According to the note in the Cronicon of Valladolid, this sword was sent to Enrique IV. of Castile by Calixtus III., to encourage him to fight unremittingly against the Moors. The ornamentation has gone; but we may judge of its richness and artistic value by the sketch of it in the Inventory of the alcazars of Segovia: it says—”.... A sword, all gilded, nearly to the last third section, with large letters in each portion, and the mark consists of seven spots on a small shield; the pommel, the hilt, and cross are all of gilded acucharado silver, and in the middle of the pommel are the words Calistus Papa Tercio; the sheath of gilded silver, engraved with evergreen oak-leaves and acorns, has four round enamels on the middle portion; on one is St. Peter with a cross in his hand, in a ship, and on each of the other two (sic) is a coloured cross and four small ones; the rim is enamelled with coats of arms of the Pope, and a shield with an ox in each quarter and some blue letters ..., &c. This work of art was by the artificer of Zaragoza, Antonio Pérez de las Cellas, established in Rome, who worked almost exclusively for Calixtus III. during his brief pontificate.” (Muntz, Les arts à la cour des Papes.)
The name falsaguarda, or dummy guard, was given, in an Inventory of arms of the sixteenth century, to the two small pieces or wings on the blades of broadswords, a third of the way from the guard, where the grooving on the blade ends.
These, of course, were presentation swords. The blade (G24), which is traditionally ascribed to the Conde de Haro, of Juan II.’s reign, is gilded and engraved at the upper end, the design representing on one side the Annunciation, on the other, St. John in the Desert. It has a groove down its entire length, and is diamond-pointed. The sword (G23—plate 11) is of similar make, and is engraved in Gothic character on a field of gold with texts, which, translated, run as follows:
THE LORD IS MY HELP; I WILL NOT FEAR WHAT MAN CAN DO UNTO ME, AND I WILL DESPISE MY ENEMIES; SUPERIOR TO THEM, I WILL OVERTHROW THEM. On a circle, part of verse 8, chapter xviii. of the Gospel of St. John: IF YE THEREFORE SEEK ME, LET THESE GO THEIR WAY, BUT JESUS PASSED THROUGH (the midst of them), and also in the centre, MARY VIRGIN. In another circle, part of the anthem of the Purification of Our Lady: MAKE ME WORTHY TO PRAISE THEE, BLESSED BE THE SWEET VIRGIN MARY, and, in the centre, the monogram of Jesus Christ.
The guard consists of an iron crosspiece with traces of gold: the guard curved towards the blade and twisted at the ends; circular pommel with two faces with a cavity (round) in the centre, which was frequently incrusted with the shield of arms of the owner.
The two-handed sword was introduced in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The Armoury contains a specimen (G15—plate 10) belonging to the first half of the latter era. It comes from Mallorca. The blade is almond-shaped, metre 0.990 long, by 0.038 broad; it has a long ricasso, counter-guard (falsaguarda), and three grooves. The guard is of copper, once gilded, with quillons drooping very slightly; the grip, of corded wood, covered with leather; the pommel pear-shaped and facetted.
Before the century was three-quarters gone, complete suits of plate-armour were worn in Castile, though the hauberk was still retained, in some cases, as an additional defence. The powerful and ambitious Juan Pacheco, Marques de Villena and Grandmaster of St. James, who died in the same year as his sovereign Enrique IV. (1474), is shown (plate 12) wearing, in addition to the pieces which had now become a regular part of the harness, espaliers in five pieces, and tassets or armour for the hips, of five pieces, in the graceful oak-leaf pattern, which endured till the time of Charles V. The opening between the tassets is defended by the skirt of the hauberk, worn beneath the cuirass. That piece, and the vambraces, are exquisitely chiselled with floral designs. The armour of Don Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Conde de Tendilla, who died five years after Villena, is very similar. His coudes are very large, chased, and set with gilt studs round the borders.
We have now reached the beginning of the most glorious and prosperous epoch in the history of Spain. The chivalric spirit, which had been sedulously fostered in the nation during the two preceding reigns, in the age of the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabel, found its genuine and loftiest expression in enterprises of supreme national importance. This was essentially a martial age—the era of the Conquest of Granada and of the Discovery and Subjugation of the New World. Everything connected with the profession of arms became the subject of close study and a matter for improvement. Farseeing men might have predicted, even as early as the taking of Granada, that the armourer’s craft was a doomed industry. Considering the productions of its latest ages, we might be tempted to impute its extinction to its having reached a point beyond which progress was impossible—where the artificer saw that all attempts to improve on existing models must be vain.
An interesting relic of this period is the sword (G13) which the Conde de Valencia thinks may be safely ascribed to Ferdinand the Catholic (plate 10). The blade is rigid, of rhomboidal section, and without ricasso; the crosspiece is of gilded iron, very plain; velvet-bound grip; the pommel is pear-shaped and facetted. “Like nearly all the swords for the saddle-bow of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which were fastened by the scabbard to the front bow of the man-at-arms’ saddle, this blade has a hilt of the kind then called ‘a hand and a half,’ because its length allowed of its being used with one or both hands without disturbing the equilibrium necessary for the proper handling of the weapon.”—Valencia, Catálogo.
G1 (plate 11) is the Ceremonial Sword of Ferdinand and Isabel. The blade is metre 1.070 long by 0.050 broad, almond-shaped, and without ricasso. The crossguard is of gilded and engraved iron, the ends of the arms cusped. On the cusps are the inscriptions TANTO MONTA[F] and MEMENTO MEI O MATER DEI MEI. The grip is wire-bound and covered with red velvet. The pommel is disc-like and cut and perforated into a cruciform device; it bears on one side the yoke, the emblem of Ferdinand, on the other, the sheaf of arrows, the emblem of Isabel.