Before MS 133

[Jake_Norwood]

How much do we really know about how they fought before we ahve recorded manuals. I was just yesterday presented with the absurd notion that another group that does "historical" fighting was closer to reality than, say, us, because what they did was "before" the the time period of the manuals. I tried to point out that his claims were false, but what really got to me is that I don't know jack about how they fought in, say, 1066, other than the equipment they used. I know we can do a lot of very reasonable extrapolation based on equipment and the manuals that come later, but do we have anything else?

[Shane Smith]

Any organization or individual that claims a knowledge of what passed for swordsmanship before the written and artistic historical records is engaging in supposition at best,out-right fraud at worst.That said,educated supposition CAN lead one to a valid conclusion .As long as it's advertised as educated reasoning and supposition,I have no problem with it if it works within the principles the historical Masters held to be martial truth as relayed to us in their writings.It is my opinion that much of the sword and shield work in Medieval Swordsmanship is largely suppostion on Johns part...but I also agree with his conclusions as a whole on the matter.I never discount anothers educated reasoning out-of-hand(especially if it seems soundly reasoned out and is effective in application). <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

[John_Clements]

All there is to go on from the time before I.33, would be limited artwork like the Bayeau tapesty, and a few chronicles making reference to war and of course, the various Sagas, which tend to be apocryphal. The rest is only speculation, so anything based on all that can't possibly in any way be more realistic, reliable, or accurate than practice following actual later teachings, can it?

JC

[Jake_Norwood]

That's what I figured. Good to know I wasn't off.

[Jay Vail]

Jake, I have often wondered myself how weapons were used before the I33. I strongly suspect that they were used the same as depicted in that manuscript. For one thing, it certainly merely records practice what must have been old at that time. These techniques were well accepted and you see the same ones used for buckler play hundreds of years later. There is no reason to think that they do not have a long pedigree well preceding creation of the I33.

Second, I have been paying close attention to classical sources, particularly depictions of single combat and guards. If anyone is interested, I will make arrangements to post a couple of pictures. Many carvings show guards close or identical to those advocated by the medieval masters. The biggest point of departure from what the pre-medievalist fighters were doing and our practice is that combat then largely involved the sword and shield. (Sword and shield does not seem to be a big area of interest in ARMA yet.) Most of the ancients’ techniques thus involved solving the problem of getting around the shield. However, so far I have not seen or read anything that invalidates what JC said in “Medieval Swordsmanship” about sword and shield fighting, which I consider to be a good source on sword and shield practice. Very common sensical.

On the wrestling front, the techniques depicted in Talhoffer and Fiore are in my opinion of very ancient origin. I have in my collection a picture, for instance, of a classical statute carved more than 2000 years ago showing a fighter locking his opponent’s elbow against his stomach as shown in Fiore and the Codex Wallerstein (and also, BTW, as practiced in judo/jujitsu, aka waki gatame).

[Shane Smith]

Hey Jay, We down at ARMA VAB do train a good bit with S&amp;S,and though I can't speak for everyone,I would like to see the pics you're talking about. We actually use padded weapons and padded shields for our sparring so that we can go with unrestricted speed just as in our longsword work.Matt has even found a way to make the padded shields so that they do not destroy the swords(this was a BIG problem initially).Besides that,we also use the other three tools in the arsenal just as we do with our longsword training.I highly recommend cross-training in this way . Mixed-weapons sparring is a real eye-opener. <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

[Randall Pleasant]

Ernie Perez of the ARMA DFW study group also has a wll made padded shield that has not damaged any of our padded swords.

[steve hick]

I'd like to add to what John says, in that we have inklings that there might have been something more than what we have.

There is a section in Doebringer, a heading, on sword and shield, no more. There are mentions of manuals of approximately the date of the I.33, but they could still exist somewhere, or not, or never did. I am still lukewarm on the trail of del /dal Serpente, finding more references and descriptions but nothing solid.

What we have is secondary material -- chanson, romances, etc., and iconography. I think people are starting to examine stuff from the 14th and 13th centuries and see if we can fit them into our current understanding.

For a work that is flawed, and predates our current analyses by a little, Ray Smith did a dissertation examining secondary sources about 1990. I recommend it more for what it does right that what it does wrong (there's a bunch, but it was a more naive time).

Steve