The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe

by Sydney Anglo

Mounted encounters by armored knights locked in desperate hand-to-hand combat, stabbing and wrestling in tavern brawls, deceits and brutalities in street affrays, balletic homicide on the dueling field―these were the martial arts of Renaissance Europe. In this extensively illustrated book Sydney Anglo, a leading historian of the Renaissance and its symbolism, provides the first complete study of the martial arts from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. He explains the significance of martial arts in Renaissance education and everyday life and offers a full account of the social implications of one-to-one combat training.

Like the martial arts of Eastern societies, ritualized combat in the West was linked to contemporary social and scientific concerns, Anglo shows. During the Renaissance, physical exercise was regarded as central to the education of knights and gentlemen. Soldiers wielded a variety of weapons on the battlefield, and it was normal for civilians to carry swords and know how to use them. In schools across the continent, professional masters-of-arms taught the skills necessary to survive in a society where violence was endemic and life cheap. Anglo draws on a wealth of evidence―from detailed treatises and sketches by jobbing artists to magnificent images by Dürer and Cranach and descriptions of real combat, weapons and armor―to reconstruct and illustrate the arts taught by these ancient masters-at-arms.

Genres: History, Martial Arts, Nonfiction, Military History, Renaissance, Medieval History

396 pages, Hardcover

First published August 11, 2000

Reviews

[Skallagrimsen]

I thought this book magisterial when I bought it back around 2000: well written, meticulously documented, and full of beautiful period illustrations depicting a grim but fascinating subject. I still own my copy, still find it a valuable reference, and still enjoy flipping through it to this day. I was surprised, therefore, to discover The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe had but six reviews on Goodreads prior to this one. At least one of those reviews claims it's dated, due to the explosion of interest in traditional European martial arts over the past twenty years, and all the scholarship it has inspired and been inspired by it. And I do find it easy enough to believe it's been superseded on specific points. Human knowledge, in all spheres, is constantly expanding. But it's hard for me to believe there's been such a revolutionary shift in our understanding of historic European martial arts that this book is truly obsolete. And I'm not aware that it's been eclipsed by a more recent work that covers quite the same subject, let alone so comprehensively or with such rigorous scholarship. If not, there might be a need for such a book. Or better yet, for an updated edition of The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe.

[Jake]

One of the few benefits to being stuck in an airport is that it lets you catch up on your reading. (I’m still working on what a second benefit would be…)

In any case, thanks to a recent trip experience with the airline industries fantastic scheduling skills, I was finally able to put a couple of books to rest. I will start with this one, because it’s been the longest in coming.

Like a lot of young boys, I went through a phase of thinking that the medieval European knight was the coolest thing ever. Unlike a lot of young boys, I don’t seem to have grown out of that phase. And, as all young boys know, one of the coolest things about knights is that they fight. With swords! And axes! And lances, maces, flails, and other various instruments of personal destruction. Net result? Knights are AWESOME. At the end of the the day, I love them more than Ninja (that statement may result in me being lynched by the intarweb, but there it is).

Being a practicing martial artist, I eventually came to the question of “how the heck did knights fight?” at which point I realized that a lot of my points of reference came mostly from Hollywood and other similarly lousy sources. So I decided to look into the matter, and by some means I’ve long since forgotten, came across Sydney Anglo’s extremely comprehensive work.

This is a great book, IF YOU ARE INTO THIS SORT OF THING. I highlight that fact because this is a fairly serious, scholarly text. It is about 400 pages long, and is much larger than the average hardcover novel. It has footnotes, citations, and all sorts of other things that you will not find in your average pop history book. If you do not have the stamina or patience for that sort of thing, this book will not be fun for you.

If you do have the patience for that sort of thing, however, you’ll find this to be a fun and interesting insight into the actual practices of medieval European warriors. Anglo works his way through a variety of topics and ideas, starting with broader problems such as historical methods of writing about martial arts practice, and then narrowing things down to look at specific methods on unarmed combat, sword fighting, jousting, and other topics pertinent to the medieval knight (and his modern fan base). Anglo’s writing is fairly scholarly, but not so dense as to make the reading difficult, and he has a very dry wit that pokes through at just the right moments.

Statistically, I suspect the audience for this one is rather limited—if you aren’t into martial arts, medieval history, or (probably ideally) both, this book won’t offer you much. If you’re a martial artist, this book will give you a great introduction to a variety of arts that are generally poorly understood. If you’re a medievalist, this book will give you some great insight into a different aspect of medieval European culture. If neither of those things interests you, leave this one on the shelf.

[Rebecca]

The biggest problem here is that Anglo's book is now sixteen years old, and the research in HEMA has exploded since then. When he published it, Anglo's book would have been the most up-to-date, introductory-level survey of European Renaissance and late medieval martial arts; now we know that some of his conclusions are not accurate.

That said, it's still the only work of its kind easily accessible to the general public, and much of the background information is valuable. For instance, Anglo sites a bevy of fencing masters a student or interested reader may want to further investigate, and the plates provided are a good sampling of the illustrations available in the manuals of the time.

[Hunter]

Anglo is a fantastic writer, and it is hard not to give this five stars, because the points where he is on, he is on, but there are just segments of the book where it doesn't matter how talented he is, the discussion just keeps going ad nauseum and it is hard to maintain interest. Don't let those occasional dips detract though. A solid and thoroughly interesting book.

[Adam Peter]

The text that started HEMA on its proper academic journey.

[Osric Lecourtier]

As I mentioned to my new supervisor, Polonius, I'm only on page 102 of the 290 pages in this massive tome. The author, Sydney Anglo, certainly knows his subject matter. This is not a light read! Anglo expects that his readers come with a great deal of prior knowledge on the subject. I really wish that Anglo used more subtitles. Despite organizing his book into chapters (Chapter One is on fencing masters and how people learned to fight with swords and such, Chapter Two is about illustrated manuals teaching people how to fight, and I've just begun Chapter Three, on sword fighting writings and practices) it would benefit from even more clearly delineated sections. I found, especially in the chapter on illustrated texts that Anglo tried to keep to a chronological order, but he bounces around Europe, discussing Italian approaches in one part, then Spanish, then French, then English. So far, Denmark's only been mentioned twice, despite having such skilled swordsmen! Like some of the complex diagrams explaining the relationship between geometry and fencing, it could get confusing if the reader was not concentrating, or if the topic was new. Sometimes the author's position is a bit obscured. Thibault's book, circa 1630, is proclaimed in the caption as "the most magnificent of all fencing books", yet it is described as "bizarre, full of artifice and a stiff test for any reader's powers of endurance" page 75). I appreciated all the reproductions of the old manuals (including color plates - I am fond, for some reason, of "the lost sword" on page 117). I may take a break from reading this book to try some other ones my employer recommends - all in all, a very wise book but hard to penetrate (like armor itself!)

[Ben]

An amibtious book that covers a dauntingly broad scope of material, this work manages to be both entertaining and well-researched. Although there are few glaring missteps (such as the statement that medeival pollaxes were basically "knightly toys" incapable of real damage), but overall, this is a wonderful book. Anglo's easy British humor makes it a joy to read, while his credentials as a historian make it educational as well. This is a great book for beginning students of Western Martial Arts to read as a historical survey of the field.

[Chris]

The word that comes to mind is 'magisterial'. This book is superb, and should serve as both an introduction and source of inspiration to generations of historians and practitioners.

I don't know why I took so long to read it. But when I did, I devoured it. Probably put a longer review on my blog.