ROYAL ARMOURIES MS I.33: THE JUDICIAL COMBAT AND THE ART OF FENCING IN THIRTEENTH- AND FOURTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The earliest extant European fencing manual, Royal Armouries MS I.33 (c. 1270–1300), is an unusual work, portraying a tonsured priest teaching a system of sword-and-buckler combat to two students, the second of whom is a woman named Walpurgis. The purpose of the manual has not as yet been established. This article first considers depictions of fencing (‘schirmen’) in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Middle High German literary texts including Kudrun and the Trojanerkrieg, and the links between sword-and-buckler combat and the judicial combat. It also investigates the degree to which clergy and women took part in the practice of the judicial combat in France, England and Germany during the Middle Ages, and the role of individual German churches, monasteries and cathedrals as organisers and judges of the process. The article draws on both literary and historical material, including the numerous later medieval German fencing manuals, to support the argument that MS I.33 was designed as a teaching manual for a clerical fencing master to assist in providing training to defendants facing trial by combat.