RingoA few weeks back I participated in an online conference called The Art of Sword organized by my friend Matt Blazek who does living history demonstrations in New England. 
Check him out. On our panel Beth Hammer and I gave a talk about the value of sport sword fighting, both as a resurrection of a historical activity and as a way of keeping swords relevant in modern life. We were addressing a common discussion in HEMA and other communities where the sportification of sword fighting detracts from the art. The discussion turned to how much weight one should give period fight books, particularly earlier ones.
Quick overly reductive summary context to fill in for people not familiar. During the middle ages and the renaissance sword masters put out a variety of treatises that are often called fight books, which I assume is from the german term for them Fechtbuch. In the past 40 years there has been a renewed interest in studying these books to learn the techniques of the time. HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts is the general term for this study and the sport that has developed from it.
Now armed with that boring context which you may already have known I can get to my point. Beth made a comment of which I only remember the basic “Consider Fiore* to be a drunk Italian guy in the bar trying to impress you. Like, if that man drew his sword I would do this, take it from him and stab him with his own weapon just so.” In response one of the audience spoke up and mentionat that a number of the treatises were not meant to be full instructionals but were advertisement to get people to there gym.
*Fiore is an italian fencing master from the early late 1300 and early 1400s.
Lets stop thinking about HEMA for a second and consider Youtube. In particular let’s look at a youtuber Icy Mike of Hard2Hurt. Icy Mike is famous primarily for having a few wins and one “controversial after fight disrespect” on the StreetBeefs youtube channel which hosts backyard MMA fights. On his youtube he tests out all sorts of weird self defense techniques and tools and gives hims opinion on them. He also talks alot shit to generate views and then demonstrates techniques.
Recently Two fighters in the steel community with an actual background in amature MMA have expressed dislike for Mike to me. One said it’s because he takes stances that are easily disproved. The other because Mike liked to resort click bait. He would say something that makes no sense, then walk it back and explain a different related concept, now that people were paying attention. His titles and sometimes his videos are sensational. The meat of his videos often are more sober and considered though and it seems clear that his gym is focused on training good proven fundamentals.
Ok back the middle ages. With Beth’s priming and those conversations I began thinking about some of the weirdness of the manuals. For example Fiore is all poetry, which to be fair in my understanding that’s how most things were written at the time, but it does little to explain the exact positioning of the body so much as describing what the move should do. Later books in the lichtenauer tradition have this habit of explaining how to beat the common fencer techniques, without explaining what those are. It’s almost like saying here’s how to throw a counter cross while slipping the Jab…without teaching the Jab. Or teaching guard passes and what to do from side control and half guard in BJJ…without ever showing the Guard.
The books are clearly useful for learning longsword, side sword, or other styles of fencing when paired with sparring and experimentation as the top competitors and teachers in HEMA have alot of skill which is easy to see watching. But it does appear to take a lot of experimentation and study of other sources. The same as it would trying to learn to fight off youtube fight influencers. There are thousands of great youtube tubes dedicated to basic techniques, but the majority of content on the popular blogs are clickbait. Things to pull you in that either assume you have some knowledge and play off of that to get you to look or as advertisement to look at more hoping you will stay invested. The books of the time seem no different.
This is no great revelation, particularly to people familiar with the idea of Fight books as advertising pamphlets. The subtle change in view though from looking at preview material before you pay subscription prices to the idea of content dedicated to draw eyes, that may reflect good fundamentals but may also just be dudes wylin to get others talking about them has reinvigorated my desire to read source material as opposed to just study the modern practitioners. I don’t have a deep enough knowledge of the manuals to know this take is valid but it feels right to me…and as a non historian just a dumb sword jock, thats good enough for me.