Exchange between east and west?

[haydniuchisutton]

(Gene)First of all, your friend is incorrect. The earliest known fechtbuch, I.33 was written hundreds of years before Talhoffer and thus before these expeditions

Only about 10 years before Marco Polo's return from the orient -I wouldn't suggest that he brought back Eastern MA though but it should be remembered that the communication between East and West wasn't completely non-existant. Italians in particular traded with the Tartars who in turn ruled China -all before I.33.

Personnally I agree with the consensous that WMA and EMA went seperate ways, if parrallel, after the decline of the Hellenic world. But it is very hard to point to any medevil WMA texts as any sort of hard proof of this. IMHO. But I'm no historian so take that with a pinch of salt.

[Mike Cartier]

Actually, Jim Arvantis, founder of modern Pankration, suggests it was the other way around; that Alexander the Great brought Greek fighting techniques to Asia when he invaded India. I really don't want to speculate on that.

Yeah I don't subscribe to that particular theory at all. At leats there is no proof that I can see. Humans need to fight and so we all create fighting systems.

Looking for the source of all martial arts would be as difficult as searching for the source of religion.

[haydniuchisutton]

I buy it to a point.
It is silly to say that before Alexander campaigned in Asia, Asia didn’t have martial arts.

But it is very reasonable to say that Pankration influenced the martial arts of the cultures Alexander conquered.

[Rabbe J.O. Laine]

While the events in question did happen relatively late on, here is a link to an SFI thread your friend might find interesting: http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15461

Rabbe

[Douglas S]

While obviously I think this question is absurd, because the European arts differ significantly from their asian counterparts in many respects, it suggested a different question to me.

I wouldn't assume too much. Fiore has some really scary similarities to Japanese bujutsu, the sword and grappling in particular, but even extending to some spear techniques...

Makes you wonder.

[Gene Tausk]

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[Jack Lynn]

I think that a piece of evidence that has not been addressed is the simple fact that, to attain knighthood, a period of over a decade of training was required. It's hard to think what they would be doing if not training in some form of martial art. This point is backed up by the dramatic effect knights had when they fought other combatants. By and large, knights could rip apart almost anything they met on the battlefield. This I would argue is evidence of extensive training in martial disciplines and traditions. These are the things that make up a martial art.

[GeorgeHill]

A decade? Cite your source. I was under the impression it pretty much involved geting someone with authority to smack you on the shoulders with the flat of a sword.

[Jaron Bernstein]

Well, knighting is just a ceremony. And the ceremony may have varied in places and times. And there was no NTP internationally certified knight training program. But by the same token that is a bit like saying that to hold elected office you just need to be sworn in with a brief ceremony. Sure, you do, but long before that oath of office is more often than not years of political apprenticeship.

A knight had a period of apprenticeship in his art that lasted for some varied amount of years in most cases. Not a unified standard program by any stretch, but clearly the skills they had (riding in combat, using various weapons proficiently, using armor, some of the cultural aspects, maybe even leadership and admin. training, etc.) were not just things you could learn just because, as Monty Python put it, "some watery bink lobbed a scimitar at you from a lake" in a short ceremony. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

[Casper Bradak]

Like he said, it varied, and the contemporary distinction was typically "knights of the bath" and "knights of the sword".
Ideally, many knights began as early as 6 or 7 years old, which generally amounts to more than a decade of training prior to knighthood if you include the non-martial disciplines taught.
If an individual knight of the proper authority deemed someone who had not been through that worthy, he could knight him in a very abbreviated fashion.

[steve hick]

I.33 might not be the oldest to have existed ever, as we know from Fiore, there were Italian manuals that preceded his. There might have existed a manual (or something) by the del Serpente which predated I.33 (and was, if we can believe one author, written to describe a new style of swordplay based upon cultural exchange with the Moslem world). Obvious parallels exist among northern African and southern European stick arts (Tatheb and Jogo do Pau use very similar handling). A "mediterranian style"

Instead I suppose that cultural exchange happened by those who lived next to each other exchanging methods --they were most often likely to fight after all. Those Tedeshi in Cividale.

[Stacy Clifford]

I didn't say that I.33 is the oldest manual ever written, but at present it is the oldest one that anybody has actually found a copy of. Also, Fiore dates to around 1410 I believe, which is over 100 years after I.33, so earlier Italian manuals still may not predate I.33, but I don't know the guesstimated time frame on the del Serpente.

[John_Clements]

Your friend is clutching at straws. Our earliest manuals do not date from expeditions to Asia. They hold more true to classical elements of Greco-Roman military ideals. This follows a more than 2,400-year-old military tradition within Western civilization of close-combat proficiency.

If anything, you might counter propose another theory: that Alexander's army, which inlcuded Spartans, and is known to have had pankrationist as well as stick fighters among it, brought systematic martial arts to India along with all the other arts and sciences they exposed the region to in their military conquests.

[John_Clements]

Yeah, Gene, it wasn’t just pirates either, the Portuguese and Spanish actually fought skirmishes against samurai and their foot soldiers on board ships and in sieges. This is little known but has been documented by scholars in both Japan and the West. I include this in one of my upcoming books along with anecdotes of other martial encounters between Renaissance Europeans and Japanese (if you wonder why you never heard the facts about these before…think about it: if the samurai had really gotten the better end of things you would never cease hearing of it). Despite the volumes and volumes of detailed writings by Europeans visiting Japan in the 16th century (the very golden age of martial arts over there) covering every aspect of their society and culture they never bothered to mention in it anything significant about Japanese martial skills or arms. This is because they saw nothing they didn’t already have back home in some form and generally considered the military technology they encountered to be inferior.

It is a simple fact today that people’s knowledge of Medieval and Renaissance history remains strongly colored by fiction, thereby complicating serious efforts to reestablish historical European martial arts of this period.
Study history, people, not popular entertainment.

JC

[JohnDemick]

I heard the same thing, someone recently suggested that the Europeans copied the Japanesse Kenjitsu techniques. He went on to say thats when thats how the 2 handed longsword came about. Well if I recall correctly the earliest known longsword dates back to 1240, several decades before Marco Polo's travels. I guess, just like your friend, he was full of bs. Ill also bet that kenjitsu looked nothing like kenjitsu until well after Talhoffer,Fiore or the Codex Wallerstein.

Speaking of which, does anybody have the date of the earliest known Asian fight manual?? Wouldn't it be ironic if it dates later then I.33?