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Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Category Archives: Medieval

Posts on events in the late first and early second millenia CE

Sir Charles Oman Almost Understood

16 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval

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Tags

ancient, hoplite controversy, medieval, methodology, Sir Charles Oman

In print and on this blog I have written a lot about how I think the basic debate in the study of Greek warfare from 1989 to 2013 was about whether we should read Greek writers as giving faithful glimpses at a timeless unchanging practice of warfare, or as class and civic partisans whose stories about the good old days were just as wishful as the ones we hear today. People who like to talk about abstract ideas often link the second approach to words like deconstruction and postmodernism and names like Eric Hobsbawm and Jill Lepore. But they were not the only thoughtful people to realize this, and in October I found some similar thinking in an unexpected place.

Back in 1924, Sir Charles Oman revised his history of warfare in Middle Ages after being introduced to the works of Hans Delbrück. Have a look at his new account of the battle on the Marchfeld between Austro-Hungarian and Bohemian forces in 1278, in one of the chapters which he says he specially reworked in response to the German historian.

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Apropos of Nothing

09 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

England, medieval, source

Early in the pandemic, British History Online was free to access. And I remember reading an Anglo-Norman proclamation from Edward II or Edward III forbidding anyone whatsoever from bringing any daggers, swords, hatchets, bows and arrows, long knives, aketons, plates, steel caps, or other offensive or defensive arms into sight of the palace at Westminister to disturb the proceedings of Parliament. I wish I could find that again but it was not helpful for the specific topic I was researching.

Edit: see Mart Shearer’s comment below with an English translation of one of these proclamations

Twelve Early European Fencing Manuals

19 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

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Tags

historical European martial arts, medieval, modern, source

reprints of four early European fencing manuals on an ironing board covered with a colourful cotton print

Today anyone who wants to can download photos of almost all the European fencing manuals written before the 20th century, and often buy a convenient reprint or translation. But this makes it difficult to get a sense of the genre as a whole. Which manuals should someone who is just getting interested in the subject read first? How can we decide which texts our readers or listeners are likely to know, so that when we mention them it helps them understand? The last academic monograph on the subject, Sydney Anglo’s The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (2000) is organized by themes so information on any one manual or tradition is scattered across different chapters.

So this week, I would like to give a short list of books which is representative of European fencing manuals before the middle of the 17th century.
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Cross-Post: FS Geibig Erscheint

08 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

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arms and armour, cross-post, historical European martial arts, medieval, prehistoric European martial arts

In honour of his retirement from Veste Coburg, a Festschrift for arms-and-armour scholar Alfred Geibig has been published.

Contributions in English and ?German? are by Heiko Berger, Raphael Beuing, Dirk H. Breiding, Heiner Grieb, Heinz Huther, Armin König, Arne J. Koets, Stefan Mäder, Jürg A. Meier, Ingo Petri, Christopher Retsch, Mario Scalini, Tobias Schönauer, Jens Sensfelder, Wilfried Tittmann, Heiko P. Wacker, Roland Warzecha, Herbert H. Westphal, Bob Woosnam-Savage and Joachim Zeune.

Hieb- und stichfest – Waffenkunde und Living History. Festschrift für Alfred Geibig (= Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung, Bd. 63, 2019), Petersberg 2020, ISBN 978-3-7319-1027-5 (488 Seiten, 29,95 €, erscheint 12/2020)

You can order via email here: sgvcoburg@bsv.bayern.de and read the original German announcement here

Insights from Experience, Excavation, and Reconstruction

07 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ancient, archaeology, experimental archaeology, Han Dynasty, Late Bronze Age, medieval, modern, prehistoric European martial arts, sixteenth century

In September and October, I came across several projects in archaeology which help us understand early warfare. This week’s post will take us from China to Germany, Italy, and England and from the Bronze Age to the 18th century CE.

Figure 7 from Hermann et al. 2020 (see below). Left is a replica sword which has delivered a strike to the socket of a bronze spearhead, right is an original bronze sword

I will start with the Bronze Age (best age!) then move on to ages of other metals. A German-UK-Chinese team published the latest project trying to understand how Bronze Age swords were used. They examined damage to the edges of originals and then compared it to damage on replica swords by Neil Burridge after performing Andre Lignitzer’s six sword-and-buckler plays. I’d like to see more studies like this borrowing ideas from other martial arts like Shastar Vidiya to see which seem to work best with Bronze Age weapons from Europe. Fifteenth-century German fencing such as Andre Lignitzer’s plays has a lot of blade-on-blade contact and twisty actions while the blades are crossed, whereas other martial arts rely on the shield to defend or prefer simpler weapon-on-weapon actions. But I think that the evidence that swords from some periods often have marks characteristic of controlled parrying, whereas in other periods the edge damage is more random, is valuable. I am also glad that they experimented with common matchups like sword against spear, and not just the rare occasions when a sword was used against another warrior with a sword who was ready for the attack.

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Battles and Sieges

24 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

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Tags

academic navel-gazing, Achaemenid Empire, ancient, book project, statistics

Eannatum of Lagaš’s Stele of the Vultures in the Louvre, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stele_of_Vultures_detail_01-transparent.png

Academic histories sometimes get very narrowly focused. There are some good reasons for this, but its not so good to read a book on archaic or classical Greek warfare which barely acknowledges that Italy or the Hellenistic period existed. Did I fall into that trap in my book on Achaemenid armies and warfare?

To find out, I made a list of all the battles and sieges which I mentioned in my forthcoming book.

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Some Addenda to the History of the Historical Fencing Movement

23 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

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historical European martial arts, medieval, modern, oral history, publishing

The mysterious (and tracking-heavy and script-heavy) website historicaleuropeanmartialarts.com has a history of the current historical fencing movement. Although they don’t provide an email address, I would like to add a few lines to their chronicle.

1972: James Louis Jackson publishes Three Elizabethan Fencing Manuals (Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints), a facsimile of the English version of di Grassi, Vincento Saviolio, and George Silver’s Brief Instructions. This book is purchased by many university libraries and becomes the starting point for many English-speaking fencers.

1979: Archaeologist William Gaugler founds a program teaching masters of classical Italian fencing at San José State University in California (Britannica). His books and students have a major influence in the historical fencing community in North America after the year 2000 and help keep this tradition alive in North America where it is threatened by versions of fencing optimized for winning bouts under the Olympic rules and electric scoring. Two articles are Tony Wolf, “The Future of Fencing is in its Past: An Interview with Maestro John Sullins.” Journal of Manly Arts, August 2003 https://www.ejmas.com/jmanly/articles/2003/jmanlyart_wolf_0803.htm and Puck Curtis, “In Search of the Rudis,” A Midsummer Night’s Blog 18 June 2014 http://www.puckandmary.com/blog_puck/2014/06/in-search-of-the-rudis/

1999: J. Christoph Amberger persuades a publisher to print an expanded version of the proceedings of his fencing-history fanzine Hammertz Forum as The Secret History of the Sword. While the main text is focused on the 19th and 20th centuries, the appendices list people and businesses to contact including Patri Pugliese.

?September? 1999: first Western Martial Arts Workshop (WMAW) in the Chicago area. At some point it sets up a bi-annual schedule at the DeKoven centre in Racine WI, with occasional smaller, off-year events without the WMAW name: they numbered the event in 2019 as their 14th and the event in 2007 as their 8th.

Continue reading →

New Magazine Articles

15 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ancient, medieval, shameless plug

an issue of "ancient warfare" magazine and an issue of "medieval warfare" magazine on a hardwood surface

So far this calendar year, I have published three articles for money:

  • “The Achaemenid Empire’s Jewish soldiers: Serving the Great King,” Ancient Warfare XIII.5 (2020) pp. 34-37 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)
  • “The Amathus Bowl, ca. 700 BC: World of mercenaries,” Ancient Warfare XIII.5 (2020) pp. 24-25 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)
  • “Turning Your Back: The Late Reinvention of Backplates.” Medieval Warfare X.4 (2020) pp. 38-41 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)

In another year I would have posted the bibliographies or some bonus content, but I don’t have the words in me and I should probably be doing something better with my time.

Murder, Rape, and Treason

14 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

medieval, modern, shameless plug

Freelance Academy Press, dealer in choice codices and excellent ebooks on history, arms and armour, and martial arts, has some books on sale.

They publish books like Steve Muhlberger’s and Will McLean’s Murder, Rape and Treason: Judicial Combats in the Late Middle Ages (2019), a modern moral criticism of warfare in 14th century France wrapped around a discourse on Geoffrey Charney’s questions about the joust, tournament, and war, and Ellis Amdur’s Dueling with O Sensei: Grappling with the Myth of the Warrior Sage (2016). They also carry Dr. Manouchehr Moshtagh Khorasani’s books on arms and armour in Iran in the Islamic period, and La Belle Compagnie’s beautiful 1381: The Peel Affinity.

I have not had a chance to flip through their publications since 2014 except for the one on Charny, but their books are always well edited and laid out.

Edit: FYI- they are US based, international shipping may be pricey at the moment.

A Tale of Three Knives

11 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

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Tags

historical cooking, knife review, medieval, modern

three paring knives (two hand-ground with steel blades and one mass-produced with a stainless steel blade) on a wooden table

Top to bottom: the Ikea VÖRDA, Phl Frazer’s knife, and Tod’s bone-handled knife

As a human being, every day I use edgetools to prepare food. This week I want to talk about three of the ones I use most often, and how much and how little some things have changed over the past 600 years. These were all made by the same modern technique (cutting a shape out of a sheet of rolled homogeneous steel and then grinding away the excess)

Scale-Tanged, Bone-Handled Knife TCP8

Overall length: 21 cm
Grip: 9 cm
Blade: 12 cm
Blade thickness (maximum): 3 mm
Blade width (maximum): 21 mm
Cross section: hollow-ground wedge
Material: Carbon steel with a bone grip riveted with brass tube and brass bolsters where the blade meets the handle

Tod’s knife has a heavy spine, a delicate shape in the blade and the handle, and has a pleasing substance in the hand like a Laguiole without being heavy or bulky.

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