Interview with Sydney Anglo, the author of The Martial Arts of Renaissance

8/14/2019 Interview with Sydney Anglo, the author of The Martial Arts of Renaissance

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Via: http://www.thehaca.com/spotlight/MAoREpreview.htm

ARMA Exclusive

The MartialArts of

Renaissance

Europe

By Dr. Sydney Anglo

Yale University Press, 2000.

A groundbreaking revolu tionary work of

scholarship by ARMA' s leading adviser.

Both practitioner and scholars of historicalfencing have long awaited this book and it

is worth the wait. It would be no

exaggeration to call this book the most

important work on historical fencing andEuropean martial arts in more than 100years. There can be no question that its

revelations will come as a wave of

knowledge to the masses thirsting for factsabout our European martial heritage. It

comes as a cold bucket of water for thosethinking previous books on the "history of

fencing" had covered it all. From now on,

surely no work on fencing or any fightingarts will be produced without citing its

enormous material as a major source. Thisis the major reference work on the historyof Medieval & Renaissance fencing for our

generation.

Read Exclusive Excerpts!Read an interview with the Author!

Review of the Book

All images reprinted by permission of the publisher.Yale University Press, 2000. All Rights Reserved.
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Balletic homicide on the duelling field; stabbing and wrestling in tavern brawls; deceits andbrutalities in street affrays; mountedencounters by armoured knights locked in desperate

hand-to-hand combat these were the martial arts of Renaissance Europe. In this book

Sydney Anglo, a leading historian of the Renaissance and its symbolism, provides the firstcomplete study of the martial arts from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries.

The Twentieth century has been captivated by oriental martial arts and their roots within

Eastern societies. Yet the West too, as Anglo shows, developed its own styles of ritualized

combat, similarly linked to contemporary social and scientific concerns. During the

Renaissance physical exercise was regarded as central to the education of knights and

gentlemen. Soldiers wielded a variety of weapons on the battlefield, and it was normal for

civilians to carry swords and know how to use them. In schools across the continent,

rofessional masters-of-arms were the artists who taught the lethal skills necessary to survive

in a society where violence was endemic and life cheap.

These ancient masters-of-arms, anxious to advertise their skills and record them for posterity,

have left awealth of evidence to reconstruct and illustrate their arts much of it used here

or the first time: detailed scholarly treaties, sketches by jobbing artists or magnificent

images by Durer and Cranach, descriptions of real combat, and an abundance of weapons

and armour.

With copious and precise illustration, Anglo explains the significance of martial arts in

Renaissance education and everyday life. His book provides the fullest illustratedaccount

of the social implications of one-to-one combat training.

Inthis extensively illustrated book Sydney Anglo, a leading historian of the Renaissance andits symbolism, provides the first complete study of the martial arts from the late fifteenth to

the late seventeenth century. He explains the significance of martial arts in Renaissance

education and everyday life and offers a full account of the social implications of one-to-one

combat training. Like the martial arts of Eastern societies, ritualized combat in the West was

linked to contemporary social and scientific concerns, Anglo shows. During the Renaissance,

hysical exercise was regarded as central to the education of knights and gentlemen. Soldiers

wielded a variety of weapons on the battlefield, and it was normal for civilians to carry

swords and know how to use them. In schools across the continent, professional masters-of-

arms taught the skills necessary to survive in a society where violence was endemic and life

cheap. Anglo draws on awealth of evidence from detailed treatises and sketches by

obbing artists to magnificent images by Duerer and Cranach and descriptions of real

combat, weapons and armor to reconstruct and illustrate the arts taught by these ancient
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masters-at-arms.

Sydney Anglois research professor of history at the University of Wales. Among his

publications are Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy(1969),Machiavelli: a

Dissection (1969) andImages of Tudor Kingship (1992).

Yale University Press

New Haven and London,August 2000

416 pp. 180 black-and-white illus. +32 colour plates 256x192mm.

ISBN 0 300 083352 1 35.00

Chapter Contents:

IViolence in the classroom: Medieval

and Renaissance masters of arms

IIThe notation and illustration of movement

in combat manuals

III

Foot combat with swords: myths and

realitiesIV Sword fighting: vocabulary and taxonomy

V Staff weapons

VI Bare hands, daggers, and knives

VII Arms and armour

VIIIMounted combat (1): jousting with heavy

lance

IX Mounted combat (2): cut, thrust and smash

X Duels, brawls and battles

Exclusive Excerpts from

The Marti al Arts of Renaissance

Europe

Introduction

Both the significance of these arts, and the

fact that they have been largely ignored by

historians, are easily established. While

nobody has ever doubted the importance of

expertise in the handling of weapons to the

knightly classes of medieval Europe, our

knowledge of what these skills were and

how they were acquired remains generalized

and inexact. More remarkably, the same

holds true of the Renaissance when, despite

the constant reiteration by humanisteducational theorists of the value of training

the body as well as the mind, we still know

next to nothing about the practice of physical

education and the provision of combat

training for youths.

Furthermore, the techniques of personal

violence were studied not only by emperors,

kings, and princes, but also by their most

humble subjects. The carrying and the use oflethal weapons was normal throughout the

social hierarchy.

From the late thirteenth to the mid-

nineteenth centuries, artists worked with

masters of arms trying to record the

techniques of personal combat.

... the masters sought to bring their skills to a

wider audience...recording series of

movements and of conveyinginformationsystems of movement notation


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and illustration.

and it is largely because of theirendeavours to give some sort of permanence

to their ideas that we are able to attempt a

reconstruction of a very important butrelatively little-studied subject in the history

of ideasthe martial arts of renaissanceEurope.

But it is still necessary to establish the

martial arts within the broader contexts of

intellectual, military, and art history while

establishing more precisely what these

activities were, and how they were

systematized.

But their neglect [by historians] still

constitutes an historiographical curiosity.

The only serious treatment of these matters

has been by historians of fencing, by

students of arms and armour and, more

recently, by re-enactors and enthusiasts for

historical modes of combat. Unfortunately,

historians of fencing were at their most

active a century ago when they confined

themselves principally to tracing the

evolution of swordsmanship towards a

wholly notional ideal constituted by their

own practice; while, in any case, sword play

was only one part of the many activities

which together constituted the martial arts of

the Renaissance. Specialists in arms and

armour have carried out much meticulous

research but, in their case, the centre of

interest has inevitably been more with

artefacts than activities. Serious modern re-

enactors, on the other hand, while frequentlyaware of a far wider range of combat

techniques than the old fencing historians

and far more pragmatic in theirapproach

to physical action than the armour

specialists, still tend to base their

reconstructions upon a limited number of

primary sourcesalthough this situation ischanging rapidly."
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A great many problems areinvolved here:

the influence of historical, military and civil

fashion; the definition of what precisely

constitutes fencing; and debate concerning

the use of point an edge, general principles of

fighting, the mechanics of movement, and thepsychology of combat."

In conclusion [in The Martial Arts of

Renaissance Europe] I briefly consider

therelationship (or irrelation) between the

techniques of personal combatas taught bymedieval and renaissance European mastersand real fighting either on the battlefield, the

dueling field, or in streets and taverns.

...the licence with which I interpret the renaissance Europe of my title requires, perhaps, aword of explanation. Although the bulk of the material in this book derives from late fifteenth

to early seventeenth-century sources, I believe that in the history of ideas there are fewprecise cutoff dates and I have, accordingly, pushed as far back as the thirteenth century and

as far forward as the eighteenth (occasionally even to the twentieth) century simply because

the sense of the material demands it. In those earliest treatises there are techniques of

exposition, as well as descriptions of modes of combat, which were to be repeated and

developed by the maters of the sixteenth century and later.

Similarly, some combat techniques receive their most sophisticated exposition in later works

which I use to throw a retrospective light on texts which are otherwise obscure, while it has

also seemed worthwhile, from time to time, to demonstrate essential continuities. No master

of arms woke up one morning to find that his teaching had been rendered obsolete overnight

because the Middle Ages had suddenly ended or that he had just missed the Renaissance by a

few minutes.
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From Chapter 4

La Communicativa

The problem facing the teacher, admired in hypothesis by

Marcelli and Hope, is to a large extent the central issue ofmy own study. While most masters agreed that there was no

substitute for practical demonstration by an instructor,

many of them still tried to convey the essentials of their art

in books and found, inevitably, that this was a difficult

thing to do. Indeed, without some sort of agreed technical

vocabulary and taxonomic conventions, it was almost an

impossibility.

Unfortunately, since all treatises had to be studied by their

readers without benefit of the authors motions, how wascomprehensibility to be achieved?

Marco Docciolini must have expressed the misgivings of

many when he explained that while, in his own book, he

had tried to describe as clearly as was within his power the rules and methods necessary for

the exercise of the sword alone or accompanied by some other arm, he knew that having todescribe many minutiae and many particular things concerning this art, it is almost impossible

to represent it with the clarity that it perhaps demands.

The majority of masters thought otherwise and preferred straightforward exposition although,

whatever the literary form used, most authors would have agreed with Marcelli that theirprincipal aim was to achieve clarity. It is also evident that they believed it possible to achieve

this: first by deducing, from a multiplicity of sword, arm, foot and body movements, some

communicable general principles; and then, by analysing particular actions and arranging

them in sequences, to form some kind of system. This required both practical expertise and

intellectual grasp; and the rarity of such a combination of skills was remarked by Fiore who

claimed that, out of a thousand so-called masters, you could scarcely find four goodscholars; and of those four good scholars there will not beone good master.

Certainly all those masters who chose to write down their

views were obliged, consciously or unconsciously, toconsider therelationships not only between the theory and

practice of fencing but also between the language and

content of their works; and some believed the task to be well

within their capacity.

These issues may be illuminated, somewhat paradoxically,

by two examples of unintelligibility. Of these, the first,

Johann LiechtenauersArt of the Long Sword, is a seminalwork in the history of swordsmanship. The fourteenth-

century German master had a thorough grasp of his art,

understood how men fought, and had worked out not onlygeneral principles of combat but also a method for
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instructing his disciples. Unfortunately, his work is recorded in gnomic verses of such

obscurity thatwithout the key provided by the comments, elaborations and pictorialrepresentations bequeathed to us by his followers (and their followers)it would remain forever enigmatic.

This may, in part, be due to the deliberate obfuscation of a master reluctant to cast the pearlsof a secret art before swinish uninitiatesalthough a similar contempt for men rustical andof vile condition did not prevent Filippo di Vadi from tryinghard to make his manuscript asclear as possible to courtiers, scholars, barons, princes, dukes and kings.

On the other hand, since Liechtenauers verses appear to have had a mnemonic function, it isnot strange that they should be abstruse. One would scarcely remember a mnemonic which

did not leave out more than it put in. But beyond that, Liechtenauers obscurity is also theresult of a nomenclature and a system of classification which fail to match the sophistication

of the combat techniques they record. In this respect, the other example of communication

failure provides an interesting comparison. The literary remains of English masters of arms at

the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are exiguous.

The existence of these writings can only be due to some desire on the part of the masters to

instruct potential readers and, unlike Liechtenauers verses, they seem not to have been eitherconsciously arcane or elliptical. Face to face, and sword in hand, these men may even have

been effective teachers; but they had no conception of what was required to explain the

complexities of movement to anybody not physically in their presence. They assume so much

knowledge, and use so many unexplained technical terms, that their writings are now barely

comprehensible.

Of course, it is possible to gloss several of the terms and to make informed guesses about

others but, even when that has been done, no clear notion of the combat technique can emerge

because there are no relevant English texts or pictures which would provide us with the kind

of key we have for Liechtenauer. The terminology used by these medieval English masters

did not survive in later works and, given the present state of our knowledge, much of their

meaning is simply not recoverable.

Yet the basic components of sword combat must have been evident to anyone who considered

the matter seriously. The weapon had to be brought into action and held effectively. The

swordsman could adopt a variety of stances; move his sword in different ways; attack an

opponent with different parts of his blade, from different angles, and aiming at different

targets. He could move in various directions, leading with either right or left foot, andadapting his pace according to circumstances. Movements could be performed to lure an

opponent into responding in a certain way, thereby giving opportunity for another type of

assault.

And, of course, when an opponent was himself trying to launch attacks, his blade could be

either knocked aside or deflected in such a way as to initiate ones own counter-attack. Inother words, there were stances, positions and targets; passes and counter-passes; cuts, thrusts

and feints; parries and ripostes. Masters of arms would have understood all this from combat

experience and from teaching; and some basic matters, such as the different types of cut

possible with a sword, were standardized very quickly. And diagrams illustrating vertical,

horizontal and oblique strokes have featured in fencing manuals throughout their history andwere also used to clarify the handling of staff weapons. Yet it took centuries for any uniform


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method of organizing all this material to develop, and for a generally accepted language of

swordsmanship to emerge: while some crucial issues, such as getting the sword into action

and gripping it properly, were consistently overlooked.

In 1389, Hanko Dbringer explained this last point: Here note that Liechtenauer divides a

person in four parts, as if he were to draw a line on the body from the crown of the head downbetween his legs, and another line along the belt horizontally across the body. Thus there are

four quarters, a right and a left over the belt, and also under the belt. Thus there are four

openings, each of which has particular techniques which are used against it.

The system (even when presented in a disorderly fashion)

was comprehensive, intelligent and practical and it is not

surprising that Liechtenauers divisions, headings andnomenclatureamplified and rearranged to make for betterunderstandingremained the foundation of Germanswordsmanship until, in the early seventeenth century, the

long sword lost its status as the principal German weapon forpersonal combat. Not only was the tiny original text

constantly swollen by annotations and explanations but later

masters also relentlessly added to the list of postures and

blows so that, although Liechtenauers original list for thelong sword was never superseded, the number of names

necessary for understanding the combat grew to a

bewildering multiplicity.

The medieval and renaissance German masters also copied

each others works, added their own opinions, incorporatedfresh information as they came across it, and included material on judicial duels, tournaments

and even analytical studies of arms and armour. The result was a kind of bibliographical

snowball...

While some of these masters expanded Liechtenauers text verbally, others sought to clarifythe phases and variations of different types of combat by using illustrations rather than long

descriptions. The pictographic method of MS. I.33 only reappeared with the advent of

printing, and the manuscript manuals never adopted it to elucidate the art of the long sword.

But, for the historian, the loss of an easily read notation is more than out-weighed by the

recording of an abundance of postures, thrusts, cuts and wrestling techniques; by a concern to

depict footwork accurately; by proper identification of target areas; and by the way in whichthe whole system was firmly set within a coherent, all-embracing combat philosophy.

Essentially, the descriptive method boiled down to providing a separate name for every

conceivable fighting posture and to illustrating these from a rich repertory of frozen action

picturesa method which long remained the norm not only in Germany but elsewhere inEurope. As a way of conveying information it was, without doubt, cumbersome; and a

modern reader might easily conclude that a system of swordsmanship described in this

fashion must have been correspondingly inefficient, especially in view of the cannibalism of

the German manuscript tradition.

Yet any descriptive system of movement, however well conceived, must inevitably be

obscure to someone unfamiliar with its conventions.


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The truth of the matter is that, considered as a corpus rather than as individual items, the

German Fechtbcherare not at all obscure and they enable us to recognize that

Liechtenauers opaque verses concealed a martial art of deadly seriousness and efficacywhich was sufficiently communicable to have occupied the energies of masters and their

pupils for nearly three centuries.

But the differences between the texts are as revealing

as their similarities.

[Liechtenauer gives] the same openings, counters,

stances, the techniques for evading an opponentsblade, counters to be used when an opponent attacks

first, the principal cuts, engagements or binding with

crossed swords, cuts at an opponents hands; andadvice on close grappling, including using the

pommel of ones sword.

In all, of Liechtenauers original 211 lines dealingwith the long sword, Pauernfeindt cites 166, every

one of which is omitted by the author ofLa Noble

Science who otherwise renders the sense of the

German text with care. Evidently, while the long-

sword fighting of the German school was considered

well worth translating into French, its idiosyncratic

nomenclature (ox, plough, fool, from the roof, rage

cut, crown cut, squint cut and so on) was not. The

Frenchmans decision is understandable. But fancifulterminology long remained the order of the day: and

not only in Germany. A colourful multiplicity of

guards and blows was also characteristic of the early

Italian masters, first under German influence and then continuing under its own momentum.

Marozzo, says Every time that you parry orare attacked you will always assume one of theabove mentioned guards. And this is the trouble. Many of the guards are obviously onlystages of one and the same movement and, as Viggiani was soon to point out, it was possible

to break everything up into an infinity of pieces. It is this arbitrariness which makes it

pointless to attempt to match the blows and guards of the various masters who have left us a

record of their two-hand sword fighting. It is not difficult to find similarities between many ofthe postures depicted in Fiore, Talhoffer, Drer, Marozzo and others: but, when all is saidand done, the difference between many of the guards is too trifling to merit the dignity of the

separate titles which were accorded them.

The precise definition of the art of fencing was something which never troubled medieval and

renaissance masters though it has bothered historians who want to establish the origins of

what they refer to asscientific fencing, by which they mean modern sword playwith theemphasis on play. It took centuries before the

wordsfencing,Fechten, escrime, esgrima,scrimia,scherma and so on, came to indicate

exclusively the use of the single sword without any other weapon or unarmed self-defence

skills. Many medieval masters taught such fighting, but it was only one of several martial artsin their repertory and never the most important. They generally accorded primacy to the long


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sword: and the use of that, as we have seen, was anything but unscientific.

The book also contains awealth of rare and previously unknown material

from numerous Masters of Defence and their works.

Copyright 2000 Yale University Press, All Rights Reserved, Reprinted by Permission of theAuthor
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Interview with Sydney Anglo, the author of The Martial Arts of Renaissance

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