Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.
A new (old!) Italian rapier manuscript: MS 2031
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Hi, I’ve been keeping rather quiet about this for the last few weeks, because I wanted to get the work done before making a fuss about it. MS 2031 is a tiny, anonymous Italian rapier manuscript, probably from the early seventeenth century. It was discovered in the Sächsisches Staatsarchiv by Chris Vanslambrouck, who transcribed it and generously shared his work with the historical fencing community. It’s only ten folios long, and it’s fascinating. I started by checking Chris’s transcription against the scans while trying to work out the fencing. That turned into checking the whole thing, producing a new transcription and translation, and then spending a lot of time sword in hand trying to figure out what the anonymous author actually wants us to do. So, there are now two ways to get into MS 2031. First, the free stuff. I’ve published the complete transcription and English translation side by side on my blog. From there you can also download the facsimile and the transcription and translation as PDFs, completely free.
In essence, the manuscript is part of your birthright, and my transcription and translation are there to help you access it. Please share this email and the blog post far and wide. Let's get MS 2031 out into as many hands as possible! Then there’s the stuff I charge for. I’ve also published the complete 30,000-word 89-page edition, which contains my practical analysis of the fencing: reconstructed actions, drills, an analysis of the system as a whole, and detailed comparisons with Fabris, Capoferro, and Alfieri. There are some particularly intriguing parallels with Salvator Fabris. And right at the end of the manuscript, we get the mysterious words: Il Salvator Gran Maestro in Italia. Does that have anything to do with Salvator Fabris? Maybe. There’s some very interesting evidence. But not enough to pretend we know the answer... The complete analysis is £10, or free for my Patreon supporters (please check your emails if that's you).
Whether you buy the analysis or just take the free material and do your own work on it, I’d love to hear what you make of this fascinating little manuscript. cheers, Guy |
Guy Windsor's Swordschool
Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.
BOOKS PODCAST COURSES COMMUNITY BLOG Hi, Jordan Kahn contacted me recently for permission to use some images from one of my books, which is how I found out about his very cool new solo training tool. It’s basically a caller, which tells you what to do next when practising solo longsword drills. You set it down, and it calls out instructions for you to follow, either as fixed drills or random sequences. It’s an interesting way to build flow and learn the Italian terminology. He shared it on...
BOOKS PODCAST COURSES COMMUNITY BLOG Hi, Last week I released MS 2031, my edition of a previously unpublished seventeenth-century Italian rapier manuscript. Since then I’ve fixed a formatting error that crept into the paid version, so if you bought it last week, you can download the corrected version from the shop. (You should already have got an email about it from me.) The free facsimile, transcription, and translation (which you can find on my blog) were all unaffected, which is exactly...
BOOKS PODCAST COURSES COMMUNITY BLOG Hi, I spent five days in Spain recently, ostensibly on holiday. This did not entirely prevent me from doing sword stuff. I was teaching the first of my Foundations of Rapier (Capoferro Mechanics) webinars on Saturday, three days after we got back, so I did my best to stay fighting fit by training on my balcony. You saw the results last week. Here’s a much more characteristic “what I did on my holidays” pic: Capoferro’s mechanics are hard. Not complicated,...