A Kampfschwert from the 15th century – a reinterpretation of the so called ‘Teutonic estoc’ from the Princes Czartoryski Collection in Cracow, Poland

Abstract

The paper aims at reinterpreting the so called ‘Teutonic estoc’ (inventory number: MNK XIV-49) from the Czartoryski Princes Collection, Cracow, Poland. Due to the weapon’s unusual construction it has been necessary to draw up precise documentation - written, drawn and photographic. It has been supplemented with research in historical sources and scholarly literature on the subject. The results obtained indicate that the researched weapon is not a typical estoc. It seems that it is a specialized anti-armour sword (Kampfschwert in German) designed for fighting against a heavy armoured opponent in judicial combat. If this conclusion were correct, the ‘Teutonic estoc’ from Cracow would be the only known artefact of this kind to have survived from the Middle Ages. In order to falsify this hypothesis the artefact’s authenticity has been examined. An analysis of Royal Inventory records spanning from the year 1475 to 1792 and younger remarks about the researched weapon in press, private letters and scholarly literature has been conducted and briefly reported hereby. Its results seem to indicate that it is not a hoax.

Affordances theory as an operational framework for interpretation of past material culture and practices. Praxiography of things, bodies, and motions

“…In the 18 th century, it was moved from the Royal Treasury of the Kingdom of Poland to an art collection assembled by the Duchess Izabela Czartoryska. Currently it is held and exhibited as a deposit by the Armoury of the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków, Poland (Talaga, 2013). This artefact has been subjected to various interpretations over the last several decades and raised much controversy, especially in the 1950s through 1970s (Talaga, 2013, pp.…”

“…The choice had initially been made in order to examine how Heft's "latent structure" composed of affordances "which the world supplies" (Heft, 2001, p. 30) was used by material culture scholars, even if unbeknownst to them, to craft hypotheses about past materiality and practices and claim validity of their interpretations, and it was only later that its broader theoretical implications became apparent (more on this in the conclusion). It also ensures that this examination is not one-sided, since the selected studies approach the problem of reconstruction in three distinct waysreverse engineering based on a partially preserved physical artefact (Freeth et al, 2006), exploration of a kinaesthetic potential of a physical artefact (Talaga, 2013), and a performative reconstruction of a physical bodily motion from a historical written account (Talaga, 2018). Of course, as "praxiography is on the one side very easy" (Bueger, 2014, p. 388), 1 all the above-mentioned works, with a partial exception of the third, could be successfully conducted without relying on any particular theory of practice (knowing).…”