Gladiatoria (MS U860.F46 1450)

Gladiatoria
MS U860.F46 1450, Yale Center for British Art New Haven, Connecticut
ff IIIv - 1r
Hagedorn Leng 38.2.1
Wierschin Hils 21 / 23
Also known as	Ars Palaestra Fencing Manual, P. M. Bequest MS Membr.H 109 MS Membr.II 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	Parchment, 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)
External data	Museum catalog listing
Treatise scans	Digital scans (1000x1050)

The MS U860.F46 1450 is a German fencing manual probably created in the 1440s. 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. 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 difficult 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 figures have been cut 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 out entirely.

Provenance

The known provenance of the MS U860.F46 1450 is:

• Created in the 1440s, probably using the same scribe as the MS KK5013.
• before 1700 – possibly owned by Pedro de Egnrca.
• before 1792 – owned by August, hereditary prince of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, and bound together with a 17th century fragment of El testimonio vengado by Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (donated 1792).
• 1792-1940s – held by the Forschungsbibliothek Schloß Friedenstein in Gotha, Germany, and listed as "MS Memb II 109" (looted during or after World War II).
• 1940s-1960 – missing; unbound at some point and scattered.
• 1960-1964 – several fragments acquired by AB Sandbergs Bokhandel in Stockholm, Sweden; one fragment listed as "MS T." (sold Stockholm, 1960-1964).
• 1960-1999 – owned by Paul Mellon (1907-1999), who purchased every fragment that surfaced at auction (28 leaves in 1960, 11 leaves in 1961, 2 leaves in 1962, and 2 leaves in 1963-64) and then had the reconstituted manuscript rebound.
• 1999-present – held by the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in the Paul Mellon Bequest.

(El testimonio vengado resurfaced sooner, having been acquired by Hauswedell & Nolte of Hamburg, Germany in 1953. Identified as a war loss, it was taken into custody by the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, and finally identified and returned to Gotha in 1997.)

Contents

Folio	Section
	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.] [Three 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
43v - 44v	Rear matter  English Translation Transcription by Michael Chidester [43v] [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.] [Blank parchment leaf] [Back cover:] [Glued in insert with the YCBA logo and the following in pencil:] U860 .F46 1450

Gallery

Images hosted on Wiktenauer with permission from the Biblioteka Jagiellońska.

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Additional Resources

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