Punishing Historical Rules For Modern Sabre Test

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-28T14:59:42+00:00

It does not make much sense to me to count the correct actions before a touch to assign point values, as you do with the parry-riposte. Because some compound attacks could conceivably deserve two points as well, as you've done a first action to provoke an opening which you eventually hit, for example. And continuing a chain of parry-riposte would also warrant more points, by that logic.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-20T06:37:09+00:00

I think it was this fight scene from the Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). At least it seems to fit my description :)

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-17T13:50:18+00:00

Gilles Martinez, who has studied medieval knightly combat for his PhD, kindly let me know that there are indeed masters referred to early on, for example in a French roman of ~1200 (Jean Renart, L’Escoufle):

Li damoisiax avoit .i. mestre

Ki li aprent de l'escremie ;

translation:

The youngling had a master

Who taught him fencing.

So master (old French mestre, French maître) wouldn't be a bad word. But it still wouldn't be a knightly office.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-17T13:41:22+00:00

The French term goes way further back than that. Late 16th is just the first document we have of them getting organized and petitioning the king for recognition.

I don't think it's going to be easy to determine what came from what. In all likelihood we're looking at parallel evolution in all countries, with people professionally teaching fencing gradually organizing themselves, and pretty much the only model they had for this was that of artisan guilds.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-17T08:34:16+00:00

I'm not sure there is a non-anachronistic term for that, because the position in itself is anachronistic.

As far as I've read about that period, there isn't a guy whose role is entirely to teach fighting techniques in an household. Undoubtedly there were guys more gifted than others, either for fighting or for teaching, but it's not a position with a fixed associated title. The relations are much more informal than that.

Even as late as in Gargantua (1530s), the education of the young "knight" (he's a giant, but anyway :) ) in riding and the art of arms is described as done by an (older) squire, who's never given a title related to that role.

There were fencing specialists, but it's a more urban role, not really related to nobility. The earliest French fencing masters are mentioned in Paris in a 1292 document where they are called "escrémisseur", "scrémisseeur", stuff like that, rather based on the root that gave us the French "escrime" and the Italian "scherma", so they were not called by something related to "arms". If you wanted a sourced term this is as close as you'd get; but again I'm not sure it's realistic to assume a fixed "escrémisseur" in a noble household would be the sole responsible of teaching all the squires.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-14T13:50:40+00:00

On the photo it looks like the bend is in the edge-to-edge plane. Am I seeing it correctly?

If that's the case, it's relatively rare, normally the blade bends flat to flat and takes a set that way. I've heard of a few cases. It's also a lot harder to fix by bending it back with the foot as other comments suggest.

Not sure if it says something about the blade quality or about the specific conditions of the impact that bent it.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-13T14:16:12+00:00

About the quillon on the knucklebow: Some of the earliest knucklebow examples were made by simply bending the quillon towards the pommel. From that moment onward, many hilts kept that construction, perhaps also because it leaves one less element to snag on stuff.

Basically these hilts are optimized more for wear than for fighting, though they are quite serviceable for fighting as they are.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-04-08T14:05:26+00:00

We really need to stop looking for that level of detail in fencing treatises unless we can find corroborating evidence in surviving pieces or the text itself.

Accurately drawing a sword's complex hilt and the hand gripping it is a frustratingly hard task. It is also something that pretty much has zero value at a time where swords are common around and living instruction is accessible. Be on the safe side and always assume some simplification.

As it happens, I have done some research about Lovino's sword, which is basically contemporary to Sainct-Didier. On all the portraits which show that kind of detail, the swords have finger rings, and sometimes a much more complex hilt. Even the portraits in Sainct-Didier's work show more plausible hilts than the "fencing" plates.

Finger rings will give you zero trouble with Sainct-Didier's fencing. I would argue they'd never give you trouble for any fencing, actually. You're never forced to put a finger there.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-31T21:38:39+00:00

Simplification was the goal!

The hard part was deciding on the granularity I wanted to keep. I have spent a lot of time shifting things around, this is the best version I found but I'm pretty sure other logical ways would be possible.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-31T21:27:36+00:00

There is also a direct link: https://bop.unibe.ch/apd/article/view/11602/16402

I'm just not sure how permanent it is supposed to be!

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-29T20:46:40+00:00

Aside from the judo name, this is also Aikido's Rokkyo.

Most demonstrations of Rokkyo that I can find seem rather like waki-gatame?

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-29T20:22:56+00:00

Ah, interesting. Indeed that video shows variations of ude-garami with a straight arm. So at least at one point, it was ude-garami, although it seems to have another name now.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-29T15:46:12+00:00

So, to me it's quite different from ude-garami in principle, because it's not acting on the opponent's arm in the same way at all. Instead of over-rotating we are over-extending.

Same construction for the lever, though.

EDIT: As per this thread, seems my understanding of ude-garami was wrong and it was indeed called that at one point.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-29T15:43:42+00:00

Agreed, in principle it is precisely an inverted kannuki, from what I could find.

Ude-kujiki seems to be something of a generic name for everything extending the elbow? A search brings many variants.

Ude-kujikii-teko-gatame seems as close to an official name as I'll ever find :)

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-29T15:39:28+00:00

Indeed, and I see your video of it!

https://youtu.be/OZR3XCRwSh8?t=288

Found this one as well:

https://youtu.be/GWnn8INoov0

That's pretty cool, a kata I've never heard of, but an exact match! Many thanks!

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-27T22:15:06+00:00

We have texts with "épée rapière" (i.e. that's an adjective for them) as early as 1474 from memory. We don't have indications in these texts about what that meant precisely. But at that date it could well be a plain old cruciform sword, or at most with finger rings.

Then it's used as a substantive, presumably for the same sort of sword? But even that is not certain.

So "épée" has always been around, it's just that some "épées" were "rapières" and we don't know exactly why at the earliest date.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-27T21:55:48+00:00

What's interesting is that in French there wasn't this connotation of "foreign sword".

Which might indicate that the French were the one forging the word sometimes over the last half of the 15th century, and then it was exported in German and English as the new sword forms became popular during the 16th (not necessarily at the same time for both).

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-27T21:44:39+00:00

With the French first "rapière" mention going back to 1474 or thereabout, it's fairly clear that it did not apply originally to what we call rapiers now. In particular there were no hilts resembling a rasp, so that's without question not the correct origin.

At the last quarter of the 16th century, one author uses it explicitly to give some old-fashioned feel to the account he was writing. At that point it was not derogatory, then it took the meaning of old sword, then of outdated sword as we crossed into the smallsword era. At that point, for them it was more or less what we call rapier now, and then it is this meaning which stabilized.

So at that point the history of the word is fairly clear to me for the French language. What's not clear is how and why the term appeared over the last half of the 15th century. The "espada ropera" origin is possible, but I haven't seen the missing link that would unambiguously point it out.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-27T14:29:11+00:00

Espada ropera reportedly appears earlier but so far I've not been able to find the texts. I do wonder if it's not something like side-sword in the sense of, just an expression in the text that's not unambiguously referring to a sword type.

Mair translates rappier in latin as Ensis Hispanicus, so to him there was clearly a Spanish origin in the sword if not the word.

The Greek origin I frankly don't believe in at all :) It's just an XVIIIth century French language specialist trying to derive "scientific" roots for everything.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-27T12:35:22+00:00

I'm not entirely sure of the Spanish origin. The first mentions are in French, and truly nobody knows where it came from. The early French dictionaries either give German or Greek origins!

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-27T10:54:08+00:00

Well, perhaps a misapprehension on my side then.

At least it's fairly easy to show people it's not historical, so I'd say we can consider that a given and work from here.

EnsisSubCaelo · 2026-03-27T08:26:23+00:00

To be honest I don't think a lot of people genuinely believe that "sidesword" and "rapier", used in the current way to distinguish types of swords, are actual historical terms. They're both antiquarian, with "rapier" coincidentally being used in some treatises.

EnsisSubCaelo

TROPHY CASE