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sine armis, equester et pedester.1410. Reprint, Padua, Italy: Gladitoria.Swordsmanship, European Renaissance
Beginning in the 1490s and early 1500s there arose across Western Europe
a distinction between those swords intended for war and those for personal
self-defense. Changing social and technological forces allowed commoners
to be able to afford and legally own swords, and to wear them in the ex-
panding and newly crowded cities. The transformation of warfare by
firearms and the breakdown of the old feudal order limited the avenues
both for redress of personal grievance and for exhibition of martial skill.
The result was an explosion in the popularity of dueling. This in turn
caused a renewed interest in the personal Arte of Defence, to use the
spelling of the English Renaissance, and the civilian use of the sword. Com-
bined with the new sciences then coming into vogue, a systematic approach
to studying swordsmanship swept Western Europe. The swords of the Re-
naissance then developed methodical styles in an age when swordsmanship
on the battlefield had begun to lose its relevance and dominant role. This
was to climax later in the methods of the military cut-and-thrust sword and
the development of its innovative cousin, the slender thrusting rapier with
its unique manner of fighting. But there were many types of Renaissance
military swords, including assorted cage- and basket-hilted riding swords,
the cleaverlike medieval falchion, the single-edged backsword, the Italian
schiavonacutlass, the machete-like German messer,and the “s”-hilted
Swiss katzbalgershort-sword.
Swordsmanship, European Renaissance 579