Mis-information & confusion in historical fencing

[Rod-Thornton]

I was perusing an article in Wikepedia (the online encyclopedia) and came across this claim:

"While by the year 1700 the rapier had been replaced by the lighter smallsword throughout most of Europe, this weapon is probably the oldest European sword that still has a LIVING TRADITION [emphasis added]; that is, fencing masters exist that can trace their lineage of teachers back to the 18th century and before. Two of the most famous of these current-day masters are [names omitted]...."

-(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapier accessed 10.4.05)

???Is this true? It was my understanding that our Western Martial Heritage has no extant living traditions owing to the pragmatic approach of western warfare and the supercedence of sword-training with ballistic weaponry training. Is the claim in the source simply dead wrong? Frankly, it seems every time I try to cross correlate historical readings with other writings, I get as many contradictions as I get confirmations of what I am checking out.

[Matthew_Anderson]

Well, that's the problem with Wikipedia isn't it? Anyone can pretty much post whatever they want there and jeez, if it's on the internet, it must be true right? <img src="/forum/images/icons/smirk.gif" alt="" /> I think a lot of classical fencers seem to have a need to cling to this concept of a "living tradition" to add legitimacy to what they are doing and promote themselves as experts on Historical Fencing styles. Often, they imply if not state outright, that unless you are studying under someone they recognize as a "master", you are wasting your time in studying Historical fencing. When pressed for details, most of these "living traditions" turn out to be somewhat short on documentation and rather short lived, i.e. not from the period when these weapons were used in deadly earnest. One of these "living traditionalists" makes a pretty big point of mentioning his lineage on several other forums quite often, even including longsword as part of the tradition. When asked to provide details, it turned out that this tradition only extended back to the 20th century! By this logic, many of us are part of living traditions too! The truth is modern fencing masters have inherited little if any of the efficient, effective, deadly combat styles of their rennaissaince counterparts. Many of them are quite good with the classical weapons of foil, sabre and epee, used within the "gentlemanly" rule set but many of them actually bear a marked disdain for the earlier styles, believing them inferior to their modern forms. There are several good articles related to this topic here on the site:

http://www.thearma.org/essays/barbasetti.htm

http://www.thearma.org/essays/expert.htm

http://www.thearma.org/essays/classical.htm

[Rod-Thornton]

...I especially liked the insight behind this statement:

"...many practitioners and enthusiasts pursuing medieval &amp; renaissance fighting arts consider sport fencing and its recent rediscovery of classical fencing to be the part of problem, not the solution...."

Thanks for the links.

[Mike Chidester]

Well, at least the article on ARMA is correct.

[John_Clements]

Considering how limited and restricted modern/classical fencing is in contrast to the brutal sophisticated effectivness of Renaissance martial arts with its demonstrable diversity of techniques, weapons, and grappling skills, anyone professing expertise ala' the narrow art of modern/classical fencing, is a fool in my opinion.

See our recent article on Myths under the Spotlihgt section.

Gotta run,

JC