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Scenes from a 15th Century
German Fencing School
The video clips on this page show some of the techniques and weapons forms
taught to students in martial arts schools in the 1400s. The techniques are
taken from German martial arts treatises, called Fechtbücher (sg. Fechtbuch),
written by martial arts masters of the period. The longsword, armored longsword, dagger, and wrestling techniques are taken
from the Starhemberg Fechtbuch, dated 1452. The staff techniques come from
the printed Fechtbuch of Andre Paurenfeindt, published in 1516.
In the years between the Middle Ages and the present, these techniques were
lost. While the books themselves have survived, the knowledge of how to perform
these techniques has been forgotten. Many of the texts are intentionally
vague and misleading, in order to prevent someone from learning these
techniques except under the tutelage of a master.
In
recent years, students of medieval martial arts around the world have begun
to study and reinterpret these lost martial arts based on the material in the
surviving treatises. Members of the Higgins Armory Sword Guild have taken a
significant role in this research and rediscovery.
Here, they present some of the techniques from those lost martial arts as
they might have been practiced toward the end of the Middle Ages.
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