Hey Guys:
Some of you took what I wrote totally wrong. To clear it up:
*Talhoffer's techniques are deadly techniques!*
Fightbooks portray deadly encounters, no doubt. The nature of my article should have made that quite clear that it is not playfighting shown by Talhoffer. But I am certain that it was more practical for the fellow-fencers, then as now, to practice safely with each other, rather than slaughtering each other in literal replication of the slaughter portrayed in the fight-book.
What I meant was that in practice with a partner, then as now, the weaponry would have been blunt, thus bare hands would be alright for gripping such a blade. But the students would have understood that on battlefield or in duelling yard, you would wear gloves/gauntlets (or at least have proper gripping technique perfected) and wield sharp weapons. So the artwork was contextually understood, just as practice is contextually understood. Thus one really does not actually stab and dismember and behead and so forth one's training partner -- thus the fightbooks portray men slaughtering each other with sharps, but I am quite certain that the men who read and studied them contemporarily must have done their training with blunts when sparring. I did not think such a distinction needed to be stated. <img src="/forum/images/icons/confused.gif" alt="" />
Again, if we were to be literalists about say, Meyer-1570, then we would disbelieve that the techniques therein were deadly and applicable to sharp swords, since the fencers in there all use "Fechtfeder" (practice-blunts). Get what I mean? <img src="/forum/images/icons/smirk.gif" alt="" />
And of course, one can do half-swording and murder-striking with bare hands, if one knows how to properly do that. I have done so, and many fine fellows here have described how to do so. But publicly, I must advocate use of gloves while doing that sort of thing with sharps while practice-cutting/striking. And I advocate use of wasters or blunts when sparring with a partner. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />
By the way DG: I hope that what we all wrote was helpful.
JH
