Great read! "Fencing masters in HEMA are often shrouded in mystery. Old books, old names, old German, all coupled with the obscurity that the centuries apply to all things. Names like Lew, Ringeck, and Lichtenauer become shorthand for fleeting images of bearded men pouring over pages of text with a feder propped against their shoulders, placing them on pedestals as mythic creatures more than men. There is very little we know about the people that these fencing masters were because so much of their legacy is only in the form of their fencing treatises, causing us all too often to lack a picture of who was behind the pen. Even our personal knowledge of Joachim Meyer—a fencing master of whose life we know relatively much more; dates of marriage, death, extensive fencing writings, etc.—is still surprisingly deficient in what we know about the person himself." Three "Other" Fechtmeisters of the 16th c.
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