and-death encounters and cultivated over generations in contexts ranging
from brutal medieval battlefields to Renaissance civilian street fights. Dur-
ing the period from the mid-1300s to the early 1500s, the Germans and
Italians were particularly industrious in teaching fighting arts as well as in
producing books on their techniques.
Skilled martial experts were never unfamiliar in the West. The Greeks
were known to have their professional hoplomashi(weapon instructors),
and among the Romans, senior veteran soldiers trained their juniors in the
handling of weapons for combat. The later Roman gladiator schools too had
their lanistae(fight coaches). The Germanic tribes as well as the Celts and
Vikings were known to have their most skillful veterans placed in charge of
teaching youth the ways of war. The Vikings recognized a number of specific
war skills preserved by special teachers. Much later, by an order of the Span-
ish royal court, special categories of fencing masters, Tenientes Exami-
nadores de la destreza de las armes(roughly, “individual’s weapon ability ex-
amining lieutenants”), were organized in 1478. King Alfonso el Sabio (the
Wise) of Castille himself wrote a textbook on warfare in 1260, and in the
1400s Duarte, king of Portugal, produced a manual on fighting skills.
Not until the Middle Ages in Europe, however, did true experts in the
martial arts begin to teach in ways we would associate with martial mas-
tery. Throughout the medieval period, because of the obligations of the feu-
dal system, training in arms was a requirement for both the nobility and
the common folk who were pressed into military service. It is reasonable to
assume that much of the martial knowledge the common warriors learned
was individually passed down from person to person within households,
clans, or families. These were not skills just for use in the local village or
remote forest paths, but were intended for the battlefield complexities en-
countered with whole armies at war.
Yet more formal mechanisms existed as well, since, despite being
poorly armed, the common folk always had need to protect themselves
and, if called upon, to defend the kingdom from invasion. Of course, train-
ing for war and tournament was an everyday fact of life for knights. For
the chivalric warrior class there was always the ideal of the preudome (man
of prowess) skilled in military arts. Prowess in arms was itself one of the
fundamental tenets of chivalry.
German and English histories indicate clearly that professional mas-
ters and teachers of swordsmanship and weaponry existed at least from the
late twelfth or early thirteenth century. In France in the 1200s, there are
references to royal privileges granted to a group of Paris masters. By the
late Middle Ages, there were sword masters and fighting experts both
teaching and fighting for pay, yet they themselves were typically common-
ers. Many of the instructors of various fencing guilds, especially in Italy318 Masters of Defence