Sword Fighting

T

hanks to the works of some 19th century scholars and later by Hollywood, the myth that medieval European Swordsmanship was a crude hack and bash affair has persisted to this day. In reality Medieval Swordsmanship was a highly evolved combative system with sophisticated unarmed and armed techniques.

Dozens of manuscripts describing and/or illustrating combative techniques dating from the early 1300's right up to modern times have over the past 20 years been made available in the public domain.

These conclusively prove that in the middle ages in particular, European armed and unarmed martial arts techniques were just as sophisticated and effective as those developed anywhere else in the world at the time.

Because of the period that we cover, the most relevant of these manuscripts to us are the Tower Manuscript 1.33 and Fiore de Liberi's Flos Duellatorum.

Tower Manuscript 1.33

1.33 is a series of about 40 beautifully drawn colour illustrations with rhyming couplets that describe in some detail how to fight with the sword and buckler (small shield). This is an important document as it is the earliest known "manual" of European combat technique. The sword and buckler is viewed more as a civilian system of self defence or as a self defence system for archers and other lightly armed troops whose prime role in a battle is not to directly physically engage the enemy. So in the Order of the Boar the sword and bucker is the weapon of choice for our foot crew.

Flos Duellatorum

Flos Duellatorum was published around 1410 and covers the Italian sword master Fiore dei Liberi's 50 odd years experience in personal combat. As most of this is from the late 14th century it is of great interest to us. Unlike the above-mentioned Tower Manuscript 1.33 which covers a system used by the average man in the street, Flos Duellatorum is written for the nobility and covers all aspects of the formal duel - from lance combat on horse through to combat on the ground with a number of "knightly weapons" - including dagger, long sword, spear and poll axe.

Flos Duellatorum is also a complete fighting system and we also study it extensively and practice its techniques – both in re-enactments of foot combat and combat from horse.

Medieval Swordsmanship is taught at the Upper Hutt Martial Arts Academy using the techniques documented in the above texts.