Many people ask me, what kind of fighting is portrayed in the fencing manuals of the Middle Ages? Were they sports, dueling, or real battlefield combat?
In the case of HEMA, the manuals still around we have are primarily designed for one or more of three purposes
1)
judicial combat, which has certain artificial qualities (it's a one-on- one fight, with equal weapons etc.) but in most (though not all) cases it's a real fight to the death with lethal weapons*. If you were sentanced to face a judicial combat (a fairly rare occurance) you would be confined for 3 to 6 months, during which time you would be trained to fight. The trainers were experts in this martial art, sometimes Fencing Masters. In fact under certain circumstancs, some of them would rent their services, these people were called kemphe, it was considered a disreputable passtime but may have even been practiced at one time or another by some of the famous Masters. But the judicial combats in these manuals are a real, harsh, brutal martial art.
2)
private duels many of the 16th - 17th Century manuals for rapier are designed for private dueling. This is also a lethal combat, which may have an overlay of some kind of etiquette, but was quite brutal and pragmatic form of fighting, these manuals have a rowdy swashbuckling vibe, fighting with rapier, dagger, cloaks, candlesticks, stools etc. and using every trick in the book. Later in the 18th Century a new more formal type of dueling arose around the use of the smallsword, and these 'Classical Fencing' manuals can be a bit more 'sportified', in fact leading to the modern olympic style sport- fencing we have today.
3)
Sport combat In "German" (Central European) fencing, right along side the lethal fighting, there also existed a type of sport fencing called Schulfechten, named after the fechtchules or fencing schools, this goes all the way back to at least the 13th Century though it became more and more prevalent over time. This is not so much like the sport fencing we think of today, and has a much more working class realm than the Aristocratic salons of Classical fencing. It was more like 19th Century English prize fighting. (In fact a lot of people don't know that 19th Centruy English prize fighting typically included fencing matches with broadswords). Winning a fight usually involved cutting the scalp of your opponent. There were high stakes associated with this sport, because clubs whose members were recognized by the government as fencing Masters**, such as the famous brotherhoods like the Marxbruder and their rivals, the Federfechter, who were granted the right to certify soldiers as expert fencers who could recieve double pay (
Dopplesoldner), a very lucrative franchise.
Brotherhood of St. Mark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Federfechter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Some of the later 16th Century longsword manuals arguably focus on schulefechten, Joachim Meyer for example, but the system is closely linked to the earlier 14th-15th Century judicial combat systems of the Lichtenauer tradition.
In the East, the situattion is more complex. In China Martial Arts were suppressed in the 17th-18th Century, and then Colonialism of the 19th and early 20th century and the Cultural Revolution both wrought their havoc on all aspects of the surviving culture but especially martial arts (which was directly linked to many uprisings, for example the Boxer Rebellion). The shaolin temple was suppressed, for example, and some of it's members fled to the Peking Opera, which incorporated some of the techniques into their act, this is the legacy that Jackie Chan has. Most of what was left of "Tai-Chi" (Taji), which was originally a fencing system, was reduced to a form of exercize. Today some of the old original systems are being painstakingly reconstructed, both in China and here in the US. There is a network of people fighting with the Jian. They have some literary evidence to work from, I think there is at least one fencing manual survives.
In Japan, martial arts were suppressed by Meiji government in the late 19th century, and then even more so by the Americans after WW II, in both cases due to the association with bellicose Samurai culture, deemed incompatible with modern society. The old martial arts of Japan were turned into a sport, Kenjustu became Kendo, Jujitsu became Judo and etc. Even most of the katanas were taken away by US occupation soldiers in the late 40's and 1950's.
In other places like the Philippines and Malaysia, I think the tradition is a bit more intact though there has been many disruptions there as well.
Here is a partial list of the manuals which have been discovered so far from the various European traditions:
Martial arts manual - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eastern martial arts, while benefiting from having a contiguous living tradition, went through that sportification process often forcibly imposed by internal or external government forces. Both sides of this fence are learning from each other lately though I think; most HEMA schools (my own small group included) are made up mostly of people with strong backgrounds in Eastern Martial arts of some kind, whereas many Eastern fencing schools are taking a cue from HEMA and updating their systems from available literary evidence from various sources which are increasingly being sought out. Bruce Lee himself famously incorporated elements of English boxing, Graeco-Roman wrestling, and Classical fencing into his syncretic fighting system.
There are some Eastern manuals, for example this 16th Century Korean manual:
Muyejebo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And this 18th Century one
Which RpG gamers shouild really like since it is one of the very few I know of which includes two-weapon fighting
http://www.muye24ki.com/muye24ki/ssanggum_chongdo.jpg
And there are also some uninterrupted traditions have lived alongside sport versions of fencing for centuries, such as the Sikh
Gatka and Filipino
Arnis traditions,
Zulu stick fighting and Nigerian wrestling (among others) in Africa, and quite a few others in South Asia and the Pacific.
*There are also a different type of judicial combat which uses some special weapons just for that purpose, like those dueling shields. But for the most part this is sword vs. sword and etc.
** To be recognized as a fencing Master you had to put out your shingle and face all-comers in fight. The early 15th Century Master Fiore Dei Liberi allegedly fought 5 successful duels with rival Masters, possibly for this reason
G.
