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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 5337881" data-attributes="member: 77019">Imagine this as a scenario for a fantasy film.  In a Medieval Kindgom, a bandit has been captured and convicted of a felony.  The laws of this Kingdom are harsh, his sentence is death.  But he is offered a deal: fight his former accomplices on behalf of the Crown, and sentence will be commuted.  The man fights judicial combats against several local bandits, and slays them.  He is spared the gallows and put on the payroll with title of "Approver", a duelist who fights for the Kingdom.  As an "Approver", he is accompanied by another man called a "Magister", and the two travel to a neighboring county, challenge known criminals there, and kill them in judicial combat.  Then they continue to travel the countryside, slaying the wicked, and bringing justice to a Wild land.That is not a fantasy story, it's historical fact.  The Medieval Kingdom in question was England, the year was 1160 AD, the bandits name was Evrard, and records of his payments have been found by researchers.-<a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/piperollsociety15pipeuoft#page/34/mode/2up" target="_blank">Great Roll of the Pipe for the Sixteenth Year of Henry the Second</a>, Pipe Roll Society (Old Series) vol. 15, p. 34.It is not certain what the precise status of the 'Magister' was.  Several 'Approvers' were  accompanied by a 'magister' whom scholars originally took for a kind of  manager or a Crown prosecutor.   But some of the cases show that the 'magister' was a  former champion rather than an attorney, which means they may have actually been a travelling fight-instructor.  Like something right out of a Samurai movie.Special thanks to Ariela Emena for this research.Professional duelists in Medieval Europe So we know that most of the fencing manuals surviving today are for Judicial combat.  But the fencing manuals we have today are from the 14th Century or later, (almost all of them are from the 15th Century or later) we don't know much of the early history of the European Martial Arts or it's role in Judicial combat, if any, during the Medieval period.Roland Warzecha, a fencing instructor and researcher from the group <a href="http://www.hammaborg.de/en/index.php" target="_blank">Hammaborg</a> in Germany, posted an interesting description of another type of professional duelist in Medieval Germany called a "Kemphe".  I'll quote him here in his own words:<img src="http://www.parttimepolymath.net/Images/man5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />This may be a portrait of the famous Renaissance fencing Master Hans Talhoffer himself.Working as an 'Approver' or a 'Kemphe' was dangerous business, Judicial Combat was no joke.  Illustrations in the 15th Century manuals make that abundantly clear.<img src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_Fechtbuch_Talhoffer_149.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_Fechtbuch_Talhoffer_188.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />It was not unusual for the Church to participate in Judicial combat either. Roland Warczecha pointed out a couple of incidents which exist in period records:Nor was it unheard of for Women to fight in Judicial combats.  But more about that later.</blockquote>

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