ANST - Re: The Book of Fencing

Stefan li Rous stefan at texas.net
Thu Feb 17 20:59:00 PST 2000


Greetings to the fencers on the Ansteorra list,

This gentleman in Switzerland is looking for the bibliographic info
on a period rapier book. He used a search engine and found a partial
referance to the book he seeks in my shields-msg file in the COMBAT
section of my Florilegium. Unfortunately, I believe this is the only
referance to this book in my files.

I am hoping that someone on this list can answer his questions or
forward this note to perhaps the rapier maillist if no one here has
the answers.

Please send him a copy of any correspondance by email since he is
not on the lists. Of course I would love the answer also, so that
I may place it in the Florilegium for folks to have in the future.

His email is: yoomi.steffen at olympic.org

Thanks for any help anyone can give.

Stefan li Rous
------------------------------------------
Yoo-Mi Steffen wrote:
> Dear Stefan,
> 
> First of all I would like to present myself. My name is Yoo-Mi and I
> am in charge of the Olympic Museum's Library in Lausanne, Switzerland.
> 
> I was looking for an old book, very famous among fencers. After my
> research on the web (Thalhofer and fencing on Metacrawler.com), your
> site was referenced in the first place.
> Could you be kind enough to give me - if possible of course - the
> complete reference of the following book :
> "Book of fencing : code de Gotha" by Hans Thalhofer, 1467
> The place of publication, the editor or printer would be very valuable
> informations.
> 
> Thank you in advance and kindest regards,
> Yoo-Mi Steffen (Ms.)
> Head of Library

-- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****

> From: shick at europa.eng.gtefsd.com (Steve Hick)
> Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
> Subject: Re: Two-pointed Shields: was Spear and Sword
> Date: 7 Dec 1993 21:25:54 GMT
> Organization: GTE GSC FSD
> 
> In article <2e1237INNd08 at matt.ksu.ksu.edu>, harald at matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Harold
> Kraus Jr) wrote:
> 
> > The good Tristan writes:
> > 
> > [comments on spear and sword deleted]
> > >                                             .....      Also, a shield with
> > >two sword points on it is documentable for Moorish Spain (the Palladium RPG
> > >arms and armor book, which is actually remarkable informative as a tertiary
> > >source).
> > 
> > Other posters have noted in the Spear and Sword thread that the above
> > piece could be based on a misidentified piece in a Spanish museum (posibly
> > a madoo).  
> > 
> > The "Book of Fencing: Code de Gotha" by Hans Thalhofer, 1467, Bohemia,
> > has an illustration of "Fight with special shield, in the combat called
> > 'The Judgement of God'".  (Millia Davenport, "The Book of Costume"
> > 
> > 	The special shield is, basically,  a "two-handed 'madoo'".  
> > Picture a 5'6" (@2.6m) spear tipped at each end fixed to the 
> > back of a 4'x2' shield with rounded of corners.  On the vertical axis of 
> > the  shield is a 3' (1m) long shield boss that allows the user to grip
> > along that length of the spear shaft.  Kind of a squared off Zulu shield.
> > Quite silly looking -- at best, I'd say it was a fad, limited
> > to the school or region, or a pudgil stick variation.
> > 
> Sorry, I had been reading this, and didn't think of the kampfschild as
> germane.  
> 
> This is true, it is as described, often it has auxiliary points, barbs,
> blades, saw-tooth blades, etc.. It is used in judicial duels, and far from
> being obscure, it is referenced in most of the major Fechtbucher (German
> Fencing Manuals). Besides the 1467 Talhoffer, it appears in (from memory) 
> the 1443 Talhoffer, Paulus Kal's Fechtbuch of the second half of the 15th C
> ,  Paulus Hector Meier's Fechtbuch of <1542, and several others.  It is
> used in conjunction with the cudgel, sword(?) and alone.
> 
> When used alone, it is used much like a polarm.  In conjunction with other
> weapons, it seems to be used mostly as a shield.  It appears in
> documentation from ca 1440 up to the end of the 16th c, not a passing fad.
> 
> ST
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Ansteorra mailing list