Renaissance Combat

Jörg Wilhalm's Fightbook, 1522-1523

Jörg Wilhalm, Dierk Hagedorn, Helen Hagedorn

• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781784386573
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

"Dierk Hagedorn continues to solidify his reputation as one of today's most talented authorities on German Fechtbücher with another superlative volume… Highly recommended for students of history, historical reenactors, and today's fighting practitioners." - Christian Henry Tobler Longsword instructor Dierk Hagedorn brings the work of one of the most prolific authors of 16th century fight books to a modern audience for the first time. Jörg Wilhalm’s teachings feature fighting techniques with the long sword, in armor and on horseback and combines the teachings of the famous fighting master Johannes Liechtenauer with those of his successors. Vividly illustrated throughout, each technique is rendered in detail that even modern practitioners will be able to easily follow. This book will appeal to enthusiasts of historical European martial arts, re-enactors, jousters, as well as art historians - particularly those with an interest in the armor and clothing of the 16th century. Comprehensive in its scope, it is a striking and fascinating insight into the ancient art of swordplay.

JÖRG WILHALM

• THE • MANUSCRIPT

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EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

THE TRANSCRIPTION

The transcription corresponds to the original to the letter, and line breaks are indicated by a grey pipe ( | ). Abbreviations are resolved and marked by italics, completions of missing text passages and those added from JWM1 are set in [square brackets]. Occasional special characters or diacritical markings above a letter have mostly been ignored, such as an Umlaut above y or a demi-circle above the letter u which was used in the manuscript to distinguish it from the otherwise identically written n. Other Umlaute (ä, ö, ü) have been retained, since they alter the pronunciation of the vowel. As was customary at the time, an initial vowel ‘u’ was written as ‘v’; the transcription sticks to this original ‘v’. The capitalisation reflects the original, but when in doubt, lowercase has been preferred. Capital ‘I’ and ‘J’ (the same letter in Gothic script) are used according to the conventions of modern New High German. The same procedure was chosen for capital ‘U’and ‘V’, which are also the same letter in the original – unlike their lowercase counterparts – and which are also rendered according to modern standards. Letters, words or passages that were cancelled in the original are represented by crossed out text. To accommodate a more fluent reading of the text, hyphenation has been applied to the justified textblocks in order to avoid excessively large and irritating gaps. Those artificial hyphens are marked in grey, so they can be distinguished from those that were expressly written in the original manuscript. The folio specifications can be found on the left side next to the transcription of the original text.

THE TRANSLATION

A considerable amount of Wilhalm’s text is based on Johannes Liechtenauer’s teachings, which are recorded in verses (called ‘the text’) and commentaries (called ‘the glosses’).Wilhalm’s version is often a deviation or a deformed version of older sources, occasionally to the extent that the original meaning has been lost. At times, it is highly dubious whether the scribe actually understood what he was writing. Quite likely he did not entirely comprehend his source – and possibly had a hard time actually reading and deciphering portions of it. In comparison with older text versions, there are occasional outrageous misreadings. In the translation, I did not amend those atrocities; instead, I tried as best as I could to stick close to the original. This may result in some oddities and sentences that do not seem to make sense. Only extraordinarily blatant errors such as a mix-up between ‘sein’ and ‘dein’ (‘his’ and ‘your’) have been cautiously corrected, since they alter the meaning considerably and are certainly only due to inattention by the writer. Apart from that, Wilhalm – as well as his predecessor Liechtenauer – deliberately phrased their teachings in ‘secret and obscure words’. I therefore frequently had to make a choice. Particularly obscure passages are provided with annotations in the footnotes. Master Liechtenauer’s verses actually rhyme – at least in the early sources. Sometimes, they are so corrupted in Wilhalm’s version that these rhymes disappear completely. In order to stay as close to the meaning as possible, they are rendered in prose in this edition. Wilhalm inserts the Notes into his text without distinguishing them in any way from the glosses. In order to make them clear to the modern reader, I have highlighted these verses in bold in the respective section (pp. 309-331).

Since both Wilhalm’s and Liechtenauer’s texts are quite ambiguous and since there is more than one way to translate a specific passage, I have occasionally sought refuge in different translation variations throughout the text to better explore the broad spectrum. Due to the complete absence of punctuation, I felt the need to resolve the multi-clause sentences in more easily digestible components. Frequently, I needed to make a choice, and I hope to have done justice to Jörg Wilhalm and what he intended to convey.

I have not translated the majority of the specific technical terms of the Early New High German original text. Some of these terms are deliberately ambiguous, possibly in order to give a special word more scope or to obscure its original meaning. Some more generic words (such as absetzen or versetzen), however, have received a translation (to set off, to displace) in order to facilitate a general understanding and not to burden the text with clumsy constructions such as ‘perform an Absetzen’.

THE GLOSSARY

The German entries in the glossary follow the orthography of the original Early New High German text. Since the spelling in the source is not always uniform and a considerable number of variations occur, I have unified them and adapted the spelling slightly: capitalisation and separate spelling of words follow mostly modern standards. Behind the entry, the term can be found translated into modern English in brackets, as far as it can be reasonably transferred. Special technical expressions, however, appear only in their origina...