17th century (?) sword blade
 

Just recently i bought a few swords from a relatively unknown auction. This is my first time owning an item like this and my knowledge on these blades is non existend. :)
That beeing said, i hope the vast knowledge from others will point me towards a better understanding.

The blade is 74cm long measured from the point. Total length is 88,5cm. The blade balances around 23cm from where the crossguard would have been.

The blade is etched with multiple drawings and also letters which i can not decipher (could be pig Latin?).

The script on one side of the blade reads "Pro Christo et Pro Patria"
corrado26

Hi Corrado,

Thank you, that type of text is not unussual for swords i think?

Maybe Pro Cristo et Patria ? :o

Who is "Cristo"? I never saw a name like this on a blade
corrado26

I ried to line the "Ch" in red
corrado26

The name of the maker is on the other side i think.

"Vincere aut mori" (win or die) on the other side ... :o .

My mistake; i meant to write "Christo". I was influenced by the term in portuguese being "Cristo" ... some guy i know ;). But my point was that i didn't discern the word "Pro" in the inscription, as neither it usually see it in such motto out there.


Also i wouldn't imagine this blade being from the 17th century, rather than from the 18th.



.

The blade could well be 17th cent. I have in my collection a Polish saber (ex-Salm-Reifferscheidt zu Schloss Dyck, E.36, dated mid-17th cent. per the Ehrenthal catalogue) with very similar motifs, inscriptions, and font on its blade. A similar decorative style, along with Latin inscriptions, can also be found on a rare example of a European blade marked Me fecit Solingen 1633 [or 1635, last digit illegible] in Japanese mountings, ex-King Frederick VII of Denmark collection, now in the Nationalmuseum Kobenhavn (inv. no. AB 56 NMK), published in Vaabenhistoriske Aarboger XVI (1970), pp 163-71.

The "fuller" are also inscribed, one side seems to read "si deus pro nobis quis contra nos" which translates to "If God be for us who can be against us?"

also a reference
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?p=209301

This saying, along with "pro Christo et Patria" and "Vincere aut mori" are also on the blade of the Polish saber I referenced above.

It is likely that the style of decoration was widely copied by artisans working in different parts of Europe, as were the "running wolf" mark and other symbols on other blades. The name Solingen on the above-referenced blade in katana fittings might not indicate its true origin. The author of the Vaabenhistoriker Aarboger article opines that this blade, despite its markings, could well be Dutch as well as German. The clumsily-scribed and often misspelled wording on many similar specimens points to pattern-book copying by artisans whose fluency or literacy in Latin left something to be desired.