[Ansteorra] The purpose of tournments was history

John Atkinson johnmatkinson at gmail.com
Wed May 7 16:14:02 PDT 2008


On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 4:46 PM, willowdewisp at juno.com
<willowdewisp at juno.com> wrote:

>  The main difference between a sport and a Marshal art is the matter of growth. Sports are played to win but Marshal arts are done to learn and grow. I remember a young knight who have just got his belt and thought he was great but I mentioned what my teacher told my first husband. "Now you need to win using another weapon". That young knight was Duke Jonathan the Macebearer and then he went on to win tournaments using all kinds of weapon styles.

With apologies to all I am going to offend with this little tear,

I've ignored this for the entire discussion.  The word isn't 'marshal'
it is 'martial'.  Martial derived from the classical deity Mars, and
is variously defined as:

Of, relating to, or suggestive of war; warlike
Relating to or connected with the armed forces or the profession of
arms or military life
Characteristic of or befitting a warrior

"Martial" Arts are so-called because they are the arts of combat,
intended to be used to kill enemies on the field of battle or in other
hostile situations.
By this definition, close-quarter marksmanship is a martial art--and
anyone who doubts its effectiveness is cordially invited to try me in
a shoot house.

All, or nearly all, martial arts have a 'sport' or 'tourney' form.
Sport forms have safety rules, limits on acceptable techniques, and
often an artificial point scoring method based more on stylistic
issues than on taking the enemy down.  When the combat form is used
competitively, there are severe safety issues, such as with ancient
Greek pankration, which frequently had lethal outcomes in high-level
bouts (eg, Olympic competition).

In many 'martial' arts, the sport form has taken over from the combat
form entirely.  You see this in a lot of Eastern arts that have been
taken over and taught in the West, such as Judo.  Basically, if you
could do it in combat, and you can't because of stylistic reasons,
it's a sign that the "martial art" is really more of a "sport".
Fencing anyone?

Now, of course, we come to the SCA.  SCA armored combat is indeed a
martial art.  Is is an attempted revival of the sport form of the
medieval fighting arts (tournaments) further modified by the adoption
of relatively thick rattan clubs vice blades, again for safety
reasons.  It is at least as deserving of the name 'martial art' as a
lot of other styles that make their teachers well off.  It is NOT as
extensively, nor as easily, codified as many other arts which have
been around for centuries and slowly evolved to their current state.

Some folks are going to approach it as a sport.  Some folks are going
to approach it with a more traditional 'martial arts' arts approach.
Personally, I figure that's all overthinking the whole question, and I
just like hitting folks with rattan clubs while trying to keep them
from hitting me.  I'm new to it, so I may change my mind.  I'm an
adrenaline junkie.  I'm going out there to take a risk of getting hit
in order to hit someone because that satisfies me.  If the bout lasts
half a second, that's the way it works.  When the brackets put me up
against some duke or count, that's going to be the way it goes down.
If the bout happens to be about 15 or 20 seconds of staring at each
other, followed by a single bastard sword stroke, well that's life
too.  And characteristic of a certain breed of live-steel duels, so
it's a good thing in my book.

Arguing about whether or not it is a sport, or more or less fun to
watch than it was 20 years ago, or whatever seems to be a bit silly.

Oh, and I think folks wishing for smaller tournament fields and a
"stand and fight" mentality is another symptom of the aging of the
SCA's membership.  I've got perfectly good knees and ankles, and I
like the room to dance around someone.  Don't like it?  Well, remember
what I said above about the more rules a tournament form has, the
further removed it is from the realities of combat, hence the less
'martial' and more 'sporty' it is.

Ioannes Dalassenos
-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again. We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani



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