The Art Of Swordsmanship

Forgeng’s translation is clar and accessible. His experience not only as a scholar of early swordsmanship, but as a practitioner, is readily apparent. – De Re Militari 

Completed in 1482, Johannes Lecküchner’s Art of Combat with the “Langes Messer” (Messerfechtkunst) is among the most important documents on the combat arts of the Middle Ages. The Messer was a single-edged, one-handed utility sword peculiar to central Europe, but Lecküchner’s techniques apply to cut-and-thrust swords in general: not only is this treatise the single most substantial work on the use of one-handed swprds to survive from this period, but it is the most detaield explanation of the two-handed sword techniques of the German “Liechtenauer” school dating back to the 1300s. Lecküchner’s lavish manuscripts consists of over four hundred illustrations with explanatory text, in which the author, a parish priest, rings the changes on bladework, deceits and grappling, with techniques ranging from life-or-death escapes from an armed assailant to slapstick moves designed to please the crowd in public fencing matches. 

This translation, complete with all illustrations from the manuscript, makes the treatise accessible for the first time since the author’s untimely death less than a year after its completion left his major work to be lost for generations. An extensive introduction, notes, and glossary analyse and contextualise the work and clarify its technical content. 

Jeffrey L. Forgeng is curator of Arms and Armour and Medieval Art at the Worcester Art Museum, and teaches as Adjunct Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

 

• Translated by Jeffrey L. Forgeng 
• Paperback edition
• Dimensions: 15.5 x 23.5 x 2.5cm 
• ISBN: 9781783272914