Book review: Interrelated New Publications Illuminate Freydal

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Book review: Das Tower Fechtbuch

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“En garde – un, deux!”: Military Sabre Fencing in Nineteenth-century Switzerland

This article presents recent research into military fencing in Switzerland, with a focus on manuals and regulation written to help instructors teach sabre fencing in Swiss officers’ schools. The publications discussed here, essentially sabre fencing manuals, can be grouped into a unique corpus based on the only official regulation for sabre fencing. They are interesting elements that can help scholars to understand not only the teaching and practice of fencing inside the infantry officers’ schools, but also the more technical aspects of an individual system: all publications in the corpus are part of the same system, although with minor variations. The system, called Contre-pointe (or Stichsäbel in some of the publications), is similar to others in France and elsewhere in Europe. Another central part of the system was its sportive aspect and use in military and civil competitions. Surprisingly, this meant that infantry officers were taught a type of fencing designed not solely for fighting on the battlefield and arguably more suited for the fencing room.

Sword and Buckler in Masorah Figurata

Two manuscripts produced in early fourteenth-century German lands reflect similar iconography of the fighting with Sword and Buckler; one is the well-known fencing manual, Leeds, Royal Armouries, MS I. 33, produced ca. 1320, and the other is a Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France héb. 9, made in 1304, that will be the focus of this article. This preliminary research intends to demonstrate how Hebrew illuminated manuscripts can shed more light on the study of fight books iconography.

A new manuscript of Joachim Meyer (1561)

The manuscript of Joachim Meyer dated 1561 kept in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, was ignored by specialised bibliographical works on fencing and absent of the secondary literature about fight books. This re-discovery sheds a new light on the story of the composition of the treatise printed in 1570 by this same author. This Research Note briefly presents the manuscript and the perspectives it opens up pending a larger scientific investigation. It contains a description of the manuscript and its content, as well as new findings regarding biographical information on the author. The manuscript images are available as downloadable dataset attached to the article for research purposes, with the kind permission of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (licensed material). We thank the French Federation for Historical European Martial Arts (FFAMHE) for the financial support.

The Siete Partidas: A Repository of Mediaeval Military and Tactical Instruction

The Siete Partidas, compiled in the mid-13th century for the Castilian king Alfonso X el Sabio, constituted the code of law for Castile and later Spain. Despite the practicality of their instructions and principles on warfare, they are not well studied. This article will review the military provisions, paying special attention to commanders, the battlefield formations for infantry and cavalry, and the rules on booty and ransom, in the context of the time. While it is difficult to pinpoint unequivocal influences, the passages are demonstrably practical within the contemporary military doctrine and the ideals of chivalry. As such, they offer a unique insight into the mechanics of leadership, the battlefield formations of the High Middle Ages, as well as the crucial function of spoils as a source of status-compatible income for the knightly estate and lower nobility, so adding depth and texture to this little-studied yet essential aspect of mediaeval military, economic, and political organisation.

Book review: The Invention of Martial Arts

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