern italy i would say most likely yeah and who as to who used them i think initially they are again based on pictorial evidence uh uh military professionals and and uh soldiers as suggested by the iconography but this representation is expanded in the 16th century and is definitely used in civic context as well so a couple of things that um came to my mind which we didn't discuss in in the other video we did um is that it's it seems possible to me that these originally and we lack the data to know this for sure but it's possible that they were associated with a more localized group or area in italy in a similar way to how the navaja knife was associated with the basques or how that's human or how the basilard was associated with the swiss sometimes referred to as the swiss dagger well debatably the whole bone type um and possibly that source that that kind of data is just not available to us at the moment so so the way i sort of wonder how this fully evolved health form came out is possibly it did evolve in a particular little place and then suddenly got popular and that's why it suddenly appeared everywhere fully formed and then got unfashionable again and disappeared again but you know it's just an idea you're touching on one of my absolute favorite subjects when it comes on llama which has to do with how we tie an object in specific in this case a piece of weaponry to the identity of um of a localized group is i find this fascinating and and um we have examples of polaxes of halberds of certain knives as you say within our hands on uh that are linked to certain groups with the katz belga the katz belga of course yeah um that are very strongly associated with identity and the expression of certain forms of either uh nationalism in certain cases or or the formation of later national identity in the 19th century or even a particular military group like the landscape or the uh schiavona um in venice yeah i mean if you're going to do an episode on the schiavona at some point like this is something i also find it has many parallels in the study and the lack of evidence with its inquiry there they're both sorts that they appear in so many collections we have so many excellent examples and there's so little work on them well maybe the watchers would like to see a replica of the schiavona if you do want to see that then get posting down below and we'll see we've already got one so um for me like i i cannot i cannot know if this was if this originated in a specific part or if it was associated with a group but the closest thing to to this i can offer um is uh uh makers uh the the known makers uh or rather certain known makers and workshops that also decorated uh cinco des um we know they were from uh northern italy from breccia or from milan um and um and breccia of course has in the modern world is famous for like i think beretta is based in brussia they're famous for guns but originally brussia was famous for armor for swords for everything to do with the arms industry but even in the modern world they're still making firearms yeah and and um uh it's interesting as well the same workshops uh i i had worked on an article recently on one of our partisans and i i went this rabbit hole of looking to uh into marks and workshops from northern italy because the partisan was from northern italy and i found that uh i uh identified three specific workshops that what they made uh i mean they could have made other stuff as well but they've made a lot of partisans and a lot of cinco des um and the same they collaborate with the same uh um uh goldsmiths that decorated the um so it's interesting to see this and and of course um when you see the blades of the cinco des uh until somebody until somebody points out is it oh this looks like a partisan but then oh it becomes suddenly obvious yeah of course the same people would make both partisans and cinco des and and you you told me that earlier and it was a kind of mind-blown moment because it's like i have never looked at a cinco de because the the grips are so characteristic they kind of dominate how you see them but if you just now look at the blade and even the shape of the guard it looks like a winged yeah it looks like a partisan so so it's we often talk about partisans and glaives as being like a sword on a stick where you could reverse that you could say this is a partisan without the stick on the handle and and uh just to tie this all together which because i think it becomes more interesting like specifically the mark on on on which i think we replicated on the on the replica as well the maker's mark yeah well we can debate if that's a maker's mark or or a city mark or an expo mark sure but we we do find this in um uh partisans that we know they were from northern italy because they were part uh or because of the decoration and the style um so it tie it definitely ties in uh as a subject from various angles and we have an example uh in the in the collection that you can you can see here in the royal armories of um of a blade of a partisan that the bottom bit has been cut and ground and fitted into it really yeah oh but it looks a bit shoddy you know it doesn't look very very good yeah yeah but you can see how it's been repurposed and and and the time has been drawn from the bottom um it almost makes me wonder because these Cinque Terre do seem to come out of nowhere you know they have ancestors but in this form they seem to come out of nowhere at the late 15th century it almost makes me wonder if there could have been like a partisan maker who had a surplus of blades somewhere in italy and just kind of went i'll just mount i'll just mount helps on these things and sell them and everyone went wow in the year 1490 and everyone went i want one of those a partisan on a on a hill i mean because i've been the other way around as well yeah absolutely maybe at some point because the the partisan is also a complicated subject because it's it's form changes so uh the early 15th century and the late 14th century partisans are very different to the 16th century and they don't all have the yeah yeah and you know but i i mean just really to say that sometimes these things which are lost to history you know sometimes one maker or one town deciding to do a certain thing it can have these ripple effects that go out and if we don't have the written source or the you know archaeological evidence to show it that we just will never know what i also i also find interesting and i find this uh humbling in the sense that it often makes me feel like an idiot you know you we talk about all these things that we do not know and suddenly you'll meet a colleague or or an or an art collector in a random part of the world and they'll say no no no you're full of it right now we know exactly what that is here's the evidence they're like oh cool yeah yeah but i think it's a but we're all here to learn yeah exactly exactly you know maybe maybe someone out there there's some italian source which talks about these things the the closest thing that i found to sources from the early 16th century and again it might be interesting to some of your viewers the closest thing i found to a source because we do not have specifically a fight book talking about these um sources of the period do not refer to them by name so we don't know exactly where they are however um one of my favorite type of sources are coroner reports oh right yes yeah uh because and it doesn't mean necessarily that somebody was killed by them but when there's an an incident usually in a city and italian cities have incredible archives incredible archives uh you get a mention of um of the weapon that was used or a description even of the weapon that was used in a violent crime yeah and you get a description of of sword with broad blade yeah and i can easily like see how something like this um is associated with a crime in let's say in florence when when they talk about uh a broad blade that took somebody's hand yeah yeah yeah um you know we get we've got the london coroner's records from the 14th century for example and um all the way through to the 17th century and very often actually our best information for uh colloquial period names for specific you know whether it's a type of back sword they'll often say the name and then they'll say which is the type of short sword or whatever yeah so they're incredibly useful sources um i think to wrap it up what are your thoughts on the use regarding your question i cannot claim martial expertise um and as much as i like historical european martial arts uh i i do not want to uh step on other people's toes in that regard however um what i can offer is based on um studying the relevant iconography um from my knowledge from what i've seen and i can i again we cannot be certain because i can only say about you know we have all this amount of art on the subject which is not great really no um there's not a lot of there's a lot of it no like like we cannot exclude um the combinings with anything else however to my knowledge this is not really shown consistently with anything else and is used as it is shown even the early depiction of soldiers is shown as a as a is depicted as a as a sidearm yes um and as we've discussed in in the other video we're shooting like this was you see in in earlier and even depictions from the 16th century worn um uh straight down across uh against the buttocks of a soldier or right in the middle rarely on the side as well um and we discussed a bit as to why would that that would happen because you would probably get in the way if somebody used a staff weapon with it um but even in depictions where you see it with uh in a civic context you still do not really see it used like hanging with a buckler or or even with a dagger uh but i guess sometimes you see with a shorter dagger but that is because that is an accoutrement that everybody was that you would always wear in any case so for me wearing it with one does not really um allude to the use combining it could be yeah but we cannot know um so as far as i recall all of the art where i've seen these shown the person either only has that or they have a polearm yeah um and so for me i think the place that this probably occupies is similar to a katzberger in that the person's primary weapon is a firearm a crossbow a pike a halberd yeah it's a 200 the sidearm the edge weapon sidearm and and in that point of view so much similar to a some short falchions and hangers as well it's an incredibly convenient and you know easy to wear object it's got a hilt which is not going to get easily caught on things and and get in the way it's a nice length um and it's quick to pull out and and um on the on the note of practicality because we we discussed that a bit earlier as well um before this video um when i first saw these when i told you that this might sort of pique my interest um we would like i would see these as a weird sculptural thing that look it looks very unwieldy and and if you try and hold it with a hammer grip that just gets in the way like it feels weird um and for me it's a very um it's a good example of often our modern brain of wanting to use things in in a manner that are comfortable to us or that we're familiar familiar with yeah whereas um once you start playing around with a grip and and using the the fingers different positions or like with the with a thumb up here um and start applying your fingers in non-natural positions it suddenly becomes very anatomic and and and very uh nice the grip even i would i would even say nicer to a to a straight grip um i don't know i i can also be completely wrong and this might be well it's all about experimentation isn't it and it's very likely that in period not everybody gripped them the same way and you know a lot of people make a lot of assertions about viking era hilts but my opinion looking at the art and experimenting with myself is that probably 20 different people had 20 different ways of holding them and having said that they're actually quite those with completely straight grips or or flared out ones and there's some with a with a pommel yeah yeah um i mean some people when they've got grips that confuse them uh go to putting the finger over the the front guard but you you can't really i mean i won't say you can't do it but it's not conducive for a couple of reasons one because the blade is so broad by the time you've stretched your finger that far you've only got the very end of the finger around it but secondly these are all pretty much sharp down to the base of the blade they don't have a ricasso or anything like that so it would be a kind of crazy thing to do but what i did notice is if you put the bottom three fingers around the grip here you can actually put one finger up or indeed if you hold it like a messer you can put your thumb up on the inside here and it's entirely possible that they were gripping them somewhat like a like a german lackmaster i have no idea it's all conjecture anyway yeah it's interesting it's interesting to experiment with yeah that you know these are fascinating weapons and i'm really glad that they're finally getting a bit more attention uh after sitting in cabinets um for all of my life and a lot longer um but you know they are somewhat obscure weapons but there are quite a lot of them around in collections uh and they've got quite a lot of variation and they're a very interesting period of history when the italian martial classes were fighting against various of their neighbors and internally in the internal city sort of wars in italy and against people like the ottomans um and various other people around so very interesting uh weapon at a very very interesting time and finally uh we've now recreated one uh based on this example this wonderful sword in the royal armories um and that is now available essentially if you want to add one to your collection anyway yes and thank you so much for sharing your experience and knowledge thank you great finally having i've wanted to get you on the channel for a long time so finally we managed it and um yeah hopefully you've enjoyed this video if you'd like to see more from yes and of course you can see more on the royal armories um youtube channel which i'll link down below but if you want to see him on here again then give us a thumbs up and comment down below but thank you yes and thank you for watching cheers folks