The Dresden MONK'S GUN - a MYTH Revisited, and Finally CORRECTLY DATED: ca. 1525-30!

[Matchlock]

- Another detailed view of two rounded and conical/tapering padlocks, plus a rectangular, all securing a heavy oaken iron-mounted ammuniton chest in a Maximilian arsenal, ca. 1500; from Essenwein: Quellen ...

- A very similar rounded and conical padlock, ca. 1530, in the Joanneum, Graz

- The Monk's Gun, in the Rüstkammer, Dresden

- An later type of a padlock, ca. 1550-1600, manufactured in Styria, in the Joanneum, Graz


m

[Marcus den toom]

A great subject as always Michl,

But i have some questions

Are there any contemporary writtings about this "monk's gun" ? The wheel lock mechanism has been written about in that time, just as the matchlock mechanism?
Is the monk's gun in fact a working mechanism and if so why wouldn't have been further explored? There are less moving parts than on a wheel lock mechanism and it should't have been to hard to add a (coil) spring with release mechanism. Just as in the more modern guns, with the bolt action etc.

And why is it called the monk his gun (monk's gun)? Is this also due to some juicy legend?

[Matchlock]

These seem to be the the earliest known dated Nuremberg barrels to feature an elongated round muzzle section (German: Mündungskopf): a pair of Nuremberg cast-bronze falconet barrels founded, signed by Endres Pegnitzer the Elder (E.P.G.M.), and dated 1522 - cf. Heinrich Müller: Deutsche Bronzegeschützrohre 1400-1750. Ost-Berlin, 1968; pp. 63, 68, ill.#46-48; p. 69, ill.#57-58; p. 74, ill.#106-107; and p. 105-106.
They are preserved in the Museum at Schloss Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt, Thuringia - together with a third piece bearing the same date, but its muzzle section still showing the older Nuremberg style of ca. 1500-15, for being shorter and still octagonal, though following a long rounded forward section (German: Vorderstück). Notwithstanding that earliest Renaissance taste, this barrel can be identified to have been made after ca. 1520 because of its muzzle; it is pronouncedly beveled, instead of being flat, like the muzzles used to look before the end of the second decade of the 16th century. That beveled muzzle seems to have been kept up to the 1530's, at least with arquebus barrels, whether consisting of a copper alloy like brass or bronze, or of wrought iron.
See scan attached, from Müller's Bronzegeschützrohre ... , p. 69;
and author's photos, taken 9 October 2000.

For comparison: The muzzle sections of earlier cannon barrels are notably shorter:
Der Drach, founded by Jerg von Gunten, also known as Jörg von Guntheim, and dated 1514, shows a short, reinforced and octagonal shaped muzzle section, still denoting the influence of the Late Gothic taste of style (Historisches Museum Basel, Switzerland, inv.no. 1874.94; it came from the former Basel Arsenal.
See author's photos attached, taken 5 August 1992.

Best,
Michael Trömner

[Matchlock]

Originally Posted by Marcus den toom

A great subject as always Michl,

But i have some questions

Are there any contemporary writtings about this "monk's gun" ? The wheel lock mechanism has been written about in that time, just as the matchlock mechanism?

Not to my knowledge, Marcus; as far as I know it only entered the Royal Saxon Armories, respectively their Kunst- und Wunderkammer ( ... ), in as late as 1667, and is still dated ca. 1600 to 1667 by their experts.

Is the monk's gun in fact a working mechanism and if so why wouldn't have been further explored? There are less moving parts than on a wheel lock mechanism and it should't have been to hard to add a (coil) spring with release mechanism. Just as in the more modern guns, with the bolt action etc.

The curators at the Dresden Armory (Rüstkammer) are known to be extremely strict; not even fellow curators from other museums are allowed to even touch their objects. So I cannot really imagine that anybody has ever dared to try and lay his hands on the Monk's Gun, let alone test its action, for at least about a century.

I reckon though that it works on the same principle as da Vinci's mechanical tinderlighter; these objects of everyday household use most probably kept being made much the same, until the mid-16th century.

And why is it called the monk his gun (monk's gun)? Is this also due to some juicy legend?

I do not know for sure but I guess that strange name has to do with Medieval monks. In the 14th through the 16th centuries, abbeys and orders were known to be cultural and intellectual centers, including the writing, copying, and illuminating of precious, because singular, manuscripts.
Before the late 15th century, and the invention of printing, all books were manuscripts. Most of them were written in Latin, for this was the international language of all academic communication, and of teaching at universities, regardless of the language of the respective country. In the 14th century, many kings could hardly read or write; all that was donefor them by learned secretaries, professional writers - or by monks in abbeys.
Therefore, all things relating to science, academic education, or philosophy, were commonly connected with monks. It was not just theology that was covered by their expertise - although the Roman Catholic Church prevailed in all everyday matters, just by the sheer power religion wielded over all people, including the nobility, simply by threatening that they would be damned and go to hell and its devils for all eternity if they did not follow the words of the Holy Bible, the Pope, and the clergy.
Only the wealthy were granted the priviledge to buy themselves free of all their sins, even the ones they would commit in the future; this was officially called the sale of indulges (German: Ablasshandel).

Almost everything that was written and taught was in Latin, including the Mass, so the common peope would not understand a single word, and were very superstitious as well. They must have got the impression of evil magic powers and secret hidden knowledge behind it all - in short: the devil, the fiend. Of course, monks fitted that scheme perfectly. Most orders were clad in black or brown, and they held all the knowledge. Serious sciences such as chemistry did not yet exist; it was all alchemistry, magic, and could only come from the devil.

And then, some fine day in the early 1300's, a completely knew and frightening sound rang out over North Western Europ; it was for the first time that anybody could remember such a noise: the sudden bang of a black dust-like substance that would explode with a bolt of orange fire, just by a tiny spark - and leave the smell of sulphur in the air.

For ages, both superstition and poular belief used to link things like the black, fire, sulphur, and magic with the devil, deep down in hell. Of course, black powder was characteristic of combining all those facts. The notorious German monk called der Schwarze Berthold (Black Berthold) actually never existed, but in England there was a monk named Roger Bacon, who is said to have been the first to write down the exact mixture of coal, saltpeter, and sulphur to create gun powder in the late 13th century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon:

Bacon is often considered the first European to describe a mixture containing the essential ingredients of gunpowder. Based on two passages from Bacon's Opus Majus and Opus Tertium, extensively analysed by J. R. Partington, several scholars cited by Joseph Needham concluded that Bacon had most likely witnessed at least one demonstration of Chinese firecrackers, possibly obtained with the intermediation of other Franciscans, like his friend William of Rubruck, who had visited the Mongols.[52][59] The most telling passage reads: "We have an example of these things (that act on the senses) in [the sound and fire of] that children's toy which is made in many [diverse] parts of the world; i.e. a device no bigger than one's thumb. From the violence of that salt called saltpetre [together with sulphur and willow charcoal, combined into a powder] so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, no more than a bit of parchment [containing it], that we find [the ear assaulted by a noise] exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash brighter than the most brilliant lightning."[52] More controversial are the claims originating with Royal Artillery colonel Henry William Lovett Hime (at the beginning of the 20th century) that a cryptogram existed in Bacon's Epistola, giving the ratio of ingredients of the mixture. These were published, among other places, in the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.[60] An early critic of this claim was Lynn Thorndike, starting with a letter in the 1915 edition of the journal Science,[61] and repeated in several books of his. M. M. Pattison Muir also expressed his doubts on Hime's theory, and they were echoed by John Maxson Stillman.[62] Robert Steele[63] and George Sarton also joined the critics.[64] Needham concurred with these earlier critics in their opinion that the additional passage does not originate with Bacon.[52] In any case, the proportions claimed to have been deciphered (7:5:5 saltpetre:charcoal:sulfur) are not even useful for stuffing firecrackers, burning slowly while producing mostly smoke, and failing to ignite inside a gun barrel.[65] The ~41% nitrate content is too low to have explosive properties.[66]

Attached find an engraving of 1617, of Roger Bacon conducting an experiment, as well as the formula of gun powder he wrote down before he died in either 1292, or two years later.
There is also a 16th ! century English drawing of devils, helping men make gun powder and firearms.


Best,
Michl

[Raf]

The Monks Gun.

Sorry Michael. I don’t think we have quite got to the bottom of this one.
It seems unlikely that the gun currently in the Russtkammer is the legendary Monks Gun beloved by early writers on firearms history.

Quoting from Ellacott (Guns . Methuen and Co 1955.)

There once lay in Dresden Museum a hand– gun of the early sixteenth century eleven inches long, 5 inches bore ( ! ) A long serrated bar lay in a square casing above the priming pan, and above the bar was a pivoted serpentine holding in its jaws a brittle yellow mineral then called fools gold. When the pyrites was pressed down upon the serrated bar. And the bar drawn sharply backwards, a shower of sparks was rasped into the priming pan. For many years this little weapon was called the monks gun on the assumption that the German monk Berthold Swartze had made it in 1320.

Swartze being the apocryphal inventor of gunpowder. The author attaches his own drawing of the gun which we assume was based on an illustration from some antiquarian source . The gun as illustrated by Ellacot looks entirely implausible as a hand held firearm and if it wasn’t for what looks like a belt hook we might suggest it was the breech from a breech loading cannon . Since we cant be sure whether the seventeenth century inventory relates to the gun illustrated or the Russfkhammer gun one implication is the later might be a historiscistic re creation of the missing original perhaps re using a genuinely old barrel

I personally have doubts as to whether it, or any other hand operated rasp ignition lock would have actually worked. A typical wheelock has a wheel speed of around 1000 feet per second. equivalent to 60 miles an hour. Therefore no matter how smartly the bar was jerked backwards it seems unlikely that it would achieve sufficient speed to raise a spark. However it’s a simple idea and some might have believed that it would. The same principle was successfully developed in quadrant locks (Tower; X11-1067. Dated1619) where the wheel is replaced by a quadrant operated by a strong spring, achieving the same effect as a wheel lock but without the need for a spanner. Blair quotes Thierbach who illustrates a rasp lock operated by a spiral spring; of the kind envisaged by Marcus and also a manually operated rasp lock for a cannon.

[Raf]

Anybody noticed that there are in fact two Monks guns up for discussion here ? So somebody must have made a fairly accurate copy of the Russkhamer gun , presumably to test it to see whether it worked . Anybody know the source of the lower picture ?

[batjka]

This is a really fascinating mechanism! I wish one was available for testing. Although I doubt the artisans would have spent all that effort to produce a non-working item.

The accuracy of this gun would be dismal due to the jerking of the barrel as the rasp was being pulled out. But it's probably OK for contact ranges.

Thank you for posting this and making people aware of this gun.

[Raf]

The Monks Gun myth Revisited... Part 2

Tracked down the author of the reconstruction. His name is Peter H Kunz who specialises in re creating ( and testing ? ) historic firearms . Link to his site is wwwfirearmch
So now we have the uncontravertable photographic evidence that the thing actually works .

Or do we ?