This is part of the SHotS Wayback Machine:
Götz von Berlichingen owes his lasting fame to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s eponymous 1743 drama, and specifically a line when he calls out to the commander of the superior Imperial troops:
„Vor Ihro Kaiserliche Majestät hab ich, wie immer, schuldigen Respekt. Er aber, sag’s ihm, er kann mich im Arsch lecken.“
“I pay my due respect to His Imperial Majesty. You, however, tell him, you can kiss my ass!”
Posted in 16th Century, Antiquarian Books, Images, Sword Fighting, Weapons
Tagged amberger, escrime, fencing, fencing history, götz von Berlichingen, knight with the iron hand
Over the years, we have shown you hand-drawn and hand-painted images from students’ Friendship Albums. This one adds little to our understanding of late 1500’s fencing, but at least it documents the use of German schmeissen being used in the sense of “hitting”…
Posted in 16th Century, fencing, HEMA, Images, Sword Fighting, Transcriptions
Tagged federfechter, marxbrüder
A 1590’s Fechtboden, a pair of fencers, a pair of dussack-wielders, and—what on earth is the little fellah at the center doing? Look what we just found in a French-owned Album amicorum from Nürnberg!
Continue readingPosted in 16th Century, 17th Century, Antiquarian Books, Dussack, fencing, HEMA, Images, Rapier
Tagged fencing, fencing history
by J. Christoph Amberger
More questions than you can shake a stick at… and we answer them all!
Hidden among the stacks of a New York City book dealer, its existence unknown to even the most erudite scholars, the Codex Amberger was lost to history until its chance discovery in 2005. Originally thought to have been created by Albrecht Dürer, now attributed to the sphere of the Augsburg patrician Paulus Hector Mair, it may have been part of a much larger treatise whose remnants are yet to be found….
Posted in 16th Century, Antiquarian Books, HEMA, wrestling
Tagged codex amberger, fechtbuch, fight books, HEMA
Posted in 15th century, 16th Century, fencing, HEMA, quarterstaff, Sword Fighting, Transcriptions
Tagged amberger, codex amberger, Dierk Hagedorn, Paulus hector mair
We may not be up-to-date any more on what old fencing and wrestling manuals are available and accessible by now. But we just found a careful transcription of von Eyb’s fencing and wrestling sections that deserve greater exposure. Here ya go… Continue reading
Posted in 15th century, 16th Century, HEMA, Ordeal, Sword Fighting, Transcriptions, wrestling
Tagged fechtbuch, HEMA, historical european martial arts, Kriegsbuch, von eyb
After many a year of absolutely nothing, the dining room table is now bending with old and new books, reams of print-outs, photographs, articles, bibliographies: We’ve finally started to work on the definitive monograph to the modest 15-page anonymous manuscript fragment we acquired back in 2005.
To sucker as many experts as we can into doing our work for us, we’ll be presenting some of the preliminary work here on FencingClassics… to elicit qualified response and criticism and, yes, lavish praise.
Let’s kick off the process by presenting Sheet 8r, which may prove to be a key element in properly placing the fragment in its proper lineage… Continue reading
We spare no cost to proselytize the combative arts of Europe to the larger web community.
But we’re also not above letting other people foot the bill. Like those 1%ers at Google, who’ve been scanning in old books like there’s no tomorrow. Today, we bring to you a title we’d have given our eye teeth for, had it been available as an antiquarian book just five years ago:
Dr. Karl Wassmannsdorff’s Die Ringkunst des deutschen Mittelalters… Continue reading
The Secret History of the Sword 