Picking up Michl's post #3 ...
...That guy blowing his horn and holding his dogs (Fig 130 from Bern manuscript by Boners Eldestein) suggests some familiarity between the lances being discussed and those used for hunting. The first of such lances had no "wings" or "ears" and date from classic antiquity. As very often they penetrated to deep into the game's body, allowing the animals that used to fight back (bears and boars) to reach for the hunter, a cross bracket was developed in order to retain the lance head at a limited depth. This device was implemented in Portugal by the XIII century, some later than in other countries.
This tipe of hunting lance was called in Portugal "Ascuma", a term that tends to disappear from modern dictionaries. This word derived from the German "Asc", meaning "Esche" or "Ash", due to one of the selected woods used in their shafts.
Illustrated are a boar hunting scene by Gaston Phoebus (XIV century) at the Paris National Library and an engraving from the Tryumph of Maximilian (1526), showing bear hunters with long ascumas.
Can one actually consider these hunting lances predecessor to chiaverine?
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