The Knightly Art An Overview of European in the Late Middle Ages

© 2006 Gregory D. Mele

Introduction The history of personal combat has usually been relegated to fencing historians, who in turn defined medieval combat as rough, untutored fighting 1 on the battlefield, between nobles, whereas truly scientific, systematic, and civilian martial arts arose with rapier fencing in the mid- 16th century.

It was perhaps inevitable that as most fin de siecle fencing historians looked at the evidence they had available to them, they looked at the records of the medieval masters-at-arms, and simply didn’t see what they thought of as fencing. Fencing derives from the word defense, and since the Middle “ges had simply meant the art of defense, specifically when armed with any hand weapon, be that a , knife or , be that in a , a street brawl or on a battlefield. But by the late 19th century, the art of fencing focused on single-combat within the formal, and increasingly non-lethal, duel. For most, training was really only for the friendly combat-sport that had grown out of the martial art. Broadsword, heavy saber and bayonet fencing continued to be practiced, but usually only by current or former military men, and with increasingly less frequency, as the revolver at last made the sword completely obsolete on the battlefield. Even in military fencing, the aesthetics of the age meant that grappling and in-fighting was strictly forbidden in the fencing salle. Unarmed combat was a separate discipline, divided into boxing and wrestling, each of which were also increasingly had their sportive, rather than defensive, applications as a focus.

What was taught? In contrast, the medieval master-at-arms taught cognate martial arts: complete systems of armed and unarmed defense, designed for both the battlefield and personal defense. Their diverse curriculum combined unarmed and weapons combat, both in and out of , fought both on foot and on horseback. Training in this robust art was usually based on a foundation in close- quarter combat and . Close-quarter combat was itself comprised of two key components: wrestling and dagger combat. As a battlefield art, wrestling was particularly aggressive, focusing on ending a fight quickly through either joint-breaking, throws or lethal force, rather than seeking submission. Dagger combat was split between unarmed defenses against the dagger and dagger vs. dagger dueling; a far more likely scenario for the 15th century knife-fighter than it is for his 21st century counterpart.

Swordsmanship formed the basis for training with all long, hand-weapons. The central weapon was usually either the or the sword and buckler. The longsword, often called a hand-and-a-half sword by modern arms and armour enthusiasts, was a fairly new weapon that had appeared in the 13th century. The first sword to offer a two-handed grip, it generally

1 see Egerton Castle, Schools and Masters of Fence from the Middle Ages to the 18th Centur, Dover (reprint), 2003. p. 9 measured between 44" and 54" [112 and 137 cm] in length, and was stout enough to combat fully armoured foes, yet at roughly three to four pounds [1.4-1.8 kg] in weight, it was also fast enough to use against lightly armoured and unarmoured opponents. Like the older sword it evolved from, the longsword’s straight, double-edged blade was ideally suited for both cutting and thrusting, and could be flat and wide, narrow and hexagonal, or diamond shaped in cross- section. This versatility made the weapon extremely popular with the knightly classes; so much so that this so-called sword of war also became an element of civilian dress in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The older, one-handed or arming” sword continued alongside the longsword, and when combined with the buckler, a small hand shield measuring between and to cm, was the other common exemplar weapon for the medieval fencing instructor. Sword and buckler was a common sidearm for common soldiers and travelers, and fencing with them was a popular medieval sport especial with university students often to their professor’s horror.) Through the use of these weapons the master taught all of the basic blows, defenses, entering techniques and disarms of his martial art.

Full had been developed by 1400, and was virtually impervious to sword cuts. To defeat this, the master-at-arms taught how to turn the sword into a short by gripping the blade in the left hand; this allowed it to be strongly thrust into gaps in the armour. This shortened sword or half-sword combat also included a number of disarms, throws and wrestling techniques, very similar to those taught with the dagger. Through these techniques, the student linked the lessons of close-quarter combat, armoured combat and swordsmanship. This formed a basis for fighting with the spear, the a .’ to ’ two-handed or warhammer, similar to the ) and mounted combat.

It was a diverse and complex martial art, perfectly in keeping with the ethos of the warrior culture that created it.

What survives today? Sadly, these martial arts were victims of the same pragmatic culture that produced them. As the nature of both warfare and personal defense evolved what was no longer useful was abandoned. Although many of the older medieval weapons continued to be taught and practiced throughout the Renaissance, by the turn of the 18th century their use seems to have survived in only a few places as traditional curiosities.

Today, there are a number of traditional European styles of stick-combat whose histories claim descent from the two-handed swordplay of the late Middle Ages, such as French grand baton or Portuguese jogo do pau. But in reality, there is no documental or lineage evidence and very little technical or lexiconal proof to support these claims, or show that any of these arts have a clear origin prior to the 18th century.

A number of folk wrestling traditions surviving throughout Europe, such as those of Iceland, Cornwall or Brittany, some with claims of great antiquity to their art. Unfortunately, folk culture is oral culture, so there is little way to verify these claims. While, not surprisingly, there sometimes are a number of similar throws, holds and takedowns found between all surviving forms of Western wrestling and the medieval material, the techniques of the medieval masters were battlefield arts, not sportive ones. Consequently, the medieval material focuses on ending the fight immediately through a use of strikes, joint-breaks, chokes and potentially lethal throws; most of which are banned for safety in folk and Greco-Roman wrestling. There is also fairly little ground-fighting, which is a key element of most modern grappling. Although these folk traditions certainly may have grown from, or in parallel to, those taught by the medieval masters- at-arms, they have less in common with their curriculum than do most modern close-quarter combatives.

What do we have, and where does it come from? The medieval masters-at-arms arts did not survive the centuries as a living tradition, but fortunately, they were prolific writers. By the turn of the 15th century, an entire corpus of fencing treatises documents not only the presence of highly developed cognate martial arts, but actual fencing guilds, whose masters were plying their trades in cities, universities, and courts throughout Europe. Surviving fencing manuscripts from Germany, Italy, England, Spain, Portugal, and Burgundy give us a detailed, and often reconstructable, look at martial arts more than half a millennia old. Of these, the lion's share of the medieval material are German and Italian treatises.

Liechtenauer's Legacy. The surviving record of European swordplay begins with a unique, south German manuscript, Royal Armouries Ms. I.33,2 dated to c.1295. This curious manuscript, written by an anonymous priest, shows a cleric teaching his scholar, or student, sword and buckler combat. The manuscript is comprised of captioned illustrations that teach a clear, well-developed and elucidated system of combat. It also refers obliquely to a common method of swordplay, but does not describe how its own instructions might relate, or differ, from that method.

While Ms. I. is a sophisticated text, when looking at it from our side of history, it’s hard not to see the anonymous priest as something of a medieval one hit wonder. Despite other German sword and buckler styles some common guards and techniques, and a few later manuscripts that seem to show small sections copied from Ms. I.33, there is no real, clear historical evidence that the priest’s art survived him in any kind of established tradition. The first evidence of a continuous, European tradition begins two generations later, with the German grandmaster, .

We know virtually nothing of this man, aside from shreds of data left by his students and their descendants. Johannes Liechtenauer was born sometime in the first half of the 14th century, possibly in Liechtenau, Franconia, but his actual birthplace, family and rank remain unknown. He traveled through the (modern Germany, Austria, Switzerland and northern Italy) and Eastern Europe for a number of years, training with local masters and synthesizing their teachings into a new method. His primary weapon was the longsword, but his direct teachings also include wrestling, dagger and spear fighting, both in and out of armour.

By the later 1300s, Liechtenauer had settled down and begun to teach, precisely where is unknown, although Swabia or Austria are likely. Tradition has it that he gathered a circle of

2 Ms. I.33 has recently been translated by Dr. Jeffrey Forgeng, The Medieval Art of Swordsmanship: A Facsimile & Translation of Europe's Oldest Personal Combat Treatise, Royal Armouries MS I.33, Chivalry Bookshelf, 2003. students, to whom he taught his art, simply known as Kunst des Fechtens (Art of Fighting), and from whom comes nearly our entire record of German martial arts of the next two centuries. Liechtenauer preserved his teachings in rhyming, mnemonic verses that were designed to intentionally obscure his art from anyone who had not been trained by the master or his inner circle. The grandmaster swore his students to secrecy, presumably until they were recognized as a master, and then they were expected to hold their own students to secrecy, as well.3

”ut there’s an interesting thing about secrets, oaths not withstanding: it doesn’t take long before someone breaks the secret, usually for the good of insert your reason of choice here. In this case, the Liechtenauer circle seems to have determined that the art was being corrupted by lesser masters. Whether this was true, a matter of professional rivalry, or something else, following Liechtenauer’s death at the close of the th century, his students, and then their students, began to write treatises that interpreted the Master’s cryptic verses and explained both the technique, and the philosophy, of his school. The first of the surviving manuscripts was created in , perhaps shortly after the grandmaster’s death, and is a compilation of fencing, medical and astrological writings.

The new generation of the Liechtenauer tradition began writing treatise after treatise, and used their works to secure the patronage of the Imperial . Throughout the 15th and early 16th centuries a succession of German fencing masters wrote treatises based on the principles laid down by Liechtenauer, expanding his original teachings with new techniques and new weapons, such as the sword and buckler, falchion and poleaxe.

The last great master of the Liechtenauer tradition we have record of was , who’s manual of 1570 is a massive, incredibly detailed and lavishly illustrated fechtbuch, covering all of the tradition’s weapons: longsword, dagger, short and longstaves, polearms, dagger fighting, and the dusack.4 He was also the first German master to introduce a new weapon and a new style of fencing, the Italian rapier, which he modified to fit the Liechtenauer conceptual framework. This massive work was filled with detailed engravings and was a complete, step-by-step how to fencing manual. Meyer’s manual was influential enough to be reprinted in , again in , and to be largely reprinted5 in at least two 17 th century manuals by other authors.6

The Italian Masters Medieval Italy was a patchwork of feuding principalities, free-republics and cities under Papal rule, all of whom seemed to excel first and foremost at finding reasons to go to war with one another. Condottieri, or mercenary soldiers, came from all ranks of society and traveled from city to city, army to army, selling their services. Culturally, it was also far ahead of the rest of Europe in terms of education and literacy. While Germany in was a very definitely medieval society, Italy was already entering its Renaissance.

3 Hans-Peter Hils, Master Johann Liechtenauer’s kunst des langen schwerts Frankfurt am Main, 1985. 4 Jeffrey Forgeng has also just-published a modern edition of Meyer in The Art of Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1570, Greenhill, 2006. 5 “Plagiarized” as a modern writer would see it. However, plagiarization is largely a modern era (18th century) concept. 6 Jacob Sutor, New Künstliches Fechtbuch (1612) and Theodore Verolini, Der Kunstliche Fechter (1679) da Premariacco was born into this factitious society around the year 1340. A member of a minor noble house in , a region of northeastern Italy, he seems to have been almost immediately drawn into the life of the itinerant swordsman. Like Liechtenauer before him, dei Liberi traveled widely and studied under a variety of Italian and German masters, systematizing their lessons into his own, unique art. He eventually entered the service of the powerful Marquis of , Niccolò III d’Este, and at his request, composed a book, Il Fior di Battaglia The Flower of ”attle, for him in . This large manuscript covered the use of the principal knightly weapons of sword, poleaxe, spear and dagger, as well as wrestling, in and out of armour, on foot and on horseback.

In his book’s prologue, dei Liberi provided a number of details of his own life, the most interesting of which is mention of the five he fought against rival masters. He also names his principle students, most of whom were well-known mercenary and military commanders of the late 14th century. Although dei Liberi wrote that he had read and owned many books on the art of fencing, no record survives of what these works or their authors might have been, and the Il Fior di Battaglia stands as the earliest surviving Italian martial arts text. Although he remains a shadowy figure, as the father of Italian martial arts, dei Liberi’s fame was still great enough to produce two biographies over the ensuing centuries and to have his name appropriated today for both the main drag of his home town and a rather lack-luster winery.

Approximately seventy years later, Filippo Vadi of Pisa produced a small, painted martial arts book De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi Of the “rt of Sword Combat, dedicated to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. “ clear disciple of the dei Liberi school, his work also has some clear departures in nomenclature and methodology, and may either represent a sub-tradition of the dei Liberi heritage, or be evidence of the school’s evolution during the th century.

A second great tradition of Italian swordsmanship originated in around the same time as dei Liberi’s, and long outlived it. Lippo di Bartolomeo Dardi, an expert in mathematics, geometry, astrology and astronomy, was a professor at the University of Bologna, and founded a fencing school there in 1412.7 Tradition names him as the author of a now lost work on geometry and swordsmanship. The Dardi School taught a staggering variety of weapons and close- quarter combat: the one-handed sword, used alone and in conjunction with bucklers, shields, the dagger, cloak, and an armoured gauntlet, the two-handed sword, halberd, , spear, winged spear, partizan, partizan and shield, dagger, cloak and dagger and unarmed defenses against the dagger, to be used in both civilian and military encounters. Although this school originated in the 15th century, it is only known to us through the line of masters who began to publish printed books in the 16th century, the most famous of which was “chille Marozzo’s Opera Nova New Word of . This is the man whom Victorian scholars wrongly considered the father of true fencing. Whatever the title of his work, Marozzo was neither a founder nor a particular innovator; other than being a printed book, depicting men in the pumpkin-shaped pants characteristic of the 16th century, there is little in his book that would have seemed odd to dei Liberi or Vadi. But whether he was really the hot new kid on the block or not, Marozzo’s book is both massive and illustrated, qualities that allowed it be continue to be reprinted well into the 1620s, suggesting that the Bolognese tradition continued throughout the Renaissance.

7 Francesco Novati, , in arnis, sine arnis, equester, pedester. 1906., p. 108, note 179. This school has also been dated as late as the 1420s. R Records also remain from maestri d’arme from unrelated traditions of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The most notable was Pietro Monte, another master in the service of Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, who was the author of a variety of printed books on philosophy, the martial arts and related practices. His Collectanea, written in the late 15th century and published in 1509, not only presents a unique system of combat, but covers a dizzying variety of weapons, wrestling plays, physical conditioning, jousting tactics and techniques, and arms and armour nomenclature.8 Finally, from 1553 we have the only surviving treatise of a possible Neapolitan school, Le tre giornate, of Marcantonio Pagano. Despite being written well into the Renaissance, Pagano’s work focuses on medieval weapons: the two-handed sword, , and a slashing spear, the coltello inhastato pole knife.

Although later fencing masters continued to dedicate space to , halberd, sword and buckler and two-handed sword, by the late-16th century all of these traditional weapons were being rapidly eclipsed by a new, purely civilian style of fencing built around a new weapon, the rapier. Although Bonaventura Pistofilo produced a massive work on spear, halberd and partisan in 1621, and the rapier master Francesco Alfieri turned his attentions to the two-handed sword in 1653, the world had changed, and it was clear that the old arte dell’armizare (art of arms) was passing away.

England Once we leave central Europe, our records get very thin. While fencing masters were apparently wandering from city to city and court to court throughout central Europe, refining their arts and setting up show where they could find patronage, it seems that the English nobility had not warmed to the discipline of arms being an open commodity. A 13th century law of King Edward I stating:

Foreasmuch as Fools who delight in Mischief, do learn to fence with Buckler, and thereby are the more encouraged to commit their Follies, it is Provided and enjoined that noone shall keep schule or tych the Art of Fencing with the Bouckler, within the City, by Night or by Day, and if any do so, he shall be imprisoned for Forty Days.9

Whereas continental fencing masters came from mercantile and knightly families, in England they were often associated with simple tradesmen, such as cheese makers and fish-mongers. Therefore, much of the knightly training in England may have continued in the old fostering tradition, with a household appointed to train youthful charges. In either case, the association with the lower classes and the lower levels of literacy in a rural country like England than were seen in contemporary Italy and southern Germany may be why the total corpus of surviving medieval English fencing literature consists of three fragmentary poems on the use of the longsword and staff, written in a rural dialect of Middle English that reads to modern audiences like Chaucer trying to write an instructional manual after an all-night drinking binge.

8 Until very recently, these books have gone largely unnoticed. For more see Sydney Anglo, “The Man Who Taught Leonardo Darts,” Antiquaries Journal, LXIX (1989), pp. 261 – 278. 9 Luders, A and Tomlins, Sir T. E., Statutes of the Realms, 1810 - 1828. France Although a country known as the birthplace of chivalry, we have even less information from France than we do England. While medieval French literature resounds with clear depictions of combat and even evidence of a developed technical vocabulary, we have only a single combat manual, Le jeu de la hache “xe-Play, a th century treatise on the poleaxe.

Iberia (Spain and Portugal) The records of the Iberian peninsula are almost as scant as those of France, and focus entirely on mounted combat. The earliest Iberian work was written by a king, Dom Duarte of Portugal, in 1423. This short work, the Regimentio de las armas, is not a fencing manual, but rather addresses how a knight should train at arms. Duarte wrote a second, longer work, the Bem Cavalgar (Art of Good Horsemanship), in 1434, which focused largely on the art of jousting, with a small chapter of wrestling.10

Throughout the 15 th - 16 th centuries, a succession of Iberian noblemen, such as Ponç de Menaguerra of Valencia (1493) and Juan Quixada de Reayo (1548) produced treatises on mounted, armoured combat, with sword and lance, both in battle and in the lists.

Conclusions Contrary to the popular notion of armoured blindly hewing at one another, medieval masters-at-arms taught sophisticated methods of fighting in battle, personal defense or judicial combat, in and out of armour, both on horse and on foot. Although none of these traditions have survived to the modern day, the large corpus of illustrated and text fencing books the masters recorded provide us a key to unlocking this rich time capsule of our martial heritage.

10 Several large portions of Duarte’s Bem Cavalgar has been translated in Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989, pp. 197 - 205.