The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe [Hardcover]

Professor Sydney Anglo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 2000

Balletic homicide on the duelling field; stabbing and wrestling in tavern brawls; deceits and brutalities in street affrays; mounted encounters by armoured knights locked in desperate hand-to-hand combat - these were the martial arts of Renaissance Europe. In this book Sydney Anglo, a leading historian of the Renaissance and its symbolism, provides the first complete study of the martial arts from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. The twentieth century has been captivated by oriental martial arts and their roots within Eastern societies. Yet the West too, as Anglo shows, developed its own styles of ritualised combat, similarly linked to contemporary social and scientific concerns. During the Renaissance physical exercise was regarded as central to the education of knights and gentlemen. Soldiers wielded a variety of weapons on the battlefield, and it was normal for civilians to carry swords and know how to use them. In schools across the continent, professional masters-of-arms were the artists who taught the lethal skills necessary to survive in a society where violence was endemic and life cheap. These ancient masters-of-arms, anxious to advertise their skills and record them for posterity, have left a wealth of evidence to reconstruct and illustrate their arts - much of it used here for the first time: detailed scholarly treatises, sketches by jobbing artists or magnificent images by D|rer and Cranach, descriptions of real combat, and an abundance of weapons and armour. With copious and precise illustration, Anglo explains the significance of martial arts in Renaissance education and everyday life. His book provides the fullest illustrated account of the social implications of one-to-one combat training.

Editorial Reviews

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"Fascinating." -- Globe and Mail

From the Inside Flap

Mounted encounters by armored knights locked in desperate hand-to- hand combat, stabbing and wrestling in tavern brawls, deceits and brutalities in street affrays, balletic homicide on the dueling field-these were the martial arts of Renaissance Europe. In this extensively illustrated book Sydney Anglo, a leading historian of the Renaissance and its symbolism, provides the first complete study of the martial arts from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. He explains the significance of martial arts in Renaissance education and everyday life and offers a full account of the social implications of one-to-one combat training.Like the martial arts of Eastern societies, ritualized combat in the West was linked to contemporary social and scientific concerns, Anglo shows. During the Renaissance, physical exercise was regarded as central to the education of knights and gentlemen. Soldiers wielded a variety of weapons on the battlefield, and it was normal for civilians to carry swords and know how to use them. In schools across the continent, professional masters-of-arms taught the skills necessary to survive in a society where violence was endemic and life cheap. Anglo draws on a wealth of evidence-from detailed treatises and sketches by jobbing artists to magnificent images by Dürer and Cranach and descriptions of real combat, weapons and armor-to reconstruct and illustrate the arts taught by these ancient masters-at-arms.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1ST edition (August 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300083521
• ISBN-13: 978-0300083521
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #745,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A profound and valuable contribution, November 8, 2000

By 

Christoph Amberger (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (Hardcover)

Eagerly awaited by historic combat enhusiasts of all persuasions for two years, the pre-release buzz surrounding this work -- characterized by expectant suspense on the one hand and tacky name dropping and tail-wagging subservience on the other -- has turned out not only to be warranted but justified.

Sydney Anglo plunges the reader into a hidden world of combat activity whose presentation has no equal by virtue of its sheer scope and erudite analysis. Lavish illustrations taken from some of the most popular and some of the rarest fighting manuals of renaissance Europe combine with carefully documented and annotated critical commentary to produce a work unparalleled in the field.

The thorough academic approach, combined with Anglo's intelligent and at times humorous personal style, is providing a backbone of respectability and credibility to a subject matter that frequently does its darndest to self-implode any claims to being taken seriously by overvaluing the emotionally affirmative needs of some modern practitioners.

Of course, this book is no How-to-Manual. It does not contain detailed analysis of individual techniqes. Nor does it quite answer the question in which specific combative scenarios the arts summarized under the modern Anglo-American pop culture handle "Martial Arts" were applied. (This particular aspect of mainly legal and extra-legal history might make for a book in itself.)

But that's not the point.

Short on brawn and long on brains, Anglo introduces us to the very core of these arts... the masters themselves... the way they thought... the methods they (and their graphic artists) employed to transmit complex ideas and sophisticated systems of ethics, philosophy, and physical skill to students, patrons, readers, and of course to us.

What makes this book relevant not only to the enthusiast of medieval and renaissane arts, but to the entire Western martial arts community: Anglo foregoes the pat shoe-boxing usually associated with focus on a partiular period. His work doesn't leave the reader stranded in an era that is hermetically sealed off from the modern period:

While rightfully emphasizing the differences between modern sport and ancient art, Anglo provides tantalizing glimpses of continuities... manifest in the literary traditions of individual systems that track the influence of a particular work -- through its reprints, translations and plagiarisms -- from the Renaissance far into the modern period.

One of the Great Books of combative history!

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most important work on the subject in over 100 years, September 8, 2000

By 

John Clements (Houston, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (Hardcover)

It would be no exaggeration to call this book the most important work on historical fencing and European martial arts in more than 100 years. With it Dr. Anglo establishes himself as the unquestioned modern expert on the subject of Medieval and Renaissance martial arts history. Dr. Anglo makes an airtight case that the skills described within historical European fighting texts must be properly studied as "martial arts", and not as the traditional view of merely "fencing" (in the modern sense of the word). For most all of its history "fencing" meant not just swordplay, but the armed skills of fighting with weapons and always included unarmed techniques.

At 384 pages and with more than 200 illustrations this is an immense treasure-trove for all those interested in swordsmanship and the history of European combat. Dr. Anglo begins his volume not with a "history of fencing", but with the documentation for "masters of arms" (or masters of defence) within European civilization from the 13th to the 17th centuries. His primary concern is how they created systems of notation to convey information about combat movement, the various ways they went about achieving this communication, and what they thought they were achieving as a result. He establishes that, fitting within the classic Western tradition of arts and letters, many masters of arms were purposely recording their martial teachings as literary works for the education of future students. He achieves a detailed task of putting the works of the masters of arms into their historical and social context while discussing the limitations of researching these texts. He also presents the material with frequent dry humor and appreciation for irony.

The book is hard to put down and pleasantly written to avoid either academic jargon or lightheartedness. Most any chapter can be opened and read on its own. The work contains fascinating sections such as "Foot Combat With Swords: Myths and Realties", "Diagrams, Mathematics, and Geometry in Swordplay", "Lawyers, Humanists, and the Martial Arts", and "Arms and armor". Annoyingly however, the footnotes are all in the back, which makes it inconvenient to look up what are in many cases highly relevant comments.

Anglo's concern throughout the work is not that of a traditional fencer trying to trace the origin of a sport, for he considers today's fencing to have little relation to the violent killing arts of his subject matter. Nor is his approach that of an arms collector or museum curator concerned with objects rather than application and effects. Instead, his view is that of the historian and specifically a historian of ideas. Thus his interest lies in what the masters thought they were trying to accomplish and how they tried to accomplish it.

Of the ten chapters, that on methods of notation and use of geometry within fighting texts contains some of the book's major elements. It covers considerable ground not previously addressed in this subject. The comprehensive chapter on period wrestling and grappling (or unarmed fighting) is unquestionably the most detailed and authoritative treatment of the subject yet attempted. The chapters on mounted combat (with lance and sword) bring an authority and credibility to an area traditionally overlooked or given to incredulous speculation. There are also detailed sections on dagger use. The most fascinating chapter however is that on vocabulary and lexicon of swordsmanship in which Dr. Anglo traces the major works and their significance as well as how the authors viewed their subject. This is accomplished with the goal of placing them (finally) within their rightful place of European military, artistic, social, and cultural history. It presents European martial culture in regard to a classic Western tradition -that of emphasizing technical learning and printed knowledge in every art and science.

Anglo makes a point several times to emphasize the tremendous errors of 19th century fencing historians improperly denigrating Medieval & Renaissance fencing skills as primitive and untutored and how this ignorance persist still today. Anglo does not hide the disregard he holds for the irrelevance of either modern sport fencing or its historians to the book's subject matter. He also debunks the mistaken belief of fencing having ever gone from "cutting" to "thrusting" and the view of thrusting as somehow being a recent evolution to a superior form of fencing. He instead describes how warriors have always relied on both from cutting and thrusting and how there have always been many forms of swords and many established styles for using them. The related section on the historical facts behind "thrusting vs. cutting" itself reveals a wealth of previously unknown elements.

Along with the innumerable facts and tidbits he offers on the works of historical fencing masters, what Anglo does best is present the subject within its historical and cultural context. As a historian of ideas, he insists on fixing the content of Medieval and Renaissance fencing manuals clearly within the greater intellectual, philosophical, and scientific elements of European civilizations. It will be no mistake to say this book will surely change the whole perspective by which historical Western martial arts are viewed. It is a joy that the work is so heavily illustrated.

The only real weakness of the book is that the subject could easily fill another volume. There is also unfortunately very little discussion of the contents of the source texts or their combat instructions. There can be no question that Anglo's revelations will come as a welcome wave of knowledge to the masses thirsting for facts about our European martial heritage. It will also come as a cold bucket of water for those thinking previous books on the "history of fencing" had said it all. From now on, no work on fencing or European fighting arts will be produced without citing its enormous material as a major source. It is will surely be long considered the major reference work on the history of Medieval & Renaissance martial arts for our generation. In doing so Anglo cements the unquestionable title as the foremost authority on historical fencing manuals.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for serious European martial artists, December 27, 2001

By 

Stephen Shellenbean (Merrimack, NH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (Hardcover)

One of the greatest problems facing modern enthusiasts of our European martial history is the availability (or lack there of) of scholarly study from the viewpoint of the period in which these arts were practiced. Too often they are approached from a standpoint of their applications in sport fencing or stage combat. Anglo has tried very hard to separate himself from these ties and look at the arts from their position in history, and while he occasionally falls shy, in most instances he succeeds remarkably well.
As a practitioner of medieval combat I was pleased to see many of the theories and postulations many of us have espoused borne out and explained in a scholarly text. The case Anglo makes for a systematic basis for training well before the Renaissance is well stated and helps to legitimize the work reenactors are performing today. As others have stated, this is not a "how to" manual, but is rather an indispensable tool to assist in researching masters and understanding the environment in which these skills were used. I have informed all my students and friends in the field that this book needs to be in their collection. I am certain I will reference it many times in the future.