Scholarly section Acta Periodica Duellatorum volume 7, issue 1 (2019) – DOI 10.2478/apd-2019-0001 Tradition, Innovation, Re-enactment: Hans Talhoffer’s Unusual Weapons Ariella Elema
[email protected] Multiple manuscripts of Hans Talhoffer’s fifteenth-century Fechtbuch depict duels between combatants wielding faceted clubs and tall shields, as well as combatants in tight-fitting grey clothing, and duels between a man and a woman. Legal ordinances and court records from Talhoffer’s time and before him provide context for these scenarios and this equipment. Customary law regarding judicial duels varied significantly between German regions. It also changed over time, shaped by influences that sometimes originated well outside German-speaking lands. Talhoffer’s work and the Fechtbücher that followed him reflect a practice that spanned multiple regions, preserving fading traditions while embracing new innovations. Keywords – trials by battle, trials by combat, judicial duels, Hans Talhoffer, clubs (weapons), swords, shields I. TALHOFFER’S EQUIPMENT The fifteenth-century manuscripts attributed to Hans Talhoffer contain some of the most easily recognizable and most reproduced images in the European fight book corpus. In particular, Talhoffer’s sequences of drawings depicting judicial duellists on foot battling with tall shields, and a woman fighting a man, spark curiosity both inside the historical European martial arts community and outside it: the unusual clubs, the fancifully shaped shields taller than their users, and the tight body suits seem utterly unlike most other images of combat produced in his period or before it.1 Where did such equipment come from? Was it ever employed in a recorded judicial duel? Are there examples to be found beyond Talhoffer and the lineage of German Fechtbücher that followed his example? 1 The manuscripts of Talhoffer containing the sequences with long shields are the following: Gotha, Universitäts- und Forschungsbibliothek, MS Chart.A.558, ff.