Martial Arts Knowledge on and Beyond the Page: From Visual Mantras to Hyperrealism with Words and Brushes

Abstract

Martial arts are cultural phenomena shaped by the societies in which they develop. They were—and still are—transmitted through interpersonal exchanges, from body to body. Martial arts experts use speech for devising these martial skills into complex systems of bodily knowledge. Once the systems are complex or vast enough to be verbalized, they are transmitted through bodies and speech with mnemotechnical texts such as poems, codified knowledge canons or a constellation of technical words associated with metaphors or images. Some of these mantras (mnemonic devices) found their way into writing or depiction. This process is a translation (transcription) from speech to the page, or to depiction. The written word or the depiction of bodies fighting on a wall, a painted canvas, or embedded into a sculpture, endures through time and survives the masters who created them. However, in most cases, those who wrote the words painted the images, or sculpted the stone were not the martial art experts themselves. The documents, depictions, and sculptures preserved for the study of martial arts culture of the past must be explored while taking into account the perspective of those who created them. Based on previous research about the circulation of knowledge based on the dissemination of European fight books, this contribution allows for a new approach to categorization of martial arts knowledge, on and beyond the page, with a focus on early modern fight books.

Martial arts are cultural phenomena shaped by the societies in which they develop (Bowman 2021). They were—and still are—transmitted through interpersonal exchanges, from body to body. Martial arts experts use speech for devising these martial skills into complex systems of embodied knowledge (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011). Once the systems are complex or vast enough to be verbalized, they are transmitted through bodies and speech with mnemotechnical texts such as poems, codified knowledge canons, or a constellation of technical words associated with metaphors or images. Some of these mantras (mnemonic devices) found their way into writing or depiction. This process is a translation (transcription) from speech to the page, or to a depiction. The written word or the depiction of bodies fighting on a wall, a painted canvas, or embedded into a sculpture challenged time and survived the masters who invented them. However, in most cases, those who wrote the words painted the images, or sculpted the stone were not the martial experts themselves (Anglo 2012). The documents, depictions, and sculptures preserved for the study of martial arts culture of the past must be explored while taking into account the perspectives of those who created them.

The first preserved depiction of a martial system in the West dates from Ancient Egypt (Middle Bronze Age, 21st–seventeenth centuries BCE), with a mural painting in one of the tombs of Beni Hasan. The tomb of Baqet III contains wrestling positions in series, labeled as MnTw “Montu”, translated as arts and sciences (Decker 1987, 82–6) (See Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1

© Wikimedia Commons

Detail of the wrestling scenes, mural painting in tomb 15 at Beni Hassan, twenty-first–seventeenth centuries BCE

Similar depictions can also be found in ancient European cultures, such as the petroglyphs of the Val Camonica in Italy (Priuli 2022). Few documents with proper attempts to translate the martial art practices on paper from the antiquity and early Middle Ages have survived. Only three fragmentary papyri give us insights into antique European combat sports (Ijas 2020). However, we do find more stories and traces of these practices in narratives from that period. Besides the athletic contests testing force or endurance in the Graeco-Roman worlds, three categories of bare hands combat sports emerged as well: boxing (πυγμή), wrestling (πάλη), and pankration (παγκράτιον) (Poliakoff 1987). Heracles, the mythical figure of the Antiquity, is credited by Appolodorus (Bibl. 2.7.2) to have instituted the games of Olympia and is described as a pankratiast, mixing boxing and wrestling. The glory of Olympic champions, such as the athlete Milo of Croton (sixth century BCE), echoes through time constituting legends and myths (Roubineau 2016). The martial culture of the Greeks is celebrated in major epic works, such as the Homer’s Illiad, which depicts the Trojan War over 15,693 lines. In the episode of the funeral games for Patroclus, long descriptions of combat sports reveal the richness of agonistic practices, with or without weapons (Hom. Ill. 23).

In the Roman World, these major contests became notorious public spectacles. Gladiatorial schools were managed by martial entrepreneurs (lanistae) who owned and provided training to the athletes. The golden era of gladiatorial spectacles reached its peak between the first century BCE and the second century CE, but the “games” lasted longer up to the early Middle Ages after the end of Roman rule, mainly in the form of horse races (Bougard 2012). No translation or transcription of those martial arts survived, but again traces can be found in other literary genres and media. For example, Vegetius compiled a military treatise, Epitoma Rei Militari, even if he had no military experience himself. This work lived an interesting fame, as one of the most copied works throughout the Middle Ages. No proper description of combat techniques is included, only one passage advocating the use of thrusting over cutting with the Roman gladius, and one mentioning the striking a pell as a proper training for the soldier (Veg. Mil. 1.12).¹

During the Early (500–1000 CE) up to the High Middle Ages (1000–1250 CE), no proper translation or transcription of martial arts survived. Traces of martial arts practice are to be found in epic literature, military treatises, and mirrors of princes (speculum, didactic literature for princely education). For example, much like the Homeric tales, the Viking sagas are full of descriptions of martial arts including technical vocabulary (Wetzler 2017), as do chivalric romances. Like the military treatise of Vegetius, the anonymous Norwegian thirteenth century King’s Mirror (Konungsskuggsjá, Lat.: Speculum regale) contains one passage on the training with sword and shield, as well as advice for the mounted warrior. Such information and the inclusion of technical terms are proof that martial traditions were alive at the time of the writing, but the surviving literature from this period does not allow proper insight into the contemporary martial art systems. The same is true of the bronze age mural paintings of the Egyptian tomb, the inclusion of martial exchange in Homeric tales, or mosaics representation of gladiators, up to chivalric romances. Insights into martial knowledge were fragmentary and insignificant compared to what followed at the end of the Middle Ages—the fight books.

1 Fight Books: A Specific Kind of Technical Literature

Fight books are a specific genre of technical literature. Just before the advent of printing machines, which changed forever the relation between knowledge and its production, a new book culture started to develop at the end of the Middle Ages. Formerly restricted to the scriptorium of monasteries or princely libraries, the books entered into the possession of lower social strata within the walls of cities during the fourteenth century. Following the development of universities, religious and laic book production centers or small workshops allowed the book to become a more common object of consumption. That is the time of the first fight book featuring a martial arts system with the sword and buckler. The anonymous Liber de Arte Dimicatoria contains combat techniques grouped in seven parts, based on seven guards, featuring technical images with commentaries (Forgeng 2018). The fencing teacher is depicted as a priest with several students including a woman. The language is Latin mixing versified knowledge canons with prose commentaries, including technical terms stemming from the Germanic vernacular language. This book is an exception in many ways, one of them being a particularly early example of naturalistic drawing, dialoguing with technical commentaries for describing complex embodied knowledge. More importantly, the martial expert was involved in the production of the book, and this is not always the case. In technique 28, the author complains that the images are not accurate, “And note that no more is illustrated of this sequence than these two figures, which was the fault of the artist (Forgeng 2018, 122).” The book was planned and involved several individuals. The images were realized before the text was written––by three different hands, one being obviously the actual master.

From then on, the production of fight books developed. They constituted at the end of the sixteenth century a heterogeneous corpus of more than two hundred sources (printed books and manuscripts), in most of the main European languages (Jaquet 2020). Fight books should not be confused with other literary genres about fighting, which also developed their own corpuses, including tournament books, military books, books about dueling matters, and horse-riding treatises. These literary genres may record martial embodied knowledge in passing or in a dedicated section, but it is not the main topic of our discussion. Fight books are different in the sense that they focus solely on inscribing, describing, or codifying martial embodied knowledge (Jaquet 2018). The inscription is the action of writing down for personal matters, usually without intent of being read by others. This category includes student notes, teacher notes, or non-martial practitioners noting down martial gestures. The description is the action of writing down with the didactic intent to be read and understood by others. The codification is the action of writing down with codified words, signs, or images, rendering the reading to the non-initiate difficult. An example of primary sources belonging to this category is the translation or transcription of poems on the page, filled with the mantras (mnemonic devices) of martial systems. Of course, the borders of these categories, as well as those of the literary genre by definition are blurred. Moreover, the fact that most of these texts or images were copied, re-invented, or re-organized makes the study of these primary sources, as well as the concept of martial traditions itself, an increasingly complex puzzle.

To refine this threefold theoretical typology (inscription, description, codification), I propose to build categories with examples illustrating it. It creates a panorama of different innovations for the translation or transcription of embodied knowledge into the page within the heterogeneous corpus of the fight books.

2 Categories of Martial Arts Knowledge

2.1 Poetry as Versified Knowledge Canons

Most of the early European fight books are structured with the use of versified knowledge canons, usually series of couplets. Most fight books not only transcribe those couplets from a living oral tradition but add prosaic commentaries in order to make sense of the codified meaning of the verses, obscure to the untrained reader, but familiar to the learned practitioner. This is the case with the aforementioned Liber de Arte Dimicatoria and the German fight books, structured around the poem of Johannes Liechtenauer over three centuries, but also with the early Italian fight books. Four early fifteenth-century manuscripts are attributed to Fiore dei Liberi, a late fourteenth-century fencing master from North Italy (Lagomarsini 2011). The different versions preserved contain text in Latin or Italian vernacular, in prose or verse, in connection to decorated technical drawings. These are the first works allowing technical insights into the medieval Italian martial systems by combining different media (See Fig. 9.2).

Fig. 9.2

Detail of a wrestling technique. Fiore dei Liberi, Flos Duellatorum, 1409. Edition of the Pisani-Dossi version, by Francesco Novati (1902). Translation of the embedded text: I will make you kiss the ground with your mouth, or I will force you into the lower key (Cum la bocha la terra ti farò basare/O in la chiaue de soto ti farò intrare)

When prose commentaries and images are missing with only the verses preserved, the martial arts knowledge is usually barely accessible. For example, the anonymous writing of a knowledge canon from 1420 contains only eight couplets in Latin with Italian vernacular technical terms, outlining guard positions for a master and his student (Hec sunt guardiae in dimicatione videlicet).² Besides the names of the guards and their opposing postures, we do not know the intended weapon of use for this martial arts system, and no actual fighting techniques are described in the text. This text is preserved by luck. It is an unfinished project of noting down a knowledge canon. This sheet of parchment was later used to protect the quires of a vade-mecum book for a professional scribe, in Florence in the first third of the fifteenth century. Nothing in the content of the book is connected to martial arts practice. For example, another sheet of paper with a random recipe for a meat sauce is also bound into it to protect the next quire. We however can guess that this represents a complete martial art system, now completely lost to us. In that case, the Florentine example is an inscription of martial knowledge, when the fight books of Fiore dei Liberi are descriptions.

2.2 Visual Mantras as Metaphors

When the complexity of a martial art system is transcribed in the form of a versified knowledge canon, some of the underlying principles can be transferred into images using symbolism. Such depictions are as complex to read as the technical words of the codified verses. The treatise of Philippo Vadi (De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, 1482–7), one of the followers of Fiore dei Liberi, included a segno (diagram) with such visual mantras. The objects and the animals, represented in connection to different parts of the human body, symbolize key skills in connection to the martial system which is put into writing in the fight book. In Fig. 9.3, the different verses in connection to the animals are translated.

Fig. 9.3

Segno. Philippo Vadi, De arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, 1487. Roma, Biblioteca Nazionale Central, MS Vitt.Em.1324, fol. 15r. Translation of the embedded text: Bear: The nature of the bear is to turn/Here, there, up and down/Thus your shoulder should move/Sending your sword out to hunt. Ram: I am a ram, always on the lookout/Naturally always looking to clash/So your cut should be clever/Always parry when [your cut] is answered. Serpent: The right hand should be prudent/Bold and deadly as a serpent. Greyhound: With the left hand I have the sword by the point/To strike already when it is joined/And if you want the strike to be complete/Make it as quick as a greyhound

Interestingly, several technical terms used to convey martial techniques or principles stem from popular collective knowledge or use common images. Several guard positions are named after animals, mimicking attitudes, or signatory features of the animal. For example, in Fiore dei Liberi’s fight books, we find the Boar’s tooth (dente di zenghiaro) for the two-horned guard (bicorno). In contemporary German fight books, some technical terms stem from the agricultural lexis, such as the guard of the plow (pflug) in the system attributed to Johannes Liechtenauer.

Powerful visual metaphors are commonly used in martial art systems for conveying a complex embodied knowledge to untaught pupils. As such, the intent is didactic, however, without proper prosaic descriptions (or face-to-face instruction), such as those found in the fight book of Philippo Vadi, visual mantras belong to the codification type of fight books. Indeed, only the practitioners taught in the system can unfold the complexities hidden behind the visual mantras.

2.3 Assalti or Flourishes as Martial Forms

Martial art forms (sequence of movements performed alone) are familiar features to students of contemporary Asian martial arts, designed for learning fighting techniques. The kata of Japanese martial arts, or the taolu of Chinese martial arts, follow the same principle: sequencing technical movements for offense and defense in a formal pattern that can be repeated. It allows the student to develop complex motor skills by repetition and to bring the embodied knowledge into muscle memory. Such didactic principles are documented early on in the European fight books’ corpus. The first person to explicitly use this feature is Achille Marozzo, a Bolognese fight master of the early sixteenth century (Penso 2022). His fight book contains assalti for the different martial disciplines. These condensed didactic martial forms allow the outlining of a complex system to maneuvere between the various martial disciplines, from fighting with the dagger to fighting with the pike. The section dealing with the use of the two-handed sword contains, for example, three assalti––divided into up to ten subsections in each assalto––which allow the practitioner to study more than fifty fighting techniques.

Usually, German fight books describe martial art techniques in the context of opposing actions. If the partner or opponent is doing this or that, the performer of the technique should do this or that. Several examples however also seem to refer to sequences performed alone. They might be in the context of training sequences, or in the context of performances, including competitions. The earliest German fight book is known by its shelf number Hs 3227a (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum), which is a collection of notes for personal use (Burkart 2016), and contains an anonymous text describing such a sequence for fencing schools (Schulfechten), which refers to public competitions (fol. 52v). The text describes a series of actions changing from guard to guard with specific stepping and blade actions, and then contextualizes it to the beginning of a fencing bout in a competition when the fencer was approaching the fencing partner. This type of sequence (or specific context) is referred to, in English fight books, as “flourish” (Deacon forthcoming), and in later German fight books as “bouts” (Gänge). By extension (metonymy), these terms also refer simply to martial art techniques.

2.4 Cinemascope as the Precursor of Video

Sixteenth-century Italy was a theater of major changes in a long process of cognitive, productive, and societal transformation that is often referred to as the Scientific Revolution. Printers, mathematicians, engineers, scientists, and artists were involved in the development of a new use of the scientific image, in relation to the production of printed technical treatises (Smith 2006). New solutions were adopted to solve old problems in the translation or transcription of embodied knowledge using text and images. The still image can render neither the depth of a three-dimensional body nor the caption of a moving body. This problem is called parataxis (Anglo 2011, 7–8), and involves time and space issues. This is solved with the chrono-photography by Eadweard Muybridge in the nineteenth century, and later with the invention of the video. Fight book authors, however, already bypassed the problem with several innovations, before the invention of the printing machine. In 1553, Camillo Agrippa presented the most stunning innovation on the matter, by using similar ideas with the means of his time. With the assistance of renowned and talented artists (including Carlo Urbino), using the latest technology of copper engraving, he deconstructed the human motion into a series of images superimposed on the same engraving (See Fig. 9.4).

Fig. 9.4

© Wikimedia Commons (Collection of the Allessandrina University Library, Roma)

Camillo Agrippa, Trattato di Scienza d’arme, Venezia, Antonio Pinargenti, 1568 (Second edition)

Several authors used mathematical concepts and applied geometry in order to rationalize the human motion parameters while devising their martial art systems. The first authors to do so are Spanish in the sixteenth century (Valle-Ortiz 2016), but this trend developed in parallel in Italy, starting with Camillo Agrippa. The most elaborate fight book using mathematical formulas and applied geometry is Girard Thibault d’Anvers, Académie de l’espée, in 1630. Such mathematical demonstrations and use of geometry to translate embodied knowledge on the page are completed examples of the “description type” of fight books, where the authors use all means and innovations available to them to explain their art to potential untrained readers.

2.5 Hyperrealism with Words and Brushes

Renowned Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Dürer or Carlo Urbino were involved in the production of fight books.³ For works dedicated to princes and kings, the best quality was of course expected, while fight books produced with more modest means paid less attention to the quality of the images. Most of the authors of the former category looked for hyperrealistic depiction of the human body. The production of the masterpiece of Girard Thibault d’Anvers involved sixteen master engravers working together (De la Fontaine Verwey 1977). Other masters focused on the collaboration with one artist. Such is the case with the Italian fencing master Ridolfo Capo Ferro da Cagli when he produced his treatise for the Duke Francesco Maria Feltro della Rovere. He worked with the late Mannerist and early Baroque artist Raffaello Schiamirossi (1572–1622), refining high-quality images and caring for the transfer of the quality of the drawings in the etching process (See Fig. 9.5).

Fig. 9.5

Top: Preparatory drawing of Raffaello Schiamirossi, 1610 (Collection of Martial Art Museum (BS), Botticino). Below: Ridolfo Capo Ferro da Cagli, Gran Simulacro dell’Arte e dell’Uso della Scherma, Siena, Salvestro Marchetti e Camillo Turi, 1610 (Collection of Martial Art Museum (BS), Botticino)

The quest for hyperrealism in the images is mirrored by the need to “paint with words” by several authors. The manner and detail in which the movements are described sometimes rival the artistic brush of master painters. While some authors, such as Pietro del Monte, literally wrestle with language (Forgeng 2014) inappropriate to describe the martial arts, others paint their words with eloquence. For example, Giovanni dall’Agocchie wrote his Dell’arte di scrimia in 1572 in the form of a dialogue where the lack of image is compensated with rhetoric magniloquence:

{Mandritto.} The mandritto is called that because it originates on the right side; and it is called “fendente” because it cleaves from the head to the feet in a straight line. {Sgualimbro.} But one calls that mandritto “sgualimbro” that goes through diagonally, that is, from the adversary’s left shoulder to his right knee. {Tondo.} The tondo, or traverso, is the name of the one that turns crosswise. {Ridoppio.} Ridoppio is that which departs from beneath with the true edge of the sword and finishes at the point of the enemy’s right shoulder. {Tramazzone.} Tramazzone is that which is done with the wrist in the manner of a little wheel. {Riverso.} But riversi are named such because they are the opposite of the dritti, beginning on the left side and ending on the right. And they are similar to the mandritti, that is, of the same types. {Thrusts.} But coming to the thrusts, {Imbroccafa.} that which is clone overhand is called imbroccata, {Stoccata.} and that which is done underhand, stoccata; {Punta riversa.} and that which issues from the left side, punta riversa. And this will do for the second heading.

In his treatise, which qualifies as description type, the author marginalized the technical terms as additional support for the reader willing to find information on techniques for reference, without having to read the whole dialogue. His prose is flourished with mental images and symbolism designed to both clearly explain the actions and to offer a pleasing reading experience.

3 Lost in Translation or in Transcription

Mentions, or traces, of martial art practices in words or images found in narrative literature, canvas, wall, or sculptures do not provide proper insights into the martial art systems of the past. Fight books do, as a specific kind of technical literature devised to do so. Fight books build a heterogeneous corpus, in which some examples are inscription, description, or codification of embodied martial knowledge. The inscription type, as the codification type, is not meant to be read by others outside a closed circle of specialists, sometimes only the author himself. The description type represents an attempt to unfold the complexities of embodied martial knowledge on the page and is meant to be read by trained or untrained readers. The challenge to translate or transcribe a complex system of embodied knowledge, including the dimensions of time and space on a two-dimensional media with still images, has been tried by many authors, with different levels of success. Besides attempting an almost impossible task, the authors of the description type fight books find innovative ways to overcome the limits of the page. As such, and with the perspective of the history of science and technology, these books are key to writing a history of the technical literature on martial arts. Fight books are treasure troves also for European cultural history. Besides being invaluable sources for art historians, arms and armor specialists, historians, and anthropologists, they represent the keyhole guarding the closed door on European martial arts traditions, presumably interrupted or transformed through time. Reading and interpreting these books is a difficult task, requiring skills as complex as those of the locksmith re-inventing a lost key and re-shaping the partial remains of a rusted key to open an old lock.

One must remember, however, that books are not the ideal media to preserve and transmit embodied knowledge; the ideal channel being interpersonal exchanges. Therefore, the quantity or the quality of these surviving books do not correlate fully with the actual practice of martial arts in a given cultural context. Moreover, in the end, these books are discourses about martial arts, not manuals in the modern sense of the term.

Some of these books––which purport to discuss specific martial art traditions––stand far away from the original knowledge holders who devised the martial art systems. Some were copied over a large span of time, others were translated, and others were plagiarized or rewritten. Where some are masterpieces written by the martial art experts themselves, others are low-quality perverted versions, and others are unachieved projects left unfinished. Recognizing to which of these categories each fight book belongs is essential. This panorama of chosen examples only scratches the surface of the corpus of fight books, which calls for in-depth research on case-by-case basis before attempting proper comparative studies.