Wiktenauer:Sandbox

Welcome to the Wiktenauer! The free library of Historical European Martial Arts books and manuscripts

Without books no one can be a good teacher nor even a good student of this art. ~ Master Fiore de'i Liberi, ca. 1405

Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Patri Pugliese

Wiktenauer is an ongoing collaboration among scholars and practitioners from across the Western martial arts (WMA) community, seeking to collect all of the primary source materials that makes up the text of historical European martial arts (HEMA) research and to organize and present it in a rigorous but accessible format. The Wiktenauer project started in 2009, later moving under the umbrella of the 501(c)(3) HEMA Alliance, and is named for Johannes Liechtenauer, grand master of the best-documented tradition of the early Modern era, the subject of many dozens of manuscripts and books over a period of nearly three centuries.

Wiktenauer's data model is built on separating the contents of each master's teachings from the books and manuscripts that contain them. For this reason, there are two main types of pages:

Treatise Pages host all relevant data on an individual book or manuscript, including codicological description, provenance (for manuscripts) or publication history (for books), table of contents (with links to the appropriate master pages), gallery of page scans, and bibliography of print resources. The exemplar for manuscripts is the Goliath Fechtbuch, while the exemplar for printed books is Ergrundung Ritterlicher Kunst der Fechterey. With well over a thousand individual books and manuscripts to research, building out this index will take a long time. Ultimately, every text in the corpus of Historical European Martial Arts literature will have a dedicated page.

Master Pages display the actual transcription and translation of a given master's complete works, as well as bibliographical information when available. In cases of multiple copies of a master's work, the transcriptions are laid out side-by-side to facilitate cross-comparison and creating the most accurate translation possible. To aid in interpretation, the writings are also illustrated with pictures from the masters' work (when available). A bibliography at the end of each page lists additional transcriptions, translations, and scans that are available in print. The exemplar for this category of pages is Fiore de'i Liberi. Ultimately, every master in all of the traditions of Western Martial Arts will have a dedicated page. (Anonymous texts are displayed on 'orphan treatise' pages, which are structured like master pages but without the biography.)

The Wiktenauer index is currently considered complete up to the end of the 16th century, and we're currently working on adding material from the 17th (while also trying to keep the existing pages up to date with the latest discoveries and published research).

If you'd like to pitch in, simply request an account and consult How can I help?

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