|
Post by legacyofthesword on Nov 3, 2016 2:26:24 GMT
I guess Amazon has a pretty good deal at $50.00 then.
|
|
|
Post by legacyofthesword on Nov 3, 2016 4:48:41 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Cosmoline on Nov 3, 2016 17:17:58 GMT
There are some cheaper translations of I.33 around, including free ones on the wiki. But JF's is considered the most thorough. He's got another translation of it coming out soon which will hopefully be a lot cheaper at least to start. He also got to inspect the physical binding of the book.
|
|
|
Post by jammer on Nov 3, 2016 19:38:04 GMT
I have 1.33, there is only one 1.33. it precedes literacy in europe, and there is no evidence to decide what it actually is. It seems to me to be a warrior, monk text. No evidence of the practitioners surviving in battle, or surviving any longer that the doubtless many practitioners of other,lost, styles. It is revered simply because the pages survive, there is no evidence that it was any good As a system of fighting.
|
|
|
Post by Dean on Nov 3, 2016 20:37:02 GMT
Except that the document did survive all this time.. (Providence?) This (often) leads to the assumption that “everything” was better in times past, simply because the best and most popular tends to survive. So while it is not proof that the system was the best, it is highly likely that people of the time thought it was worth investing large amounts of resources into publishing said system, and preserving it. (Library etc) It would also seem likely that the people, who supported said system, would also derive some advantage from it. Since it is on a specialised subject (fencing with a buckler) it is more likely to that these people where sword and buckler practitioners with time and money. It therefore may come down to how much reliance you place on people who probably lived and died by the sword of said time period. There may be something that we don't understand, because we do not have psychological benefit of actually being in a real fight with swords. An example of this may be the modern ideal of "right of way" where the defender is "expected" to defend, and therefore if both people are struck, it is considered to be the defender at fault. Which appears to be a reasonable (logical) assumption. Yet in Fabris, he specifically states it is the offender's fault. So our modern mindset is quite different to theirs.
|
|
|
Post by Derzis on Nov 4, 2016 1:59:01 GMT
An example of this may be the modern ideal of "right of way" where the defender is "expected" to defend, and therefore if both people are struck, it is considered to be the defender at fault. Which appears to be a reasonable (logical) assumption. I beg to differ, it is reasonable just for somebody who never did anything but reading. I like this guy.
|
|
|
Post by Derzis on Nov 4, 2016 2:10:04 GMT
I have 1.33, there is only one 1.33. it precedes literacy in europe, and there is no evidence to decide what it actually is. It seems to me to be a warrior, monk text. No evidence of the practitioners surviving in battle, or surviving any longer that the doubtless many practitioners of other,lost, styles. It is revered simply because the pages survive, there is no evidence that it was any good As a system of fighting.
If somebody tried to print it when paper was a luxury item in those times, I think it had value for them. You can't judge a lost system based on a book. What makes you think that in 600 years from now somebody will see something good / worth to mention about Go Rin No Sho book when there are no dojos to tell you the oral part or writers to generate stories about the system ? I bet if Robin Hood was a sword and buckler fighter too, the system would have been praised by many ... and even alive these days. I see the manual as a guidance for an aprentice that already has the basics of the system, something to study on, not something to teach you to fight from scratch. A subtle difference, with a lot of dead ends due to the missing of the most important part - a description of the dynamic of the fight that is usually passed down in person. And when I say dynamic I don't mean just rhythm, I mean the thought behind each move to make it effective and efficient simultaneously. I've watched enough videos to see guys doing the things right, but I didn't got the feeling it was the right thing - like skating steps while fighting an imaginary opponent
PS Any evidence showing that Niten-ichi ryu saved lives on battlefield? The lack of the evidence is making it bad? You have evidence that knowing to fight using both swords in a duel was better than using just one sword in samurai era? Why using two measures?
|
|
|
Post by Cosmoline on Nov 4, 2016 17:17:22 GMT
I have 1.33, there is only one 1.33. it precedes literacy in europe, and there is no evidence to decide what it actually is. It seems to me to be a warrior, monk text. No evidence of the practitioners surviving in battle, or surviving any longer that the doubtless many practitioners of other,lost, styles. It is revered simply because the pages survive, there is no evidence that it was any good As a system of fighting. There are multiple translations of I.33, including some pretty divergent ones, which is what we were discussing when it comes to deciding what to buy. As with any historical fencing treatise it's important to get a variety of translations and cross check when reconstructing techniques. For example something like "sub brachia" can have different meanings. It could mean literally pinned under the arm against the chest, or it could be "stacked" under the arm on the vertical plane. Likewise "falling under" means different things depending on the translation. I.33 is an extreme example with its weird mix of German and bad Latin, but I'd say even with later sources it's good to get several translations in front of you along with examples of other interpretations. In the larger sense, of course we can't tell if I.33 was a good or bad approach to sword and buckler fighting in its context. We do know these were almost certainly not monks or warrior monks (conspiracy theories about the Templar survivors aside lol). They were secular clerics likely operating out of a Cathedral school in a southern German state. The Priest may have made money teaching combatants in judicial duels, or it's possible this was an early example of academic fencing. Nobody knows, and unless we have some other contemporary source mentioning him there's no way to verify the theory. We also have no introductory letter or frontis material, so we are left to guess who commissioned the book. Was the Priest even alive anymore? Some believe Walpurgis is a symbol of his death. Though I think it more likely she was the patron of the work. Someone had to pay for these things, and they weren't cheap. So someone at least though the Priest's methods were worth preserving. Maybe it was the Priest himself. The author did go to considerable trouble in detailing the methods. So we're left with a pretty thorough source to work with. When you're going into HEMA your goal should not be to figure out which system was "good" in a modern sense. Meyer's books are works of art, but his approach to longsword emerged after these weapons had faded from the battlefield. That doesn't make it bad or less good than earlier interpretations of the zettel, or compared with Fiore or the Wallerstein codex stuff. But you have to keep the background in mind when interpreting the text and in working with the material in competition or sparring. But if something just isn't working in freeplay or sparring, you should reconsider your interpretation and revisit the text because nine times out of ten, you misunderstood the application. Personally, I've found the "bindy" interpretation of I.33 to be quite effective if I can get to a bind. The joined use of sword and buckler give your positions tremendous strength and allow you to control the center. Tight rotational cuts and thrusts allow you to attack in small pockets where you exploit openings. Having the buckler joined or in the lead allows you to use it for all kinds of shield strikes and wrestling techniques. But the tradeoff is you don't have the same speed you'd have if your buckler was back and your sword arm allowed to move at full speed, as the Italians did some centuries later. The Bolognese folks will do better at longer measure and making hand snipes because their blades are making bigger cuts and have some hand protection built in. But there are counters to this, and I hold my own at this point against that style. I came up against a saber specialist a few months back and he cleaned my clock though ;-) I was tired, but that's no excuse. It's caused me to reconsider some of the interpretations. You always have to go back to the drawing board with HEMA. Unlike the Asian arts this is NOT a top-down exercise where you receive your lesson from a master and never change it. You have to keep your mind open all the time and always revisit your source critically.
|
|
|
Post by MOK on Nov 5, 2016 19:23:09 GMT
I have 1.33, there is only one 1.33. It's called the Manuscript I.33 (the "I" is a Roman numeral, to make it distinct from the index number that follows), formerly of the Tower of London, now in the Royal Armouries. Of course there's only one original manuscript - it's a manuscript, duh! - but there are several modern reproductions, transcriptions, translations and commentaries of the surviving pages (at least eight, and probably more, are missing), with partially differing interpretations on the text and illustrations. I would also think it likely that it was copied at some point along the centuries, although if so the copies have all been lost, as either the manuscript itself or at least the system of fencing portrayed in it seems to have been quite familiar to the writers of other fencing treatises both within and outside the German tradition. It's fairly obviously a German manuscript written in Latin verse and gloss with water colored illustrations, featuring a handful of notes and comments added at various later points, that presents a German system of fencing with the sword and buckler from ca. 1300CE. There's no significant debate about this, nor any evidence to suggest otherwise that I'm aware of. Also, as a written work it clearly does not precede literacy in Europe. (If you meant wide spread literacy among the populace at large, then yes, fairly few people in the late 13th or early 14th Century would have known how to read and write, most of them members of either the nobility or the clergy, people who had actual use for written records and communications for organizational and academic purposes - like, for example, the monks and priests featured in the illustrations and the likely creators of the original manuscript.) Well, there's no evidence for it being any good apart from all the people who successfully practice the really quite simple and pragmatic system of fencing described in it! As with most martial arts there's on-going debate about the finer points and applications of some of the techniques, naturally, but the overall efficacy of it is really quite self evident from actual study and use. It's also referenced and its contents reproduced (either directly copied or independently recreated) in several later works, and the underlying principles are the exact same as those exploited by every other style of fencing (the laws of physics are a constant, after all). Either it's legit or none of the fencing masters who have taught sword and buckler in the last seven hundred years knew/know what they were talking about - which is possible, sure, but really not very likely IMO.
|
|
|
Post by MOK on Nov 5, 2016 19:27:22 GMT
If somebody tried to print it when paper was a luxury item in those times, I think it had value for them. Nitpick - it's a vellum manuscript, i.e. written and illustrated by hand on fine calf skin, not printed on paper (it's at least a hundred years too early for that). It represents a major investment in both material resources and work hours, and there's evidence that the surviving work is only a part of a substantially larger original. It had value, alright.
|
|
|
Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Nov 5, 2016 23:35:41 GMT
? (Why fight for one of my weird ancestor's comic strip?)
|
|
|
Post by Cosmoline on Nov 7, 2016 20:35:16 GMT
Because it's the only one we've got from that time period, pretty much. It's the only clear window onto high medieval sword fighting. You can extrapolate back from Fiore and Liechtenauer, but those sources dealt with later period longswords. The sword and shield system from Liechtenauer is famously missing, and the next stuff shows up in Renaissance Italy. You can compare I.33 with period illustrations and marginalia, and it seems to hold up. It's not radically different from how people were shown fighting. But it is radically different from how modern people imagine medieval people fought. There's no crude hacking or wild swinging. The fighting is careful, precise and gives up power in exchange for better control of the opponent's weapons. Swords have two edges and simple hilts to facility free flow from one edge to the other, not to bash away on one edge then flip it around. Really the main larger purpose served by I.33 study is to disabuse people of the myths about the medieval world.
|
|
|
Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Nov 8, 2016 10:14:27 GMT
I totally agree and because many of this old fencing manuscripts have their origin in Bavaria I see them as a part of my cultural background (ok, call it megalomania). I only try to vote against taking more into them, as they are. They were not intended as the only heritage of german sword fighting art without living tradition. And not every word or drawn line was meant as a gospel.
|
|
|
Post by Cosmoline on Nov 8, 2016 19:06:56 GMT
Even if a living tradition had survived the centuries, it would by now be unrecognizable. So we'd still be going back to the original sources. And in that respect German sword arts have a decided advantage. Tai Chi sword, for example, doesn't have any sources as old as I.33. Certainly not illustrated ones. There's also no impediment of a modern sporting system--at least not yet. We aren't obliged to agree with living masters because there aren't any.
|
|
|
Post by jammer on Nov 28, 2016 14:47:54 GMT
There is still no evidence that 1.33 is a viable fighting system, and not, say, a warrior monk's attempt at self defence, or even to faithfully document a Way that he witnessed around him.
Therein lies the defect in reasoning, yes sure, train in 1.33, but do so in the knowledge that it is an old way, lost to us. And the ways of their training are also lost. Learn it from a position of experience, not as a noob.
So learn it to be part of that way I described,and not as a viable system of martial arts.learn it, and try to reinterpret it, for our history's sake. Not for martial reasons.
|
|
|
Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Nov 28, 2016 15:29:13 GMT
I.33 is not "Sword'n Buckler for Dummies".
|
|
|
Post by jammer on Nov 28, 2016 15:39:00 GMT
So who was it For?
|
|
|
Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Nov 28, 2016 16:16:29 GMT
Masters or experienced apprentices.
|
|
|
Post by jammer on Nov 28, 2016 17:08:26 GMT
Masters or experienced apprentices. And how did they acquire such status?
|
|
|
Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Nov 28, 2016 18:00:49 GMT
Afaik there is nothing written about those fencing schools in 13./14. cent. I.33 seems to represent a fighting system for judicial duells at ecclesial courts (bishops, abbots). It looks like there were fencing masters and schools to teach less skilled duelists to level the playing field. Most of the time the theoretical part of this fighting system was passed on with verses (and training of course), and the maker of I.33 tried to visualize this. Probably not for the duelists, but to keep the systematic knowledge in the school. In this times books were usually only made by cleriks. That seems to be the reason why so many known fencing masters were cleriks.
|
|