The Pope banning crossbows, the first recorded "Nerfing" of a weapon.

I hope some producer at the BBC gives Lindybeige a 6 part series on historical weaponry.

That ending snippet was brilliant

Ive always thought crossbows looked kind of pretty. I also think the a-10 looks pretty. I guess i just like things that look functional and sturdy

Back when I was seven or eight years old I used the same trigger mechanism principle to make an elastic band speargun out of Lego. I didn't, however, use it to shoot Christians or non-Christians. I readily executed GI Joes with it.

Every time you put up a video it just makes my day.

I really wish you'd put up more videos because they are educating and very fun. And as I am trying to build a crossbow (just for kicks really...) the last 2 videos have been very informative.

And that ban on crossbows was about as effective as the various Papal bans on Tournaments.

I don't think any youtube channel has entertained me and taught me as much at the same time, as yours. Keep up that good work you quirky, entertaining BRITISH genius. ^^

I met a non christian once. Good job I had my crossbow!

I was under the assumption that dry firing was a definite no-no. Would love to hear you're thoughts on the matter Mr Lloyd

The wrong kind of Christian was usually decided after the fight. Hint hint - the one without the crossbow. ;)

Wonderful videos. I hope you get the opportunity to showcase/compare different crossbows in the future. We had an antique store once upon a time with an ancient we believe Arabic Frankish crossbow. Hard to date and display use only but it was fascinating. I'd love see those comparisons. Great video,

Thank you SO MUCH for your videos! I love them! Greetings from Portugal!

Safety Rule, Never dry fire any bow,especially a crossbow with a steel prod!

love the channel helps me understand tactics and helm me improve as a game artist

Wow these weapons are powerful. that's amazing..

Hey Steve, fancy seeing you here!

Another Great Video. I still gotta make my Roman Arcuballista. On my huge Roman To-do list.

Earned a thumbs up with that last bit XD

I think the big thing about the crossbow is that, like firearms, you can put one in the hands of pretty much anybody and it becomes an effective weapon. For sure they might not be a very good shot but the effort of drawing it is separated from firing it which makes it much more effective in untrained hands and, with the right loading mechanism you don't need to be very physically strong to use one. The contrast with a longbow is that you need to draw, aim and fire the weapon in pretty much one fluid movement, which combined with the fact that the longbow is drawn to the ear means that even moderately accurate fire requires a certain amount of training. Of course this says nothing about the fundamental accuracy of the weapon but ease of use counts for a lot in war.

Hey Lyndibeige, i've been watching your videos and they are quite informative, so i want to ask you if ou could do video/s about the "stone bows" or "bullet shooting bows", internet is lacking of information about these (i have found som but i would like to found some more). Thanks and keep the good work! Im from english, sorry for my Argentina.

Excellent! One of my favourite pieces of technology from the middle ages.

"slow and careful" good one

Nice video and funny ending.

"Shall I do it?" *mumbling* "Oh yeah yeah do it go on then do it" That made me chuckle.

Would like to see a live shooting of this weapon or a similar one on your channel.

Was I the only one whincing when he dry fired it?

Fires the crossbow: 2:03 put on 0,25 speed on the video, enjoy. What you see is that you CAN'T see the string moving really. What you see is that it moves from one end and the next thing you see is that it is at resting state (not loaded). This means it's pretty damn strong. Imagine how much faster a "heavy" crossbow is.

Please read the description before leaving a comment..

Keep up the good work I fucking dig your videos dawg

Anything on "hand crossbows" or "one handed crossbows"? They've always felt like a fantasy-weapon style weapon to me.

you are so funny i love your character and accent and everything else : )

"They're sort of ugly and brutish" I actually find them with some beauty and elegance. But hey, each to their own!

I built a very low poundage crossbow, and it is quite noisy. I can only imagine how loud that one is. Of course, I didn't wrap my prod where it meets the tiller, so mine could be just as loud as that one.

Maybe in the future do a video/video series about muskets and old black powder rifles.

Ah! That dry fire must have been hell on it.

Copy/pasted from the description because nobody will read it otherwise: "On the topic of shooting a bow without ammunition in it: I did ask (three times) about this before doing it. These steel-limbed crossbows are guaranteed for life not to shatter. By and large, though, it is best to shoot bows, especially powerful wooden ones, with ammunition in them."

If you would run out of bolts you can always shoot your pommel and end your opponent rightly.

Some interesting stuff about the Second Lateran Council and the ban on crossbows. The ban is: "Artem autem illam mortiferam et Deo odibilem ballistoriorum et sagittariorum, adversus christianos et catholicos de cetero sub anathemate prohibemus." This is translated to: "We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers, which is hated by God, to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on" So it actually banned archers and crossbowmen from using their art against Christians. I've read a quite interesting paper on the subject called "The Not So Diabolical Crossbow", which examines possible reason for the ban. There is the "standard” explanation, essentially that they were too effective/deadly or were a threat to the social order based on the military importance of knights. There is also an interpretation that it banned usage poisoned arrows and bolts or some kind of tournament shooting competitions at people (jousts and tournaments which led to peoples death were also condemned in another of the Councils canons). The paper presents a new explanation, which I find quite convincing, that the ban was aimed at king Roger II of Sicily. He had been in conflict with the pope since he supported the antipope Anacletus (who had died shortly before the Council) and his army included several Muslims recruited from Sicily. Roger was forbidden from letting his Muslim troops use bows or crossbows against his Christian enemies, while the weapons could be used against those soldiers.

just a reminder: you said you were going to make a video about fire arrows in the Crap archery in Helen of Troy video.

haha loved the bit at the end

Would you say that the recoil of shooting a bolt is strong enough to need precaution? I haven't tried it myself, but watching people shoot crossbows, it doesn't look like there's any noticeable kick that would actually effect the aim or require bracing for it.

is... dry firing bad for these bows?

God I opened this video up last night and since then I made a whole fucking functional crossbow

Didnt that ban kind of get overlooked by almost any military at that time for reasons of common sense

Thanks Reddit!

Lloyd, is it possible to re-position that querell hold so it doesn't make that thwang noise? I'd imagine that'd be horrible for an ambush situation.

That Ending..

I'm still waiting for the video on 'A point about War Scythes.' Since he did one already on scythes.

I wonder, is it possible to use a metal cable for a crossbow string?

Would love to shoot a crossbow some time, but as is with many countries today, they are banned where i live. Only non-firing replicas are allowed. A shame, considering that much more powerful firearms are allowed

:'( dry firing :'(

Dr. or Mr. Tetard maybe right, and those limbs can very well sustain that force, the sting on the other hand... that energy is going to find the weak link some where either in the sting or the binding riser

"Ugly and brutish", really? I love crossbows so much, I've acquired sort of a fetish for them over the years. And that's an especially sexy one you got there.

Yeah, generally shooting your bow without ammunition (dry firing) is a wonderful way of breaking your bow and possibly injuring yourself in the process. But on a crossbow with steel limbs and a lifetime warranty? That's probably alright. :P

I heard tell that you are not supposed to "dry loose", shoot a crossbow (or any bow) without a bolt or arrow in it, to prevent damage to the bow. Is this only for modern bows?

Have any recommendation where a Murican like me could get a crossbow like that?

Actually, I think they've determined that the whole papal ban on them is apocryphal, if I recall correctly, it happened because historians confused two different subjects in two different Papal councils held some 20 years apart. Probably the strongest case against the existence of the papal ban is that crossbows continued to be used extensively all throughout the period with in Christendom. The vast majority of bow archers, in absolute numbers, were in the British isles and in far Eastern Europe where the steppes start. In between, the crossbow was the dominate individual missile weapon and in some places the dominate weapon period e.g. Switzerland with William Tell. It takes a dedicated social class, which pretty much has to be either horse riding nomad or yeoman farmer out in the stick, who has the time and area to train for years to become a skilled archer. The most elite have to start training when their about five if the distortions of the archer's skeletons on the Mary Rose are anything to go by. The French king Charles the Umptempth who finally ran the english out France, did so in part by creating almost a new social class for archers and giving them high pay, and social status with sumptuary laws in order to encourage them to practice constantly for over a decade before they could even hope to hold the field against the English. By contrast, a crossbow has a training time only slightly longer than the first firearms. More suited for the part-time urban infantry militia in Italy, Switzerland and the Germanys where the crossbow saw so much use. That argues against the existence of any papal ban. We'd see records of someone, somewhere at the very least shaking the crossbowmen down judicially for violating the ban and those records don't exist. There was a papal ban on the wheellock because it was perceived as being a tool of assassination with little utility as an honorable battle field weapon.

What if they were the right kind of Saracens?

What sort of steel should get if I'm gonna machine the bow part of the crossbow? (I'm not picky about whether it's authentic as long as it works really well). And what's a good way to test its strength at various amounts of bend regularly so I know it's not somehow losing strength so I know I did it right?

were there small crossbows kinda like hand guns in medieval ages ?

Is that pair of lashings the only thing holding the bow to the frame?

Is dry-firing a problem with crossbows? I'd be surprised if it weren't. If you shoot a bow without an arrow, the energy goes into the limbs and not the arrow, so the limbs are now under a lot of stress that they shouldn't be under, and that can damage your bow, and I see no reason why that shouldn't apply to crossbows.

so where IS that goatsfoot lever video? i mean, i have already seen it and how it works, but still

There's a little trick how to easily draw a crossbow. Attach a hook to your belt, squat and hook the string on. Then put your hand on the end of crossbow and stand up. Also you should not release the string like that. If you don't want to shoot it, use goat's foot lever to slowly release the string's energy.

Did crossbows have pistol grips? And can you fire one gangster style?

1:00 "In fact I'll shoot it in a moment, and let you listen to it", I actually feel 12 years old again

so, did the owner build that crossbow himself or did he buy it somewhere?

I am not so sure, if dry firing is so good to the crossbow.

hey lindybeige do you have any videos about siege engines?

Ahhhh! That made me wince. I've always heard dry-firing crossbows is very bad for them

Why is dry firing a bow supposed to be bad for it? Does it put some kind of pressure on it that firing with ammo doesn't? Just curious.

Lindybeige Hi, Iv always been told never to cold shoot a bow (recurve or longbow or flat bow) in this video you cold shoot the crossbow, does this not have the same damaging effects as it does to bows? I mean grated the actual bow bit of the crossbow is metal, but I still would have thought it was in some way bad for the crossbow, is this right?

What if they are French Christians?

That last bit was hilarious. Shame it was true :\

Lindy: If you were going into battle with 3,000 crossbowmen with reload times of 30 seconds; would you rather have them shoot all at once, or have 100 fire each second?

What poundage is that bow? I'm guessing around a hundred maybe?

so weapon bans have been a thing since medieval times

"Unless they were the wrong type of Christian" *cough* *cough* Protestants *cough*

Isnt it bad dry firing a bow, let alone a crossbow?

watches it some more.i want one

There wouldn't be any recoil if no projectile was launched... Did the owner of the crossbow object to it's being dry fired?

Where is the video of the loading lever? I think you called it a goat's foot lever?

Bows were also under the same ban (Second Lateran Council, canon 29).

nice

As someone with a background in competitive marksmanship, that stock is quite terrible for resting your face on to aim. You're not supposed to drop your head to reach the weapon stock, you're supposed to raise the weapon stock to your face, or else you get serious neck fatigue and have a bad visual angle at the target area (especially with proper sights). Since the end of this crossbow has only a small square bit that is in line with the top edge of the weapon, there's no way to avoid this trouble. Unless, of course, you fabricate a simple piece at the back end to allow you to raise the weapon further. But then, you'll probably have a harder time gripping the back end and squeezing the trigger mechanism, since it is angled completely parallel to the direction of fire. All in all, an atrociously non-ergonomic design in the most basic ways...

where do get one thats cheap lindy?

Aside from your moderate anti-clericalism/religionism (is that a word ?), I'm really enjoying those videos. Glad I found you Mr Lindybeige.

err... most of the ones made with metal bows to them (I dunno what to call them but blagh) they were so powerful that they can put the shooter in as much danger as the person he is about to shoot...

Didn't expect him to dry fire a crossbow..

The crossbow is a thing of beuty. That allowed a peasent to inflict damage on a man that had trained in violence all his life and that was wearing very expensive armor and riding a very expensive horse. Suddenly a peasent could pose a threat to these beasts with an affordable weapon and with little training.

Wait, so are you allowed to dry fire a crossbow?

The cylender is called a "Noix".

Where is the video showing a crossbow firing a bolt?

That dry fire tho

Still couldn’t Pierce competently made plate armor tho. Chain mail sometimes.

Did the person you borrowed the crossbow from know that you were going to try fire it?

so, technically, crossbow was overpowered :D

Do anybody know where you can buy these medieval crossbows? I have looked for one but i dont know what sites are trustworthy.