Gladiatoria (MS U860.F46.1450)

From Wiktenauer

Gladiatoria
MS U860.F46 1450, Yale Center for British Art New Haven, Connecticut
ff Iv - 1r
Hils' catalog	21 / 23
Leng's catalog	38.2.1
Also known as	Ars Palaestra Fencing Manual, P. M. Bequest MS Membr.H 109 MS 'T'
Type	Fencing manual Wrestling manual
Date	ca. 1440s
Place of origin	Bavaria, Germany (?)
Language(s)	Early New High German
Author(s)	Unknown
Material	Paper, bound in 20th century blind tooled brown morocco
Size	43 folia
Format	Double-sided; one illustration per side, with text below
Script	Bastarda
Exemplar(s)	MS KK5012 (1430s)
Previously kept	Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Gotha, Germany (until WW II)
External link	Museum data sheet

The MS U860.F46 1450 is a German fencing manual probably created in the 1440s.^[1] The original currently rests in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Paul Mellon Bequest) of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. This is the former MS Membr.H 109 from the Forschungsbibliothek Schloß Friedenstein in Gotha, Germany, which was presumed lost after World War II; it is also the MS 'T' that Hans-Peter Hils lists as being sold as individual leaves at auction in Heidelberg, Germany between 1958 and 1964. The MS U860.F46 1450 is part of the Gladiatoria group, a series of several German manuscripts from the 15th century that share the same art style and cover the same material, and seems to have been written by the same scribe as the Vienna version. The Gladiatoria manuals are interesting texts in that they seem to be contemporary with the tradition of Johannes Liechtenauer, but not directly influenced by it.

The core of the Gladiatoria group is a series of devices of armored fencing following the traditional progression of a judicial duel: beginning with spears and small shields called ecranches, moving to longswords, then employing daggers on foot and on the ground. (Traditional dueling would begin on horseback before going to foot combat, and the ecranche is designed for mounted fencing, but Gladiatoria skips that stage entirely.)

Unfortunately, parts of the manuscript are lost due to clipping and cropping of the pages. This makes the text occasionally a little hard to read or to decipher at all. Comparison to the MS KK5012, the manuscript with the most similar contents, makes it clear that several centimeters are missing from the leaves; in some places even the arms or legs of the fencers have been chopped off, and other parts of the drawings are missing as well. Furthermore, the text passages at the bottom of ff 3, 4, and 7 have been cut off entirely.

Contents 1 Provenance 2 Contents 3 Gallery 4 Additional Resources 5 References

Provenance

Contents

Folio	Section
Ir - Vv	Front matter English Translation Transcription by Michael Chidester [Spine:] A R S P A L - A E - S T R A X V s . [Inside Cover:] [P. M. Bequest sticker with the words "Oak Spring" and "Paul Mellon" around a picture of a wheat sheaf.] [Ir - Vv] Blank parchment leaves
1r - 5r	Spear in armor from Gladiatoria
5v - 29v	Longsword in armor from Gladiatoria
30r - 40v	Dagger in armor from Gladiatoria
41r - 43v	Wrestling from Gladiatoria
59v - 60v	Rear matter English Translation Transcription by Michael Chidester [59v] [Several Spanish names in a cursive handwriting from the 18th or 19th century that have no connection to Gladiatoria, but rather belonged to El testimonio vengado, which was previously bound together with it.] [60rv] Blank parchment leaf [Back cover:] [Glued in insert with the YCBA logo and the following in pencil:] U860 .F46 1450

Gallery

Additional Resources

• Hils, Hans-Peter. "Gladiatoria: Über drei Fechthandschriften aus der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts." Codices manuscripti. Issue 13, 1987.

References