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Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Tag Archives: medieval

A Path not Taken

10 Saturday Apr 2021

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

fandom, historical European martial arts, medieval, modern

a beach in twilight with sand, an area of rocks and seawead, pebbles, and steep cliffs covered with trees and brush
A beach at low tide in Greater Victoria, BC. Photo by Sean Manning 4 April 2021. At high tide there are two beaches!

The modern international historical fencing movement began in the 1990s, but before that there were isolated or short-lived attempts to collect old fencing manuals and practice their teachings. Like some exiled scholars before me, I am taking advantage of the situation to read books and find references which I could not at home. I read the following long before I discovered the historical fencers or was in the habit of listing all the useful passages I read. It was published in 1969 and describes the foundation of SCA Heavy combat in California. It begins:

Fencers and kendo men occasionally take part in tournaments. At present, some people are experimenting with rapier and dagger. No doubt still other weapons will appear. It will be interesting to see how they do.

It is likely interesting to consider the methods of their appointment. Except for a recent discovery of an old German manual by Jakob Sutor, which treats only a few kinds of arms, nobody has yet turned up contemporary instructions for sword and shield or the like. If any of you out there know of some, the Society will be grateful for the information. Meanwhile, reconstruction has been by trial and error. The influence of judo and karate is noticeable in the results. We would love to know if the men who stood at Hastings or Crécy- a time gap which may well have seen considerable evolution- had developed similar styles or quite different ones. In the later case, which set would be more effective?

Continue reading →

Shameless Plug: The Chronicle of the Good Duke

26 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval

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Tags

medieval, shameless plug

Jean Cabaret d’Orville, The Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis II Bourbon. Translated and introduced by Steve Muhlberger (Freelance Academy Press, 2021) ISBN: 978-1-937439-54-5 USD 49.95 Publisher’s website

My esteemed colleague Professor Emeritus Steve Muhlberger in Ontario has finally finished a major project, a translation of the Chronicle of the Good Duke from 15th century France. This is a book of war stories about aristocratic heroes as told by their friends and admirers, but it has never been translated from the original Middle French into a modern language. I read several of his books back in the Before Times when I was hanging out with the fencers, and they are fun to read but scholarly (when I put on my teacher’s hat I have a rant about his translation of Charny’s Questions, but that is something for an informal chat not my website). You can get a sense of his writing style from his free online textbook from 1999.

Freelance is a small publisher, and I can’t in good conscience suggest that anyone outside of the United States order anything from that country while the post is so jammed up and international trade and travel are restricted. The cost of sending is high and packages are being delayed or lost. But if you are in the United States, or can wait six months for the US Postal Service, FedEx, etc. to clear up, and you are interested in warfare or the 15th century CE, this might be the book for you.

(scheduled 25 February 2021)

New Magazine Articles

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern

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Tags

ancient, medieval, shameless plug

three issues of Ancient Warfare and Medieval Warfare magazine spread out on a textured linoleum surface

The past year has been what it has been, but I have managed to publish a number of magazine articles on ancient warfare and medieval armour. They have siege engines! Military colonists! Tomb-robbing consuls! Late Babylonia! The ones on battering rams and equipping the king’s men have come out since October.

“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) {backplates which span the whole back reappear in Europe in the 1410s after a thousand years of absence, and were not universal for a century more … why does this important area remain lightly protected?}

“Assyrian Battering Rams: A City-Breaching Buddy System,” Ancient Warfare XIV.3 (2021) pp. 14-19

“Equipping the King’s Men: Documents, Art, and Stories,” Ancient Warfare XIV.4 (2021) pp. 34-39 https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/ancient-warfare-xiv-4.html {if we combine all types of sources, a distinctive new picture of the armies of Darius and Xerxes emerges}

Sir Charles Oman Almost Understood

16 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval

≈ 8 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

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

2020 Decade-Ender, or, the Isidore Option

31 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Modern, Not an expert

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Tags

medieval, modern, not an expert, state of the web, year end

a cloudy sky over distant mountains, closer mountains, a small castle in woods, and grassy farmland
The Brenner Pass, Schloss Ambras, and a crossroads downstream from Innsbruck.

So, it is 2020. It has been an odd year in an odd decade. And while I am tempted to just note who was king and the most exciting thing that happened in the heavens, I want to finish this section of my chronicle. The conjunction of Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter in May was exciting but there are other things to write.

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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.
Continue reading →

Cross-Post: FS Geibig Erscheint

08 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

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Tags

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.

Continue reading →

Some Addenda to the History of the Historical Fencing Movement

23 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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 →

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