Eine deutsche Version dieses Beitrags findest du hier.

I’ve been reading Pietro Monte’s “Collected Martial Arts and Exercises” recently and came across a chapter called “On the way to run” and I though it was hilarious and insightful to see how an educated person from the early 1500s describes the mundane act of running.

I find this passage particularly insightful because it can serve as a simple case study for interpreting physical movement from historical texts. While not everyone is familiar with how to fence, everyone is more or less familiar with what running looks like. With your understanding of running, try reading this passage as if you were not familiar with the concept and wanted to reconstruct it. That is a little bit what it is like to reconstruct historical fencing from texts.

Without further ado, here is the English translation by Mike Prendergast and Ingrid Sperber:

Book 2, Chapter 148 “On the way to run”

When we want to run, the breath is to be held back in ourselves, and strength is to be sent into the shoulders, and the body should always vigorously hang a little to the front, though upwards, and go on the points of the feet. Finally the top of the forehead should go before the point of the foot by at least one ell, so much that it seems always to want to fall forwards, and we should support ourselves with long strides, which do not allow us to fall, and it is fitting always to have such a mind that it seems to us that the course is only one step, since in that we can let go of ourselves a little, and all the way to the end we should go with this mind. The hands should go open and extended and hard. The arms though should be recollected upwards, and the legs should bend upright at the knees, that is, not allowing them to go back much, except that the feet should be lifted upwards, and the points of the feet should hang outwards a little; and it is appropriate to open the legs much, so that they take long strides; nevertheless we should hang forward as much as has been said, with the neck and the whole person raised, so that the person goes by itself, but, however, changing the feet must be observed to keep from falling. And among other rules for running, this is truly the best. The beginning and the end on which a man should be supported when he wants to exert himself in running, are to be observed differently, namely, above all opening the legs by the thighs as much as possible, for in this way the strides are long and the runner does not fall, and for the man to quickly catch on to this way of running and be trained in it he should for a few days, while walking without running, get used to opening the legs as much as possible by the upper part, so that the strides become very long, and having assumed this habit of walking it is easy to keep it when we are running.

Pietro Monte (1457-1509)
Exercitiorum Atque Artis Militaris Collectanea
(“Collected Martial Arts and Exercises“) published 27 July 1509
English translation by Mike Prendergast and Ingrid Sperber available here