There was indeed a Renaissance - Adrian van Bronswijk

In 2022, Dr.Lynette Nusbacher showed „There Was No Renaissance“ in her lecture and practice on Salvator Fabris, making the case that their fencing actions were actually within a countinuous line based on earlier styles and techniques.

In this years workshop we want to approach the subject in question – was there a renaissance (in fencing) – from a different angle: Camilo Agrippas approach to analyzing and teaching fencing techniques and tactics breaks with earlier traditions and acts as a base for more modern didactics and fighting styles. We will dive into what sets Agrippa apart in a short lecture and then look into his method in practice.

About the instructor: Adrian got into HEMA in 2008, after having dabbled in different martial arts since his early teens. Few months in, he already knew he’d want to go all the way. In 2013, Adrian finished his fencing teacher’s degree at the German Academy of Fencing (ADFD) and founded his own fencing school in Lüneburg, north Germany. With his background as a PE/Sports teacher, his focus lies in good biomechanics and healthy execution of the HEMA sports, while always looking for the martial foundations of sword fencing arts.

In historical fencing or HEMA (for Historical European Martial Arts) we reconstruct sword fighting systems from historical sources. Our club focuses on Italian medieval and renaissance sources, fencing with the Spadone (Two-Handed Sword), Spear, Sidesword (One-Handed Sword) together with Shield, Cape, Dagger, you name it!

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[robinmarks]

Well done, as always. Thank you for providing this content, and thanks to Adrian for an excellent presentation.

[MartinGreywolf]

I don't agree with the idea that there was a shift in teaching people swordsmanship out of a book that could be correlated with the Renaissance.

First premise that we don't see rules in medieval books is already shaky, Fiore has about as much explanation of general principles as Meyer does, and much more that someone like (much later) Godinho or Mair do - and Dobringer is almost nothing but general principles, albeit explained somewhat unclearly. From what I've seen, the entire Bolognese school is written in the older I.33 style as well.

What we really see here are two different kinds of treatises. The older I.33 style is meant for someone to learn from that book, or to serve as a reminder. If you go through I.33 play by play, you get a structure of drills that is pretty good at teaching you the ins and outs of the system if you do them in order. Fiore even explicitly states that his book is in order that you should be learning it, and says outright that part of the reason is that the later bits reference the earlier ones.

The second kind of books is something like Fabris, Thibault and all of Destreza. They aren't books you are supposed to learn from, they are rigorous scientific proofs. This isn't just me saying so, Carranza and Thibault (to limit myself to the ones I've read) explicitly state this is what they are doing, and their writing is indeed consistent with Aristotelian style of scientific proof. Of the two, only Thibault pays occasional lip service to actually using his book to train, and only in the first few chapters at that.

The first kind of book is much easier to pick up and learn, because it doesn't sweat the unimportant details and is structured in a way that is friendly to someone using the art in practice. If I need to know what to do when me and my opponent approach after a bind, I can go to Fiore and look into his stretto section. If I need to know how to defend against a backhand cut, I need to go to the bit of I.33 that deals with tercia and low schutzen.

However, there is a lot of room for interpretation and error there - something that isn't there for the second type of book. This second type of book actively fights back against your attempts to understand it (and often to stay awake), but it is incredibly detailed in what your actions should look like and why. It is pretty damn hard to find an answer to "what are my options against an imbrocata" (if you think it is in the On Imbrocades chapter, well... some of it is), but if you have the patience and spreadsheets necessary for it, you can reconstruct what he wants you to do with incredible precision.

You can make an argument that the second type of treatise doesn't appear until the Renaissance, but to say that all of "how to stab literature" shifts is going too far. You can argue that Godinho was only a draft (which... okay, yeah, but he had his final organization of text and was just adding bits to clarify), but Mair is very much the first type as well and Silver is 30% the first kind of treatise to 70% angry rant at Frenchmen and Italians.

[roninrusso]

No offense to you, sir. But you spend more time talking than actually doing the art itself. You had some good information but It got boring