Holy crap, this one is beautiful.

I paid out the nose for this one, but I now have every painted Thibault print I can locate for sale, apart from a few that I passed by because they're duplicates and not better than what I have. Now we can plan the scanning.

We now have 30 Thibault prints to digitize for Wiktenauer!

If you or someone you know owns a painted Thibault page, HEMA Bookshelf has offered to pay for shipping to Massachusetts and back to get it digitized with the rest (and also provide advice about how to package it so that it travels safely).

At SCSF, I brought 26 original ca. 1630 painted prints from Girard Thibault's treatise to display alongside Brian Stokes' first edition (on the red velvet throne to the right).

Meyer Coloring Book — HEMA Bookshelf A Meyer coloring book! This book includes all 62 illustrations from Joachim Meyer's 1570 treatise. We took Hans Christoff Stimmer's original woodblock prints and cleaned them up and enlarged them to 1...

A Meyer coloring book! This book includes all 62 prints from Joachim Meyer's 1570 treatise. We took Hans Christoff Stimmer's woodblocks, cleaned them up, and printed them at 150% of their original size. Whether you want to color them or simply appreciate their details in B&W, this book is for you!

Federico Ghislieri's Rules of Many Knightly Exercises — HEMA Bookshelf In 1587, a young military officer named Federico Ghislieri returned to the Medici court from the brutal religious wars of nothern Europe. The ambitious young captain published a collection on the prin...

New book alert! 𝘍𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘰 𝘎𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘪'𝘴 𝘙𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘒𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘌𝘹𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘴, a new edition of this important 1587 fencing treatise by Mike Smallridge! It includes a complete English translation, a transcription of the Italian text, all of the illustrations from the Bnf's copy, and an extensive biography.

*mob

When the pope and the emperor tell you to hug it out and make up, you hug it out and make up. But I imagine it was the kind of thing you see in, like, mod movies, the "I will break bread with you and smile and make jokes and wait for the day when I have a chance to kill you without repercussions".

I quit tumblr when they banned adult content, and they still haven't accepted it back so I'm still quit. I wish there were alternatives to bookface apart from tiny sandboxes where only five or ten of your friends have accounts, tho.

Wiktenauer It's hard to name a person who has had a bigger influence on the culture and practice of HEMA than has Mike Edelson, because of the large number of people who have trained at his clubs and competed...

I wrote this little eulogy for Mike on my Wiktenauer account a few days ago. Hope to see and reminisce with a lot of you at the memorial service this weekend.

The Thibault Project — HEMA Bookshelf This project has two goals! 1) To publish Girard Thibault’s spectacular illustrations in as close to their original size as possible — to do this, we need at least 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐩𝐫𝐞-𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬. 2) To fund the purch...

Are you ready to buy the biggest book you've ever seen?

This project has 2 goals:
1. To publish Thibault’s illustrations in as close to their original size as possible — to do this, we need 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝙥𝙧𝙚-𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨.
2. To fund the digitization of complete, painted illustrations to release on Wiktenauer.

So much Thibault...

One original 1620s painted Thibault print has arrived, and nine more are on the way.

Thibault is large

Thanks! It was hard, but it was honestly very rewarding. I understand the underlying language and meaning so much better after doing it.

Preparing for a new project

The last post I made here was the rhyming translation, so here's a revised version! This is the version I added to the wiki, including 225 footnotes and a new transcription I did from the Rome ("Danzig") manuscript. If the footnotes are too distracting, you can go to page 29 for a clean copy. Enjoy!

I keep forgetting this platform exists. I was never really a Twitter-user, and apparently I'm not good at not-Twitter either.

I spent April-June working on an English translation of Liechtenauer's Zettel written in verse like the original. You can read the results on Wiktenauer, along with a mountain of footnotes explaining choices:
wiktenauer.com/wiki/Johanne...

(My introduction to the project is in the discussion tab.)

More revisions to the Lignitzer article: new translations by Christian Trosclair and Per Magnus Haaland, more dagger thanks to Bart Walczak and Bartosz Starko, a timeline of contemporary research, and this provisional stemma. Enjoy!
wiktenauer.com/wiki/Andre_L...

The place where one ends and the other begins has a new title in Mair's mss.
- Mair's 2 German mss. have differences (at least in the first 2 pieces) that are associated with different branches of the stemma, which possibly challenges the assumption that Vienna was copied directly from Dresden.

A few things I never noticed:
- There are only 3 mss. that assign authorship to Lignitzer (out of 17 mss. and 3 books)
- Only the Rome has all 4 texts. Krakow comes in second place with 3, and the others only have 1 or 2
- Salzburg and Vienna have complimentary halves of the short sword text (cont)

Today in updates no one asked for: Andre Lignitzer!

wiktenauer.com/wiki/Andre_L...

This page has received several new transcriptions and also the modular column upgrade for easier comparison between manuscripts.

Pictured: Short sword fencing from the Cluny, which has nothing to do with Lignitzer.

Medieval manuscript facsimile project: Philippo di Vadi We're making replicas of "De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi", an illuminated manuscript by a fencing master named Philippo di Vadi.

It's time! Announcing our next facsimile project: Philippo di Vadi! In addition to the "standard" facsimile, you can choose the "metallic ink" add-on to get a version that restores the gold and silver illumination of the manuscript (which has been partly lost to the ravages of time).

While I know people always judge books by their covers, I didn't consider that in-person, when they can't see a plaintext title, people would glance at the cover, see a word they don't recognize, and move on. So I'm working on an alternative for in-person sales to leverage the name Ringeck properly.

wiktenauer.com/wiki/Pseudo-...

Now on Wiktenauer: BnF ms. Arabe 2824 is an Egyptian fencing treatise written in 1470 in Arabic, containing teachings of the Mamluks, the elite--but indentured or enslaved--warrior class of many Islamic nations in the medieval and modern periods. It was written by Pseudo-Ibn Akḥī Ḥizām.

Prepping for the next facsimile campaign. I guess now we find out the extent to which paper prices have gone insane.

What's coming up next? Here's a *tiny* hint...

In a blatant cash grab, #Google is now raising prices on my Workspace subscription and forcibly bundling in their plagiarism engine #Gemini. Wish my web host provided a different email option.

#HEMA #HistoricalEuropeanMartialArts #dueling #Basel

And, I guess, obligatory plug: if you appreciate the work that I do and you have the means, please consider joining my Patreon! Even a few dollars a month helps.