The 14th century - a paradoxical time of world-shattering plague, the
Hundred Years War, the Peasants' Revolt, but also literary and artistic
innovation, formed the basis of the Renaissance. In the later years of
this turbulent time a shadowy figure named Johannes Liechtenauer
systematized lessons for swordsmanship, wrestling, armoured, and mounted
combat. Recorded in cryptic, rhyming verses, it fell to masters of the
15th and 16th century to record, clarify and expand the grandmaster's
instructions in an extensive body of fencing manuals. As the world of
the knight receded into history, these texts - many extensively and
beautifully illustrated - were forgotten by all but German-language
antiquarians and fencing historians until the last decade of the 20th
century, when they were rediscovered by a new audience of martial
artists and historians. In Lance, Spear, Sword and Messer, Christian
Tobler makes a 'deep dive' into these fighting traditions, creating a
rich anthology that has extensive, instructional material on topics as
diverse as the two-handed sword, spear, poleaxe, wrestling, and the use
of long shields, combined with thought-provoking analysis and historical
commentary that will occupy the mind - and challenge the
preconceptions - of long-time students of medieval German martial arts.
Finally, the martial career - in arms and in the literature of arms - of
the famed Emperor Maximillian I, often called the Last Knight, who was
himself a devoted student of the tradition, serves as a capstone of this
collection, much as his literary output, including a planned, but
unwritten fight book, did in his own lifetime at the waning of the
Middle Ages and start of the Northern Renaissance.
