Who read the manuals back then?

[ksiajdn]

I know this may sound irrelevant to the whole thing here, but just a quick question:
Who read the fighting manuals back in the Middle Ages? Nobles? Mercenaries? Taking in consideration that being able to read was not so common back then, of course!

[David_Knight]

Not to split hairs, but when asking questions of this nature, bear in mind that the earliest extant fechtbucher are from the late Middle Ages (late 14th / early 15th C.), and the vast majority are firmly placed in the Renaissance.

Before the rise of an educated middle class at the close of the medieval period, feudal society was divided into "those who pray" (clergy), "those who work" (serfs), and "those who fight" (nobility). As a professional fighting class, noblemen would be the obvious target demographic; in fact, at least one author specifically warned against sharing the techniques in his manual with low-born men, and many of the earlier texts depict armored battlefield systems that would be useless to anyone unable to afford a full panoply.

This changed somewhat in the Renaissance, when these arts began to disappear from the battlefield but were still useful for self-defense or judicial dueling among both the noblility and the new middle class. Paulus Hector Mair, for example, was a 16th C. burgher who collected fechtbucher. He was a minor bureaucrat in Augsburg, but certainly not a noble. However, the Munich edition of his "Ultimate Book of the Art of Athletics" was sold to Duke Albert V. of Bavaria in 1567 for a hefty sum.

[Shane Smith]

Not to split hairs, but when asking questions of this nature, bear in mind that the earliest extant fechtbucher are from the late Middle Ages (late 14th / early 15th C.), and the vast majority are firmly placed in the Renaissance.

I-33 is arguably 13th century.

Who read them? The Swordsmen in service of the Noble's that commisioned them is my best guess (At least in Fiores case).

[Andrew Kesterson]

It's also important to note that even many Nobles, even some that found their way into Court, sometimes couldn't read. Combine this with the fact that the Clergy (Bishops and Archbishops, which were appointed by and usually held allegiance to the king) would be required to go into battle at times, and it may be safe to assume that - alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic - many clergy taught how to fight "for God and King". Seeing as, of course, the Clergy were the only ones who could always be expected to be literate.

Not that far of a stretch, really.

[Jake_Norwood]

We know that Mair, who was some kind of local Burocrat, collected them (and was hung for embezzling to enrich his collection?). I'm quite fuzzy on the details, but in 1500s it appears that the emerging middle class and other cityfolk were reading (and writing) the manuals.

Jake

[Andrew Kesterson]

That's true Jake, I was referring to the mid-late Medieval period (12th - 14th centuries), where the middle class still couldn't read much. But with the rise of the middle merchant class, that started changing around the late 14th and early 15th centuries. And like you said, by the 16th, most people were reading and writing, so it can probly be assumed lots of people were reading them.

Off topic, but if anyone here has never researched it, the Wars of the Roses provide a very detailed picture of how the rise of the middle class - and the infighting of the english nobility - effectively killed feudalism in medieval Britain (because all the lords killed one another), and ushered in the Renaissance. I just got done with a book about it, and it's very interesting stuff. (Made even more interesting because, apparently, my ancestors lost their estates when backing Edmund [Earl of Richmond] Tudor. You never know what you'll find out when you look back on history.)

[Jake_Norwood]

That's true Jake, I was referring to the mid-late Medieval period (12th - 14th centuries), where the middle class still couldn't read much

In which case you're talking about 2 manuals, both written by priests.

Jake