Crossbow analysis
The Sensfelder article about the Sagittarius crossbow
In late 2003, Jens Sensfelder, a German expert for medieval arms, wrote a short analysis about the crossbow depicted on the Sagittarius page f73v of the VM. It never really got published, AFAIK, but the analysis is of interest, because it gives us some hints about a possible dating of the VM.
The link below guides you to Nick Pelling’s site, where you will find the analysis in full length.
[...] For a detailled discussion of the crossbow itself, see Jens Sensfelder’s analysis! [...]
[...] opposed to previous suggestions (and opposed to what I insisted upon earlier), it might well be that the Sagittarius in fact is not [...]
Hi again. Sorry to keep butting in, but after reading the link to the crossbow article above I felt that the ‘analysis’ is too ‘close up’. What I mean is, whoever wrote and drew the Vms was not an artist, that is obvious from the quality of the drawings, so to look so close up at the drawings, at the very fine details,to hope to date what is drawn seems a bit overdone- the guy ( or gal ) just wanted to depict a crossbow to convey the idea of ‘Sagittarius’ or whatever he had in mind, I really don’t think he was interested in creating a ‘photo’. It seems a bit like getting a plumber to do a rough drawing of his job to convey a concept to someone else and then say, well they’re not copper pipes because copper pipes would be shinier!!
Hi Michelle,
I agree with you partly. One shouldn’t overemphasize the design of the crossbow drawn, especially considering that it’s less than an inch or so across. OTOH, probably the artists didn’t mean to draw one particular crossbow, but the “archetypical” crossbow per se of his time. So even this sketch will probably give us at least a hint of the date of them VM, much like a machine gun with a drum magazine would enable us to tentatively date a picture to the first half of the 20th century.
OTOH, Jens’ dating and the find of this costume seem to support each other and are in agreement with the Carbon dating.