Question on Fiore

[Rod-Thornton]

I was reading through the various versions of Fiore this past week and a question came to mind after a statement in his opening commentary.

When there was fighting in the lists, was it ever done with blunts (almost much the way we ourselves may bout with blunted steel) in leui of sharp weapons. I.e., were some of those fights in the list not necessarily always "for keeps"???

[Jeffrey Hull]

As English and other sources indicate, often the same grounds utilised for tourney at a given time would likewise serve for duel at another time. So the same lists could serve double-duty.

I would think, especially by the time of Dei Liberi, that when fighting in the lists for tourney, then they used blunted weaponry, like rebatre-swords and wooden mace-cudgels, and probably wore special bloated designs of helms & armour. And certainly the thicker lances with coronel-tips, sometimes designed to explode apart dramtically upon impact, differed from the much more spear-like, sharp-pointed lances for war and duel.

However, if it was judicial duel, as I assume Dei Liberi tends to talk about, then it was for keeps, so the combatants wielded battlefield design weaponry and armour.

[Scott A. Richardson]

I know Talhoffer goes into a great amount of detail regarding the seriousness of combat in the lists, going so far as to specify exactly what causes should allow for judicial combat. These include serious crimes such as murder, rape, and treason. The mechanism for such a judicial fight would be that one person makes an accusation against another, which the accussed denied. Combat, then, was the only alternative.

This implies the deadly seriousness of such combat, and therefore, that blunts were not used. Should the accused admit to the crime, then he would be punished accordingly; should the accusser recant, then he would himself be punished. Therefore, we can be certain that these fights never ended in a "mea culpa" amounting to a big oops, with everyone going their own way. These facts indicate that sharps were used to their utmost effect, and that this was deadly business. (Jeffery Hull, in this tranlation and interpretation of Talhoffer's 1459 fechbuch, does an excellent job in describing this in far greater detail and clarity).

[Matt Bryant]

What I have read so far makes me agree with Jeff Hull. I would like to add, however, that there were weapons designed purely for dueling in the lists. Spiked pavises (those huge shields with spikes and pointies all over them), modified swords (with spiked pommels, harpoon shaped crossguards, and rondel disks placed in front of where the front hand would grasp in half-swording) and these weird box-on-a-rope-on-a-pole flail-like weapons are examples that I have seen illustrated in various manuals.

But as Jeff said, battlefield type weaponry was also used.

[Matthew_Anderson]

I was reading through the various versions of Fiore this past week and a question came to mind after a statement in his opening commentary.

When there was fighting in the lists, was it ever done with blunts (almost much the way we ourselves may bout with blunted steel) in leui of sharp weapons. I.e., were some of those fights in the list not necessarily always "for keeps"???

Fiore does seem, in his prolouge, to downplay the dangers of fighting in the lysts in armour as compared to duelling with sharp weapons with no armour. However, I believe this is more a comment on the effectivness of armour than the use of less than lethal weapons. Certainly, blunt or otherwise safer versions of weapons were used for tournaments, but most of what we see in Flos Duellatorum and other fight books is meant to depict judicial dueliing IMO and was definately played for keeps.

[Jaron Bernstein]

He does distinguish between grappling for training/play and for earnest self defense.

[Jeffrey Hull]

I would like to add, however, that there were weapons designed purely for dueling in the lists. Spiked pavises (those huge shields with spikes and pointies all over them), modified swords (with spiked pommels, harpoon shaped crossguards, and rondel disks placed in front of where the front hand would grasp in half-swording) and these weird box-on-a-rope-on-a-pole flail-like weapons are examples that I have seen illustrated in various manuals.

But as Jeff said, battlefield type weaponry was also used.

Yes, you are quite correct, I did not mean to exclude those specialised dueling weaponry that were unlikely to be seen on battlefield.

I guess to clarify -- the pollaxe, in my opinion, was of such a design that it make sense that it would be found both on dueling grounds and battlefield, and the illustration I found supports that. It was a special weapon but not specialised.