the time, also taught wrestling, grappling, disarms, dagger fighting, and the
use of two-handed swords, staffs, and pole-arms. Silver taught four “gover-
nors,” or key principles: judgment, distance, time, and place. He argued that
the new methods of defense were inferior to the existing English art.
The Renaissance masters systematized the study of fighting skills, par-
ticularly swordsmanship, into sophisticated, versatile, and highly effective
martial arts, which culminated in the development of the ultimate street-
fighting and dueling weapon, the quick and deadly thrusting rapier. The
innovations in Renaissance fighting methods did not happen in a vacuum;
they resulted from the needs of urban encounters and private quarrels as
opposed to strict battlefield conditions.
Moreover, links between the brutal, practical fighting methods of the
Middle Ages and the more sophisticated, elegant Renaissance fencing sys-
tems are evident. The English, for example, followed some of their old
fighting traditions well into the 1800s, as did the Germans and Spanish.
They did not discard or ignore, but rather used, adapted, and, in some
cases, refined methods that had persisted for centuries. Differences in the
two periods lie in the overall attitude toward the study of the craft and the
specific techniques developed (e.g., civilian dueling and self-defense as op-
posed to war, tournament, and trial by combat). Although there was con-
siderable innovation in the European martial arts of the Renaissance, there
should be no doubt that such innovations were built upon the legacy of the
medieval arts.
The various Masters of Defence were not always clear or complete in
their ideas. Moreover, masters sometimes contradict one another. Overall,
however, their works describe well-reasoned, effective fighting arts built
upon the legacy of arms and armor and skills of their ancestors.
European warrior skills were for the most part the indigenous fighting
arts of a wide range of heterogeneous peoples and not specifically limited to
a warrior class. The familiar principles of timing, distance, technique, and
perception, defined in various ways, have been identified and stressed by ex-
perts in countless martial arts and were clearly recognized by Western Mas-
ters of Defence. Yet there is more to the European martial arts than sheer
technique. Although there is an unmistakable pragmatism concerned with
sheer effectiveness, this is always balanced by a strong and clear humanistic
philosophy and respect for law and one’s fellow man—the very qualities so
often associated with the modern idealized practice of Asian martial arts.
While it is easy today to find hundreds of books on the techniques of
Asian fighting arts, it remains far more difficult to obtain similar informa-
tion regarding the European traditions. Even though practitioners of his-
torical Western arts cannot rely on traditional oral transmission from one
practitioner to another, detailed technical manuals have been preserved. In
Masters of Defence 325