Fight-book provenance?

[Jeffrey Hull]

Has anyone made an analysis of fight-book provenance, vis-a-vis why some areas seem to have less surviving now than others?

It seems that Germany and Italy are the primary origins of most surviving fight-books.

However, a country like France was just as much part of chivalry as they. Did the French Revolution, for example, lead to great loss of such in the collections of nobility?

And what of the possibility of the Vatican having untold fight-books stored in its archival labyrinth, perhaps waiting to be seen again?

Just some thoughts.

JH

[John_Clements]

Yeah, good question. This has been raised several times before in discussions. Various theories have been circulated as to why most all the sources are German & Italian and so little French or English before 1600.

[Jeffrey Hull]

Thanks - I am happy to know others have the same question.

Admitted conjecture: Would Cromwell's bully-boys have burnt fight-books during indiscriminate burnings, and/or wittingly because such illustrated and thus glorified the human body, as per Puritan-thinking? I believe, for example, that a certain cathedral (Canterbury?) retained its original stained-glass windows only because Milton intervened to prevent its "purifying".

Obviously, the exchange of bombing between Britain and Germany certainly did nothing good regarding preservation of antiquities in either country. Oakeshott spoke of swords lost or badly altered due to destruction during WWII. Quite sad. JH

[John_Clements]

While I'm sure many masters in many countries wrote them, I think the lack of general historical references to fencing texts in certain countries during the 14th-16th centuries would suggest they were uncommon in them. There are a few refs to specific texts that no copy is now known to exist, but none of them From France or England. The reasons why are certainly open to speculation.

[Jared L. Cass]

The one country that's constantly bugged me as to why no fencing manuals were ever written (that I know of), is Ireland.

Historically Ireland was one of the earliest most literate and educated (among the learned) countries, with a great history of constant warfare through-out the ages. So why no manuals?

The monks/scribes kept detailed records on such subjects as weather conditions, viking raids, church politics, royal politics, and battles...just to name a few.

With such an almost obsessive compulsion to write things down, I'm at a loss to figure out why they didn't bother to go into detail about the way an individual would fight.

Maybe it was the simple fact that warfare was a constant that we don't have any Irish manuals. Maybe they all got destroyed. But even then, we know that the Book of Kells was sent to England for safe keeping when times looked especially rough in Ireland. Wouldn't they have done the same for other books/manuscripts?

Like I said, this has really bugged me.

Jared L. Cass, ARMA Associate, Wisconsin

ps: for those of you interested, a cool book to read is "Wars of the Irish Kings" by David Willis McCullough.

[Guest]

Perhaps they didn´t need a manual because they always fought. Hand to hand knowlage of figthing. manuals ar for preserving knowlage. Why make a manual when you have houndred living great fighter??

[Jared L. Cass]

That could very well be. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> I wish I knew for certain though.

Wouldn't that be great to have the writings of an Irish master? Especially for those of us who can trace our families back to that island. All of you out there with German, Italian, and English blood running through you're veins are lucky folks!

Jared L. Cass, ARMA Associate, Wisconsin

[Jake_Norwood]

Yeah, because my German ancestry makes the manuals make more sense...

Jake