street situations. Although it can include numerous disarms and grappling
actions, that is not its primary purpose. It is a martial art form intended for
an age when most citizens openly went about armed.
Today’s historical fencers and students of Renaissance swords who are
reconstructing and practicing forms of Western swordsmanship practice and
train as true martial artists in ways far different from those of sport fencers
or theatrical and stage performers. They learn and train through handling
historically accurate replica blades. They practice test-cutting and indulge in
forms of intense free sparring. It may be argued that more has been learned
in the past three decades about the actual functioning of European arms and
armor than has been known for the past two hundred years. There is no
doubt that the skills of Renaissance swordsmanship are slowly becoming
again a legitimate martial art. Today, practitioners of historical Renaissance
swordsmanship, or “the Arte of Defence” as it was known, are reviving and
reconstructing the knowledge and skills of these once sophisticated and
highly effective martial arts. They are not trying to reinvent or merely inter-
pret, but to replicate and rebuild them. In the process they have succeeded
in creating a new standard for scholarship and study.
John Clements
See alsoDueling; Europe; Masters of Defence; Savate
References
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Brown, Terry. 1997. English Martial Arts.London: Anglo-Saxon Books.
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Clements, John. 1998. Medieval Swordsmanship: Illustrated Techniques and
Methods.Boulder, CO: Paladin Press.
———. 1997.Renaissance Swordsmanship: The Illustrated Use of Rapiers
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the XVIth, XVIIth, and XVIIIth Centuries, with Lessons Arranged from
the Works of Various Ancient Masters.London:
H. Grevel and Co.
———. 1980.The Sword and the Centuries: or, Old Sword Days and Old
Sword Ways.1901. Reprint, Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle.
Turner, Craig, and Tony Soper. 1990. Methods and Practice of Elizabethan
Swordplay. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Wise, Arthur. 1971.The Art and History of Personal Combat.London:
Hugh Evelyn.Swordsmanship, Japanese
Japanese swordsmanship since ancient times has been a unique martial dis-
cipline of wielding a straight or curved sword using one or two hands. It588 Swordsmanship, Japanese