[Ansteorra] History

[Chris Zakes]

At 05:00 PM 5/7/2008, you wrote:
>Dear Tivar

(snip)

>I was glad to see your  point about fighting.
>I wanted to ask you about light fighting. Lets talk about light 
>fighter 20 years ago. I know you have been around more than that but 
>20 years ago most things seemed OK. I remember a lot more 
>excitement. His Grace took up light fighting at that time and really 
>enjoyed the tournament. He would go and watch. In the Steppes the 
>light fighting practice would have between 20= 40 people depend if a 
>Queen's Champion was coming up.
>His Grace and I are excitement junkies. We started going to light 
>fighting activities because there seem to be more energy there. It 
>don't get the same feel now. Is that me?
>willow

I'm not sure. Rapier fighting in the SCA has certainly *evolved* a 
lot and become more historically accurate over the past 20 years.

Back in AS 23 (1988) almost everybody was using foils or epees. 
Schlager blades were just starting to appear on the fields of 
Atenveldt, and Del Tin rapier blades were still several years in the 
future. Ansteorra and the Outlands had signed the first White Scarf 
Treaty the year before, and about half the kingdoms of the SCA didn't 
have any kind of organized rapier program. Unless you read 
Medieval/Renaissance Italian, German, Spanish or French, the only 
period manuals available were DiGrassi and Saviolo.

Today there are half a dozen vendors who can sell you an SCA-legal 
combat rapier that is substantially the same as what would have been 
used for practice bouts in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. You 
can not only buy translations of almost all of the period sword 
manuals, but there's a decent chance that you can find a teacher who 
specializes in a particular master or particular style, rather than 
basing your fighting on modern-rules fencing or just making things up 
to see what works. (This is an advantage that our armored bretheren 
don't really have. While there are a few manuals that teach 
sword-and-buckler or longsword, there aren't any period sources for 
sword-and-shield fighting.) We've also been developing cut-and-thrust 
rapier, which bridges the gap between Medieval broadsword combat and 
late-period "pure" rapier fighting.

*I* still find it exciting, but then I've been looking at it from the 
inside since the beginning. An outsider's perspective might be different.

         -Tivar Moondragon