Category: English
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A modern gloss on Fiore’s longsword
Introduction Fiore’s art of arms is not easy to summarize because it is not presented as an outline of principles or a how-to manual, but as a set of illustrative examples. This is consistent with the scholastic method of teaching that was common in the middle ages. This a form of inductive pedagogy, where the…
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Revisiting old Perspectives
Over the last couple months, my perspective has shifted on several subjects in historical fencing. Looking back, the insight seems obvious, but until the idea was presented to me, I probably wouldn’t have considered it since I had unspoken assumptions about the subjects that kept me from considering them. Hit Quality: What about your buddies?!…
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Hit Quality and Aspirational Fencing
Eine deutsche Version dieses Beitrags findest du hier. The goal in fencing is to hit the opponent without being hit in return. More specifically, we want to hit effectively without being hit effectively in return. What “effectively” means is context dependent and sometimes ambiguous. In modern Olympic sport fencing, for example, touches are detected by an…
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What’s your “fencing ideology”?
Eine deutsche Version dieses Beitrags findest du hier. The word “ideology” comes with a lot of baggage. For some, an “ideology” is a dogmatic dedication to a set of beliefs; “rational” people don’t have an ideology, they just have beliefs they arrived at “rationally”! I don’t think about it that way. For me, an ideology is…
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Brain Injuries
Too long, didn’t read: Your strikes should be as light as possible while still accomplishing your training goals. Eine deutsche Version dieses Beitrags findest du hier. Good advice for a sword fight, bad advice for a training partner 15th century Italian fencing master Philippo di Vadi advises us to go “hammering the head from every…
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‘Fior di Battaglia’ vs. ‘Die Blume des Kampfes’
In einem anderen Beitrag habe ich die vier bekannten Manuskripte von Fiores Fior di Battalgia kurz vorgestellt. Es gibt eine Gruppe von deutschen Manuskripten aus dem 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert, die viele Bilder aufweisen, die den Bildern von Fiores Werk sehr ähneln. In Anlehnung an diese Ähnlichkeit wurde diesen Manuskripten den Spitznamen “Die Blume des…
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Sport Fencing vs. Historical Fencing
The modern practice of “historical fencing” is difficult to define. While the debate about what constitutes historical fencing will certainly never end, most definitions include at least a couple of the following characteristics: In the historical periods we study, what we now call “historical fencing” was, of course, just “fencing”. We have “fencing” today too…
Blume des Kampfes 