Historical fencing, ancient fencing, HEMA, etc. Concepts and acronyms that may sound strange to the vast majority of you or maybe you can imagine what it is about. And it is that, both of what we are going to talk about as the concept as well as the broad jargon that we use in this world are new, but not completely, they simply had been forgotten for a few centuries.
Sport, an activity in itself, is very new with only 30 years of life on the European continent, however, despite being practically in its infancy, it continues to establish itself as a sport and as an activity, and it is for some people who practice it, their way of life. . More than a sport, we speak of an art, which in the binomial “Steel and science” combines its entire being.
We can therefore say that it is a martial art of combat with different weapons, with various schools such as the French, Spanish, German or Italian among others and with periods from the 13th to the 18th century where this type of fencing as well as the treatises and works dedicated to her will die by changing the form of combat in war. Being a cultural manifestation, the passing of the centuries will make a dent in the different forms of European martial art, one of the clearest, is the refinement in the forms on a par with the baroque modes and the elimination of other weapons until we stay in the use of the sword, strictly following its precepts, it became more refined and with a certain classicist rationalism but adopting more dynamic and dramatic forms, with an increasing weight of geometry, mathematics and physical or mechanical laws, each author supposed an innovation on the basis of the previous one for the sake of further improvement.
But returning to the present, it must be made clear that what is involved today in the different associations and the so-called “weapons halls”, is to rebuild martial practice as much as possible based on reading and study exhaustive of the different writings and treatises, being open to modifications and even the introduction of new ideas, without clearly losing the historicist basis. When the objective is to practice and investigate historical or ancient fencing, we cannot invent or assume techniques, we always have to resort to treatise theory. Unfortunately for people who love this martial art, no living tradition or existing school or style of historical fighting skills, as practiced and taught in those periods, have survived intact to our present time.
Let’s make a historical review through the treaties and writings on which we base ourselves as fencers. Before the Late Middle Ages, there are hardly any preserved writings on combat, war and its techniques in the Mediterranean and European environment. Two stand out, the “Oxyrhynchus Papyri” in whose fragments there are mentions of the Greek fight, the current Greco-Roman, although being fragments and in a deplorable state of conservation they cannot be exploited at the level of their practical recovery. The other element to highlight is “De re militari”, translated from the Latin “de lo militari”. It is a book of tactics and strategy written in the fourth century by Vegetius, in late Latin. Many have tried to recover the combat techniques in classical times based on these few works and on literary and artistic ones, but even so, a culture of regulated written transmission of the martial teachings themselves will not emerge. There will be some mentions in works of different types throughout the High Middle Ages to the military theme, an example of this is the famous “Tapestry of Queen Matilde” that narrates, among other events, the battle of Hastings.
Already in the Late Middle Ages, the “Fechtbuch”, combat books, arise in the Germanic environment, in this bosom one of the most important conserved and still worked in dozens of weapons halls is born, the Ms.I33 of the 13th century, being a illuminated and written treatise, explaining guards and dozens of movements with the sword and buckler, a very functional small shield that could easily be carried with itself.
From this medieval base, the first fencing schools and with it the documentation of the work of the students and teachers of the same arise from the hand of Renaissance humanism and the scribe impulse of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Thus schools arise in the different Europeans, highlighting several schools such as the German School, the Spanish School, the Italian School or the French among many others, of course these will export and exchange their styles both among themselves and with their respective colonies, aspect in the which highlights the Spanish.
Let’s do a little review by schools, as well as the weapons evolution that they are introducing.
In Italian fencing, the 1409 treaty stands out “Flos Duellatorum in armis, sine armis, equester, pedestrian” of Fiore dei Liberi. It covers the use of unarmed combat, dagger, polearms, long sword, and the use of armor in combat on foot and on horseback. Also highlight the important contribution of Camilo Agrippa, architect, mathematician, fencer who introduced the mathematical vision of fencing, fundamental in the writings from that moment.
Already in the seventeenth century, the rapier sword took control and became enormously popular, especially thanks to the publication of “Of the schermo overo scienza d’arme” of the well-known fencer Salvator Fabris. The style of this, would be the dominant not only in all of Italy but in Germanic fencing, dozens of masters published their writings linked to Fabris, it is therefore fundamental.
Let us now turn to the aforementioned German or Germanic Fencing. Undoubtedly, until the Italian influence of Fabris, the dominant weapon was the two-handed longsword. Langschwertuntil baroque refinement in dueling gave way to rapiers and Italian rapiers as early as the 17th century.
If there is a keyword that is Fechtbucher, “combat manual” And if there is a fundamental teacher, that is Johannes Liechtenauer, who until the end of the 16th century would create an authentic school that generation after generation of German fencers would be maintained. It has great success, especially in two-handed weapons, but its use in warfare or dueling is progressively disappearing, and despite the fact that in the 16th century there were attempts to recover the previous tradition, the Italian influence and the baroque refinement around the rapier gave way. to the one-handed weapons, during the Renaissance swords such as the Point and Cut, more refined in the vision of the nobility of the time, had been born. Currently this school is fundamental in the historicist reconstruction of two-handed weapons.
We fully enter our country. In Spanish fencing, which will be known over time as True Skill, known throughout Europe, admired and competed in equal parts, based mainly on a weapon, the rapier sword.
The people of the Hispanic kingdoms began the treatise activity later, well into the fifteenth century, but no writings from that time are preserved, simply some mentioned in other works, already in the sixteenth century, in 1532, Francisco Román published “Treatise on fencing with figures”, it is believed that it is the foundation of the Spanish Dexterity but it cannot be proven with certainty because it has not been preserved. We will have to wait a few more years, until 1548, for the first preserved treatise to appear, without even being considered “skill”, by Quijada de Reayo, the “Doctrine of the art of chivalry.
The following author is one of the most important and fundamental Spanish fencing masters who laid the foundations for the True Skill, Don Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza and his famous “Of the philosophy of arms and their Dexterity and Christian aggression and defense” published in 1582, with deep theoretical, philosophical and mathematical bases. Destreza becomes something more than a fencing vision, it incorporates references to classical authors, geometry, biomechanics and other children of Renaissance humanism that gave its tail even in Spain. Another fundamental teacher is Luis Pacheco de Narváez, since 1624 the greatest fencing teacher of Felipe IV as well as of the entire kingdom. Based on Carranza, he writes “Book of the greatness of the sword in which many secrets of the one composed by Commander Jerónimo de Carranza are declared”but he is not the only one, he will write almost a dozen more treatises among which we can mention “New and easy way for masters of weapons prowess to be tested” either “New Science and Philosophy of Arms Prowess”, these and those not mentioned written and published throughout the seventeenth century. Other important masters should be mentioned who gave Destreza more written and fencing weight, such as Francisco Lorenz de Rada, with “Nobility of the Sword” among others, Nicolás Tamariz with “Primary and light in true skill” or Francisco Antonio de Ettenhard y Abarca with “Compendium of the fundamentals of the true skill and philosophy of weapons “, among many other authors and works that made this school very famous, at the time and in current ancient fencing. Of course this passed to the new world creating schools there too. The system would be developed until the 19th century, however with the arrival of the Bourbons, the French tradition, which we will explain briefly later, will prevail and will end up displacing Spanish fencing.
The French school was the last to appear, in the 17th century within the widespread Italian fencing, but it separated from it in the Baroque period and already in the Rococo it set aside other weapons to emphasize the use of the rapier and the foil. and already in the first years of the 18th century the foil had displaced the main weapon until then, the rapier, although it continued to be used. It was a lighter, more fluid and elegant style which, in the eyes of the upper classes of the time, was favored. He acquired such mastery that, hand in hand with illustration, the Italian Angelo’s treatise was included in Denis Diderot’s L’Encyclopédie.
From that century to the XIX, fencing throughout Europe suffered a setback against firearms, easier to handle and more effective, even so in the military ranks the fencing traditions were continued. Fencing as a sport emerged from the remains of the dominant French tradition at the end of the 19th century, being included as an Olympic sport in the 1896 Athens Games, the first modern ones. From here, the current sports fencing as we know it is regulated, burying the European martial tradition in oblivion, something that is changing.
For a few decades in Europe, and also in America, various groups and associations have dedicated themselves to the arduous task of historicizing a martial art buried in the pages of history. Since the end of the 19th century, various researchers have dedicated themselves to this and well into the 20th century, highlighting, for example, in Spain, Enrique de Leguina or in Germany, Karl Wassmannsdorf, bases for the current study. Since the 70s of the last century, the impulse of re-enactment groups…