The historical show

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As much as for my records as anything else, here are the historical bits we do in our sword shows and some notes on them.
The majority of our historical show comes from the museum where my wife and I were part of the historical research group that was dedicated to reading and interpreting these books.
Each of the main instructors at the museum split off and started their own group. Two of them were still on good terms with and have helped them and gotten material from them.
One of them started a group at MIT which my wife attended for several years. I didn’t as “Cambridge was too far of a drive”. Now, my company HQ is about two blocks from where they met and I drive there every day, but they no longer meet. Irony.
The other one is the one that has the symposium we go to every April with the nice book vault.

We don’t have PhD’s in this stuff. I did my humanities requirements in history in school, but no degree or anything.
But, we have been the demo group of a museum dedicated to this, we have taken classes from a variety of different sword masters from all over the world and we’ve given presentations and education talks on it at universities and museums in both the US and Germany.
So, we do have some backing in it.

If you are interested in the manuals, there is a lot of information here: https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Main_Page

Anyhow, the stuff:

German stuff
I.33/sword and buckler, unknown author-The oldest fight book from Europe from about 1300. Translated into English by the curator of the museum my wife and used to volunteer at. The original demo my wife and the curator’s girlfriend wrote back in 2001 for museum shows. It was done at the museum until we quit the sword guild there. My wife and I rewrote this a lot in 2018 with a new translation for the show we did in Germany.

Falchion- 1470’s book that involves throwing opponents into giant bags. Andy and I wrote this demo at the museum around 2003 when we wanted something new after doing the long sword and dusack for a couple of years. Tom keeps asking for a rewrite as we did for the I.33 stuff and I keep telling him it is all there, just how we show it, but he hasn’t spent the time learning the different way to tell it.

Longsword-1570’s Meyer. Andy and I wrote this at the museum in 2001 as part of a new historical show. There had been a longsword demo from the same book being done at the museum and a new one was wanted. This was a sequence they had us teach to sword students at the museum. The students paid for the classes, even if I wasn’t paid for giving them.

Dusack- 1570’s Meyer. Andy and I wrote this in 2002 when we had been doing long sword at the museum for a while and wanted to do more.

Sickle- 1550’s Mair. About 20 years ago one of the teachers from the museum (Jeff) was working as a Latin teacher and offered to translate this for us for a fee. We agreed and Nate and I worked through the moves and made it part of our show. Several folks can do it now.

Scythe- 1550’s Mair. This is in the same book as the sickle and we’d looked at it a lot over the years. Last year Robin said she’d come back to the troupe if we added this with her doing it. Getting one of our best members back was certainly enough motivation to find a translation. We worked through it and added to the show about a year ago. One of the three translations we used was from the MIT group my wife used to attend, but honestly they were about the same. I can do it with several others. I did get a scythe to the head once, so am a bit reluctant to teach it to others.

PoleAxe-Talhoffer 1470’s. The book for this was translated about 25 years ago and is mostly pictures. My wife got a version from that MIT group, and we tried several times to find a version we could do in the show, but it never quite worked. A couple of years ago Ian and Casey worked out a version and Tom learned it as well.

Rock and Sock-Talhoffer 1470’s. A husband and wife duel method with the husband in a pit with a wooden mace and the wife with a stocking with a rock in it like a flail. Not a lot of technique on this one. My wife and I do it and it seems to get a good audience reaction. The book is like that Godzilla film saying little more than “let them fight”, so who knows if we’re doing it right…

Dagger (Retired)- 1570’s Meyer. The other instructor at the museum (Mark) wrote this in 2001 for the underage girl he was hot for (yeah, it was creepy) so she could be part of the show. He picked fairly easy moves that I did not think reflected the book well, but we stole it for our show as most people could learn it quickly. A few years ago, Tom’s oldest hit someone in the face while doing it and I retired the bit. I think it had far more to do with this kid closing his eyes when he swung at people than the material, but I’ve never been a big fan of it anyhow.
There is other stuff in this book I like a lot that reminds me of knife fighting techniques I was taught as a teenager that I’d like to see brought back. But, not yet.

Halberd (retired)-1570’s Meyer. Meyer wrote about a lot of things. There were only two halberd moves Mark worked out at the museum that we put into the show at the museum. Once in a while we’ll do them. Nate and I used to use part of this in a stage fight, but he’s only done one show with us in the last 15 years, so not much recently.

Rapier (retired)-1579’s Meyer. Meyer did rapier too. But, it is clearly a fight for your life kind of thing and not as prone to good moves for a show as some. We’ve looked at it several times, but never come up with a good demo version.

Italian Stuff
Wrestling, dagger & Longsword-Fiore ~1400. Some items for dagger vs and unarmed person, dagger vs someone with a sword, and a mean thing with a long sword. We developed this in our group at least 20 years ago with Tom and Robin doing it in the beginning. I’ve got photos of it from 2009.

Longsword & Spear-Vadi 1470’s. I bought this book more than 20 years ago and we made it parr of the show quite a long time ago. There’s a photo of me throwing the spear at Nate from 2010, so at least 16 years.

Rapier and dagger- De Grassi 1570. Back in 2004 I quit the Higgins Sword Guild after an argument with the head of demonstrations. He wanted me to come back for a special show, so I agreed if he’d teach us this fight and Holly and I would get to do it as part of Phoenix Swords from then on.
It’s the only time I’ve been paid for a job in choreography, but it’s worked out. 22 years later my wife and I are still doing it. We’ve tried to teach it to a few others. So far, no one’s doing it.

Rapier-Gigante early 1600’s. Gigante wrote a very formal fight book that wasn’t very interesting. But, he kept saying he had a second book with cooler stuff. This book wasn’t found for 400 years, but does have cool stuff. I worked with a few others on this a few years ago and we’ve made it part of the show.

French
Bec De Corbin- unknown author 1470’s. We have a VERY simple 3 move demo of this that somehow folks still manage to mess up. But, it is something we can put almost anyone in the show doing as it is just “try and hit that person with this hammer” and the other person does mean things to them.

Small swords Liancour 1686- This is a French book on the small sword we worked out in our living room with our friends Amy and Andy back in 2014. I started with this sort of sword back in 1976 as during the American Revolution, officers learned French fighting. So, this sword has always been something I like, even if it isn’t the big sword most people associate with me.
Robin and I do it now. Casey has learned it. We’ve simplified it from the original. Amy would be disappointed in us.

Backswword-Silver 1599. George Silver hated the rapier and wrote a book on how to beat it with a “proper English sword”. He had a real thing against Italian Sword fighters and it shows up in a bunch of historical sources. My wife developed this for the museum with our friend Amy so the two of the could do it as a demo at a women’s college at the request of Mark who was in charge of the demos then. We brought it over to Phoenix a few years later, and started doing that same show at the women’s college. We let women fight with all sorts of weapons too…

Small sword- Domenico Angelo 1763- We added one move from this to the small sword demo we do because I think it is cool and I thought it was in the Liancour book, but was this book instead.

Dutch
Hat trick-unknown author, date or place. The original is in Dutch, so we thing that’s where it’s from. We found this book in the gift shop at a museum in London. It has a trick of throwing your hat at someone when they threaten you and you’re unarmed. That’s too good not to put in our show. It’s the only part of this book we use.