Lance, Spear, Sword, and Messer: A German Medieval Martial Arts Miscellany

Christian Tobler makes a deep dive into the fighting traditions of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, particularly as recorded by Johannes Liechtenauer (1300-1389). It was a time of plague, of the Hundred Years War, of the Peasants Revolt, but also a time when the origins of the European Renaissance were formed.

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 grandmasters 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.

No author has done more to reveal this lost world of German knightly martial arts to a modern audience than Christian Tobler. Lance, Spear, Sword and Messer is a rich collection of Toblers work, containing extensive 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 mindand challenge the preconceptionsof students and historians of medieval German martial arts.

In addition, the martial careerin arms and in the literature of armsof Emperor Maximilian I, often called the Last Knight, who was himself a devoted student of the tradition, serves as a capstone of this collection. Maximilians literary output, including a planned but unwritten fight book, was a similar capstone in his own lifetime at the waning of the Middle Ages and start of the Northern Renaissance.