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Johannes Liechtenauer

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Die Zettel
The Recital
Johannes Liechtenauer.png
Full Title A Recital on the Chivalric Art of Fencing
Ascribed to Johannes Liechtenauer
Illustrated by Unknown
Date Fourteenth century (?)
Genre
Language Early New High German
Archetype(s) Hypothetical
Principal
Manuscript(s)
Manuscript(s)
First Printed
English Edition 		Tobler, 2010
Concordance by Michael Chidester
Translations

Johannes Liechtenauer (Hans Lichtenauer, Lichtnawer) was a late-14th century German fencing master. The only account of his life was written by the anonymous author of the Pol Hausbuch, arguably the earliest text in the tradition, and he may have been alive at that time.[1] The text reads:

First and foremost, you should notice and remember that there's only one art of the sword, and it was discovered and developed hundreds of years ago, and it's the foundation and core of all fencing arts. Master Liechtenauer understood and practiced this art completely and correctly; he did not discover or invent it himself (as has been written previously), but rather traveled through many lands and searched for the true and correct art for the sake of experiencing and knowing it.[2]

Liechtenauer was described by many later masters as the "high master" or "grand master" of the art, and authored a long poem called the Zettel ("Recital"). Later masters in the tradition often wrote extensive glosses (commentaries) on this poem, using it to structure their own martial teachings. Liechtenauer's influence on the German fencing tradition as we currently understand it is almost impossible to overstate. The masters on Paulus Kal's roll of the Fellowship of Liechtenauer were responsible for most of the most significant fencing manuals of the 15th century, and Liechtenauer and his teachings were also the focus of the German fencing guilds that arose in the 15th and 16th centuries, including the Marxbrüder and the Veiterfechter.

Additional facts have sometimes been presumed about Liechtenauer based on often-problematic premises. The Pol Hausbuch, often erroneously dated to 1389 and presumed to be written by a direct student of Liechtenauer's, has been treated as evidence placing Liechtenauer's career in the mid-1300s.[3] However, given that the Pol Hausbuch may date as late as 1494 and the earliest records of the identifiable members of his tradition appear in the mid 1400s, it seems more probable that Liechtenauer's career occurred toward the beginning of the 15th century. Ignoring the Pol Hausbuch as being of indeterminate date, the oldest version of the Recital that is attributed to Liechtenauer was recorded by Hans Talhoffer in the MS Chart.A.558 (ca. 1448), which further supports this timeline.[4]

Treatise

Liechtenauer's teachings are preserved in a long poem of rhyming couplets called the Zettel ("Recital"), covering fencing with the "long" or extended sword (i.e. with both hands at one end of the sword), the "short" or withdrawn sword (i.e. with one hand at either end), and on horseback. These "obscure and cryptic words" were designed to prevent the uninitiated from learning the techniques they represented; they also seem to have offered a system of mnemonic devices to those who understood their significance. The Recital was treated as the core of the Art by his students, and masters such as Sigmund ain Ringeck, Peter von Danzig zum Ingolstadt, and Lew wrote extensive glosses that sought to clarify and expand upon these teachings.

In addition to the verses on mounted fencing, several treatises in the Liechtenauer tradition include a group of twenty-six "figures" (figuren)—phrases that are shorter than Liechtenauer's couplets and often arranged into the format of a Medieval tree diagram. These figures seem to encode the same teachings as the verses of the mounted fencing, and both are quoted in the mounted glosses. However, figures follow a very different structure than the Zettel does, and seem to present an alternative sequence for studying Liechtenauer's techniques. It is not known why the mounted fencing is the only section of the Recital to receive figures in addition to verse.

Seventeen manuscripts contain a presentation of at least one section of the Recital as a distinct (unglossed) section; there are dozens more presentations of the verse as part of one of the several glosses. The longest version of the Recital by far is actually found in one of these glosses, that of Pseudo-Hans Döbringer, which contains almost twice as many verses as any other; however, given that the additional verses tend to either be repetitions from elsewhere in the Recital or use a very different style from Liechtenauer's work, they are generally treated as additions by the anonymous author or his instructor rather than being part of the original Recital. The other surviving versions of the Recital from all periods show a high degree of consistency in both content and organization, excepting only the much shorter version attributed to H. Beringer (which is also included in the writings of Hans Folz).

The following concordance tables include only those texts that quote Liechtenauer's Recital in an unglossed form.[5] Most manuscripts present the Recital as prose, and those have had the text separated out into the original verses to offer a consistent view. For ease of use, this page breaks the general Wiktenauer rule that column format remain consistent across all tables on a page; the sheer number of Liechtenauer sources made this convention entirely unworkable, with more columns empty than filled, so instead the long sword table uses one layout, the mounted and short sword tables use another, and the figures use a third.

Note: This article includes a prior (2010) version of Christian Tobler's translation. A revised version of the translation was published in 2021 by Freelance Academy Press as part of The Peter von Danzig Fight Book; it can be purchased in hardcover.

Additional Resources

The following is a list of publications containing scans, transcriptions, and translations relevant to this article, as well as published peer-reviewed research.

References

  1. ↑ When German writers were aware that a person was dead, they would add a formulaic blessing after their name (i.e., "God have mercy on him"); this manuscript doesn't, but 15th century manuscripts do.
  2. ↑ See folio 13v, trans. by Michael Chidester.
  3. ↑ Christian Henry Tobler. "Chicken and Eggs: Which Master Came First?" In Saint George's Name: An Anthology of Medieval German Fighting Arts. Wheaton, IL: Freelance Academy Press, 2010. p6
  4. ↑ There is one version of the Recital that predates Talhoffer's, recorded in MS G.B.f.18a (ca. 1418-28) and attributed to an H. Beringer; this also conforms to a 15th century timeline and suggests the possibility that Liechtenauer was himself an inheritor of the teachings contained in the Zettel rather than its original composer (presentations of the Recital that are entirely unattributed exist in other 15th and 16th century manuscripts). Alternatively, the Beringer verse, which includes only portions of the Recital on the Long Sword, may represent just one of the teachings that Liechtenauer received and compiled over the course of the journeys described in the Pol Hausbuch.
  5. ↑ The figures are often given as a preamble for the gloss of Lew, and a fragment of the short sword to the teachings of Martin Huntsfeld, but those instances will not be included below and instead treated as part of those treatises.
  6. ↑ Zettel is a tricky word to translate. The closest English cognate is “schedule” (both come from the Latin schedula), but only in the more obscure legal sense of a formal list, not the familiar sense of a timetable. It’s commonly used in modern German to denote a short list or a scrap of paper that could hold a list (like a receipt). Zettel is translated as “record” here (and capitalized and italicized as the title of a written work), but other common translations include “epitome”, “notes”, and “recital”.
  7. ↑ The literal translation here would be “long sword”, but since it isn’t the sword that’s long and instead it’s holding the sword with both hands on the grip that ‘lengthens’ it, “extended sword” seems clearer. Compare “retracted sword” in the dueling lessons, which refers to placing the left hand on the blade. An alternative interpretation might be that the amount of blade extending in front of the hands is long in the langen Schwert grip and short in the kurtzen Schwert grip.
  8. ↑ The spelling Schirmeister is ambiguous. A Schirmmeister is a fencing teacher, using the late medieval term for fencing (schirmen rather than fechten). A Schirrmeister is an aristocrat’s stablemaster, or a logistics officer in a military setting in charge of animals and anything pulled by animals (wagons, cannon, etc.). ‘Schirmeister’ could be a spelling of either one; Hans Medel reads it as the former. The Leichmeistere ridiculed by the author of ms. 3227a in their introduction, often translated as “dance masters” or “play masters”, might be a shortening of this phrase (leichtfertigen schirmaister).
  9. ↑ The individual section headings don't seem to be part of Liechtenauer's original Record—or at least, the scribes seem to have treated them as non-authoritative and felt free to expand, contract, modify, or omit them entirely. They are only included here in abbreviated form and can be hidden along with the footnotes for easier reading.
  10. ↑ Jay Acutt has pointed out that the structure of the Record of the extended sword could be framed in terms of Classical rhetoric following Cicero and others, in which case this preface is the exordium, the introduction that appeals to the audience by declaring the speaker/writer's ethos.
  11. ↑ This preface to the Record is quoted by the glossators but rarely discussed by them (see the notes below for exceptions).
  12. ↑ Many in the Kunst des Fechtens community are inclined to discard this verse or openly declare it fraudulent or evidence of burghers pretending to be knights, but all of the known students of early masters in Liechtenauer's tradition (apart from the masters themselves) were indeed knights and princes, so there's no basis on which to argue that Liechtenauer was directing his teachings to anyone but members of the nobility. ‘Liechtenauer’ is a non-noble surname, as are most of the other names associated with his tradition, but that should be no surprise considering the occupation of fencing master was typically one that the lower classes performed for the nobility, just like hunting master and any number of other such services.
  13. ↑ Jens P. Kleinau has pointed out that in the first couplet, the second line is much longer than most in the Record, while in this second couplet, the version used by the Lew gloss only includes the first line and the version appearing in H. Beringer and Hans Folz only includes the second line. This may be evidence of combining two early proto-Records, each of which mentioned loving god in the first couplet and honoring women as the first line of the second couplet. See his 2020 blog post for more details.
  14. ↑ In the same blog post, Jens P. Kleinau points out that the mention of Ehre (rendered “fame" in this line to avoid repetition) may be a later addition to the text, since some versions have sehre instead of zu Ehre, which makes the phrase and meter smoother; additionally, the idea of warfare as an avenue of increasing one's honor is mostly absent from contemporary literature. Hofieren is to serve, often in a feudal or courtly sense, so the alternate rhymed version would be “And serve you well in war some day”.
  15. ↑ Messer is a term that we often associate with the iconic German machete-like knife taught by Johannes Lecküchner and others, but both historically and today it can refer to any kind of knife; mentions of it in the Record are usually interpreted as referring to daggers by the glossators.
  16. ↑ Literally “manly”, not “gallant”, but I've used ungendered language for the most part in this translation because I want readers to be able to more easily see themselves and their training partners in it regardless of their genders.
  17. ↑ Bederben and verderben could be read as synonyms in Early New High German (ENHG), both meaning “to destroy”, but that doesn't make sense in context so we tend to read bederben in its Middle High German (MHG) definition of “to use”. H. Beringer uniquely has ‘bedurfen=need or make use of’, which reinforces this reading and could represent an earlier, less ambiguous phrasing.
  18. ↑ Jens-Peter sees a division here where the moralistic/inspirational address to the young knight ends and practical advice to a fencing student begins. I disagree, and think couplets 6–9 are still about mindset and morality in fighting.
  19. ↑ I will generally translate the verb hauwen as “to cut” since that's the common parlance, but note well that while it describes a cutting motion, there's no connotation that the intent is to cleave or or otherwise directly hit your opponent. The word is instead often used to describe a ‘cutting motion’ that will set up further techniques (such as cutting in order to hit with a thrust).
  20. ↑ This couplet isn't directly glossed, but is mentioned by the author of ms. 3227a in their gloss of the common lesson.
  21. ↑ This word pair is translated in all kinds of ways, from the abstract/geometric (dimension and extension) to the colloquial (time and place, weighed and measured) to the fencing-specific (distance and reach). My translation goes with a more moralistic read, outlining two qualities the young knight needs to develop, both of which point to the cardinal virtue of temperance. This couplet isn't directly glossed, but is mentioned by the author of ms. 3227a in their gloss of the common lesson; it's also invoked and connected to teachings in sword section of the Augsburg Group manuscripts.
  22. ↑ This couplet might instead have been intended to be combined with the previous one as two very long lines of a single couplet: "ettlich biderman in anden hanten veder ben / kunt er chunst er mocht wol eren erwerb".
  23. ↑ Text adds an additional couplet: "kündt er kunst er möcht ere erwerben".
  24. ↑ First letter almost illegible.
  25. ↑ First letter illegible.
  26. ↑ Classical rhetoric would label this section the narratio, the statement of basic facts and the nature of the things being discussed.
  27. ↑ This is interpreted as an admonition against passively waiting for your opponent's actions in the early glosses, but I phrased it in a way that it could also lead Andre Paurenfeyndt and Joachim Meyer to turn it into a teaching about footwork.
  28. ↑ This line is contentious because it encapsulates two approaches to striking among students of Liechtenauer in the 21st century: it either advises you to approach close to your opponent and then cut so you're sure of hitting their head or body with your edge, or it advises you to cut so that your sword approaches close to your opponent and then hit their face or chest with your point; I hold with the latter interpretation, which seems most in line with the instructions in the Sigmund ain Ringeck, Pseudo-Peter von Danzig, and Lew glosses (RDL).
  29. ↑ ‘Schilt=shield’ is often treated as synonymous with the flanges that appear on some 15th-16th century fencing swords, but there's no textual support for this (no, not even in Joachim Meyer's treatises). ‘Shield’ instead seems to refer to the entire lower portion of the sword most often used for defense: the crossguard, the Strength of the blade (see below), and yes, also any flanges that appear near the shoulder of the sword.
  30. ↑ Literally “don’t avoid the skirmish”; German loves using double-negatives to emphasize a positive. Zecken is typically translated with a variety of words suggesting minor strikes (and Zeck also means “tick”, leading some to read it as something like “bug bites”), but the Lexer gives an alternative reading of “skirmish” or harassing actions. Rühren is “to stir up”, “to cause something to move”, and “to touch or hit” (including “to land a blow in fencing”); I summarize these senses as “harrying”. Zeckrühr doesn’t appear in Grimm or the Lexer, so I read it as a compound of these two words and render it as “harrying strikes” to express the idea of harrassing during a skirmish. (Thanks to Christian Trosclair for digging up the zecken lemma.) The terms Zecken and Zeckrühr are not used again in the Record or in the glosses for any other section, so it’s hard to be sure what this term means. There are hints, though: Hans Medel’s gloss repeats this couplet when it covers the take-away (after couplet 28), the misser is described as rühren (see couplet 53), and two specific pieces are given in the gloss of this couplet in Pseudo-Peter von Danzig and Lew. Based on these examples, I surmise that it's the term for actions that exit a bind and strike to a new exposure, creating a nice contrast between the skirmish and the ‘Krieg=war’ (mentioned in two places below, in which you remain in the bind and attack by turning your sword).
  31. ↑ More literally “When you want to drive something strongly, fence with your whole body”, but I went with this translation because one of my objectives was to make this stick in people's brains, and “always fight with all your strength” has been part of our collective subconscious in Kunst des Fechtens ever it since was used by Sigmund ain Ringeck translators at the turn of the 21st century. Also, not much rhymes with ‘strength’.
  32. ↑ Schlecht often means “bad”, but it can also mean “straight, direct, simple”, and that makes more sense here (as Stephen Cheney pointed out), and really in most usages in this text.
  33. ↑ This quatrain is typically interpreted as referring to right- and left-handed fencers and translated accordingly, but the text just says “right” and “left” and it’s not clear whether it’s referring to handedness, which side of the body the sword is held on (regardless of handedness), or which foot is forward (thus echoing the first lesson, just as the fourth lesson—on Before and After—echoes the second lesson—on attacking to provoke a parry rather than waiting to parry the opponent's attack). It would be odd indeed for Liechtenauer to make this one solitary mention of handedness when that subject is never addressed again, neither in his writings nor in the subsequent two centuries of writings based on his teachings.
  34. ↑ This line is the same as the first line of dueling couplet 62.
  35. ↑ RDL read this as referring to the parts of the sword—the ‘Strength’ of the sword is the part closer to the hand and the ‘Weakness’ of the sword is part near the tip (perhaps specifically from the center of balance to the cross and from the center of percussion to the tip, as swordsmith Paul Champagne (God rest his soul) once opined.); in between is the ‘middle’, and this is where two other words, ‘Hardness’ and ‘Softness’, are felt. Conversely, the author of ms. 3227a doesn't clearly distinguish these two sets of words and typically refers to things as being both “Hard and Strong” or “Soft and Weak” (perhaps owing to their love of hendiadys).
  36. ↑ The meaning of the word Indes changes significantly from MHG to ENHG. It may be translated “within” or “inside” in both languages, but in MHG, Indes was primarily a spatial adverb (i.e., within a place or location) and in ENHG it became primarily a temporal adverb (i.e., within a time or event). Liechtenauer’s Record seems to have been written in the midst of this transition and straddles both senses: the word ‘Within’ is used to describe actions the instant (time) when you have felt the pressure of the bind (place) and must choose a response. By the time of Joachim Meyer, this linguistic evolution was complete and this is perhaps what lead him to accuse masters who taught a spacial interpretation of Indes to be conflating it with the Latin word Intus, which does indeed align closely with the MHG
  37. ↑ Erschricken is often translated as “frighten”, but according to Grimm, it's in the sense of a ‘jump-scare’ rather than a feeling of terror. This verse isn't about cowardice or running away, but rather about panicking and doing something stupid when attacked (as Jessica Finley has pointed out).
  38. ↑ With full extension
  39. ↑ This couplet seems to replace the first line of couplet 15, leaving the second line of 15 as an orphan.
  40. ↑ Text terminates at this point. The leaves with the rest of the text are missing.
  41. ↑ l corrected from t.
  42. ↑ kam
  43. ↑ deinen
  44. ↑ faler
  45. ↑ This quatrain is often appended to the end of the common lesson, but the author of ms. 3227a places it as the beginning of the list of main pieces of the Record, and I think it makes the most sense there, where the five are actually listed and named.
  46. ↑ This couplet is omitted from the Record in ms. 3227a; it's also worded awkwardly (in German) and doesn't rhyme. It's possible that this was a late addition to the Record and perhaps even not authored by Liechtenauer.
  47. ↑ In Classical rhetoric, the third segment would be the partitio, the outline of the argument.
  48. ↑ Krumm und twer is an expression meaning something like “to and fro” (per Jessica Finley). Likewise, the cut of wrath is described by both RDL and the author of ms. 3227a as a ‘schlect haw=straight cut’, and schlect und krumm is an expression meaning “straight and crooked” (per Christian Trosclair). But since this couplet is clearly designed to be mnemonic rather than a functional description, I devised something memorable.
  49. ↑ Schiller mit Scheitler is listed as one of the six techniques that the Brotherhood of St. Mark would test prospective masters on, but neither RDL nor the author of ms. 3227a make any effort to explain these two things in context with each other. Hans Medel offers a play that he labels that way, though, and Hans Talhoffer modifies a verse in the Schiller to include a reference to the Scheitel (see below).
  50. ↑ This couplet is strange; it can be read as describing the first five main pieces, but if that were the intent, we'd expect to see Leger versetzt / Nachreisen überlauff absetzt (which would even have the same meter). Instead, it says ‘Alber=poplar tree or foolish’ instead of Leger in the first line and and ‘haw setzt=set the cut’ (or, more commonly, ‘haw letzt=hinders cuts’) instead of absetzt in the second. This might signify that it was manipulated to make it more memorable than a simple list would be, so I similarly tried to phrase it into a narrative sentence. (Lew is unique in that the Record quoted there does indeed have absetzt, but no extant copy of the Record has Leger instead of Alber.)
  51. ↑ I've tried to emphasize opposing pairs whenever they are apparent, even if the Record doesn't call attention to them. ‘Stossen=push’ and ‘zucken=pull’ are such a pair; they might be translated even better as “shove” and “yank”, emphasizing the forcefulness of the action, but I hate both of those translations (not for any good reason, they're just not part of my dialect so they sound unnatural to me) so I'm going with push and pull.
  52. ↑ Or “crush”
  53. ↑ Or “twirl”
  54. ↑ According to Classical rhetoric, the partitio would be followed by the confirmatio (arguments) and refutatio (counterarguments), which might be separated or mixed together. This is the weakest part of the hypothesis, since you have to really work to frame the descriptions of five strikes and the first eleven of the twelve main pieces as argument and counterargument.
  55. ↑ This is the ‘schlecht haw=straight cut’, so I wrote this section to be simple and direct.
  56. ↑ Who is wrathful here? In Medieval art, the concept of ‘wrath’ is often represented as a man stabbing himself, showing its self-destructive nature; the name of the ‘wrath cut’ may thus be meant to indicate that you are offering your point for a wrathful opponent to impale themselves upon (as Jessica Finley has pointed out). The author of ms. 3227a supports this interpretation, indicating that this strike is meant to be used against a person in their anger and wrath (as Maciej Talaga has pointed out). However, RDL offer the instruction to “cut wrathfully” against your opponent's cut, implying that you are the wrathful one. With respect to that, it's worth noting that Grimm states that Zorn began as a term for excitement in battle, not an expression of anger or hatred. The Record doesn't explicitly assign wrath to either side, which I tried to preserve in my phrasing here, though it does contain admonitions to remain calm and controlled while using the ‘wrath cut’ and its pieces.
  57. ↑ Werner Ueberschär has suggested that there may be a double-meaning in this verse: ohne fahr would be “without danger” (rendered as “care not” here), but ohne farr would be “without ox”, emphasizing that this technique is used instead of turning your sword into guard of the ox (which the next couplet describes).
  58. ↑ In this quatrain, we have taking off above and below. Lew presents these as equal options that you're free to choose between, whereas Sigmund ain Ringeck and Pseudo-Peter von Danzig offer specific cues that lead you to choose one or the other, and both the author of ms. 3227a and Paulus Kal present them as a sequence of motions, taking off below only after you've taken off above.
  59. ↑ This line is the same as the second line of couplet 97, in the section on the angles.
  60. ↑ Some witnesses have vor instead of far or var, and the alternate rhymed version would be “‘Within’ the After and Before”.
  61. ↑ As mentioned above, the ‘Krieg=war’ could be read as the counterpart to ‘zecken=skirmish’. The war is defined in RDL as a term for attacking by turning your sword toward new exposures in the bind, but once it's introduced here and mentioned once in the final quatrain of the curve, it doesn't appear again in the Record. Instead, the verb “to turn” is preferred. The contrasting admonitions to ‘embrace the skirmish’ but ‘don’t rush to war’ are interesting, but would be more interesting if these terms were commonly used to describe fencing in the Liechtenauer tradition (but they aren’t).
  62. ↑ This couplet uses similar phrasing to 80, in the section on overrunning, and dueling couplet 36.
  63. ↑ The RDL glosses discuss shaming the opponent both above and below, and Werner Ueberschär has pointed out that this couplet could be read to support that (‘If they aim at the war, bring them shame above and below’) since there's no punctuation to force a specific division of words, but I think the Record intends to contrast high and low rather than join them, and in the other places where this phrasing is used, the glosses do place one fencer high and one low. Curiously, the Lew gloss uniquely moves oben before rehmet, solidifying the ‘war above’ reading even as it describes war above and below.
  64. ↑ I render winden as “to turn”, following Harry R. and Dierk Hagedorn, which I agree makes the text read more smoothly. It also avoids some of the stranger meanings that people have tried to impose based on the more popular translation of “to wind”.
  65. ↑ Werner Ueberschär has suggested that this couplet would make more sense if it appeared after the couplet about confounding the masters (35) rather than before, though I don't see a reason for his complaint. The statement of the Record at the beginning of the Dresden manuscript moves couplet 35 before the one about turning (33), but it is unique in making this change.
  66. ↑ This couplet is very close to 90, in the section on pulling, and dueling couplet 63.
  67. ↑ Effen, translated “confound” here, can also mean “to imitate”, so this could alternatively be read as a statement about acting like a master. However, the other places where this construction is used are more clearly about causing trouble for the opponent.
  68. ↑ Or “This is the about the Wrath cut, which slices apart.”
  69. ↑ Or “wind more broadly”
  70. ↑ I.e. to the action described next
  71. ↑ Jump up to: 71.0 71.1 remen => räumen, meaning “to make space, clear away, evacuate”.
  72. ↑ There is no space between "Dupliere" and "doniden", the "D" was possibly added later.
  73. ↑ This section is often grouped together with the wrath cut, but its teachings seem to be more general. Together with the common lesson, in bookends the presentation of the ‘straight fight’.
  74. ↑ Could also be “openings”, but I think “exposure” is more evocative of what's being expressed. When fighting in literal armor, you do indeed attack the openings (i.e., gaps) in their armor, but unarmored, it's all about which parts of your opponent are left exposed by their movements. Furthermore, Bloß literally means “nudity” or “nakedness” (Mayr's Latinist renders it nuditas), and this meaning is encompassed by ‘exposure’ but not by ‘opening’. (I suspect the word ‘opening’ is imposed on the text as a borrowing from the lexicon of modern sports rather than because someone thought it was an accurate translation.)
  75. ↑ I generally read this verb as ‘rähmen/rehmen=aim, strive for, frame’, but it could also be ‘raumen=clear away, make space for’ (which is how Andre Paurenfeyndt and his followers render it). In this instance, I was able to fold in both meanings.
  76. ↑ Fahr/gefahr has two different branches of meaning: the first is ‘travelers, the movement of travelers, or the path or direction traveled’, and the second is ‘risk, hazard, danger’ (which originates from the risk of ambush while traveling, leading back to the first one). Both senses are present in the Record, and it's possible that both senses are implied simultaneously. In this translation, I've stuck with “threat/danger” as the more obvious sense in most cases.
  77. ↑ I read this as ‘brauchen=apply, use, exploit, abuse’, but it could also be intended as ‘brechen=break, counter’; the latter doesn’t seem to make sense here since whenever brechen is used elsewhere, it describes countering an action or position of the opponent, not an inherent quality of their anatomy/geometry.
  78. ↑ This would literally just be “doubling”, but “redoubling” has the same meaning in English and ‘doubling’; has taken on the very different meaning of “simultaneously hitting and being hit” in the parlance of the Kunst des Fechtens community.
  79. ↑ This quatrain is very close to 100–101, in the section on the angles.
  80. ↑ Or “to the right”
  81. ↑ Or “slow”
  82. ↑ Corrected from »Im«.
  83. ↑ The text doubles the title of this section.
  84. ↑ In keeping with the contrast between straight and crooked, I translated this section in a way that suggests deception and subterfuge. In the glosses, its plays demonstrate how to artfully violate all the instructions given in the common lesson.
  85. ↑ An interesting facet of the Record on the extended sword that we see here and in the remaining three cuts is that Liechtenauer avoids reifying them—i.e., turning them into formalized ‘things’. For example, at no point does Liechtenauer tell you to “cut a crooked cut”; instead, he tells you to curve here, or to go crookedly there. It's the glosses that turn these descriptions into formally-defined jargon like “the crooked cut”, and then this jargon is imposed onto the Record by the scribes adding red section headers.
  86. ↑ Krumm can mean both “curved” and “crooked”; it specifically describes a thing that is usually straight but has unnatural curvature. I use “curved” as the adjective form and “crookedly” as the adverb.
  87. ↑ This couplet uses similar phrasing to 81, in the section on overrunning.
  88. ↑ This line might instead have been intended to be combined with the previous ones as two lines of a single couplet: "den elenbog nym in der waug / und mach den fäler nit träg".
  89. ↑ Jump up to: 89.0 89.1 Corrected from »Twir«.
  90. ↑ haust
  91. ↑ These three fragments of lines were probably intended to be combined into a single line: "Zwifach mit macht virbas".
  92. ↑ Twer is translated as both “crosswise” and “across”, depending on which fits the sentence better.
  93. ↑ A Fehler is the opposite of a ‘Treffer=hitter’ and signifies something that doesn’t hit whatever target it was aimed at. Here, it’s clearly an intentional miss.
  94. ↑ This couplet uses similar phrasing to 79, in the section on pursuit.
  95. ↑ Fehler is the opposite of a Treffer, which is something that hits or succeeds. The Fehler is the losing throw in dice, the missed shot in archery and shooting. It is, however, an action that might hit, but it is assumed that it will miss.
  96. ↑ Talhoffer adds an additional couplet: [4r] 
    So machst du in wol betöwben
    Die fallerin kunst berowben
  97. ↑ Schielen is a tricky verb because it has a double meaning of “askew” and “cross-eyed” (once upon a time called ‘squint-eyed’), and the text relies on both meanings. “Cockeyed” is the closest we can get to both meanings in one English word. (Thanks to Christian Trosclair for suggesting this translation.) When shielen is used to tell you to look at rather than strike something, it’s rendered “cock [i.e, turn] your eye”.
  98. ↑ Or “destroy”
  99. ↑ Or “skill”
  100. ↑ Scheitel refers to the top of the front of the head, the hairline, and the part of the hair. The verb scheiden means “to divide or separate”, and the noun Schaiden refers to damage or harm. Thus, while Sigmund ain Ringeck is clear that the name refers to starting from the part of your hair (i.e., over your head) rather than targeting their hairline, the other potential meaning of “to part” (divide the opponent in half) may also be intended.
  101. ↑ Whatever comes from the Skull cut.
  102. ↑ A Leger is a lair or place to lie down and also a military encampment (especially a siege camp). A Hut is a defensive position or guard. It has been proposed based on these meanings that Leger could have originally indicated a position used offensively and Hut a position used defensively, but there’s no evidence of this distinction in any treatises from Liechtenauer’s tradition and the terms are used interchangeably.
  103. ↑ While ‘oxen’ refers to bovines trained as draft animals—usually castrated males, but sometimes bulls or cows—the term Ochs also encompassed the aurochs, the wild ancestor of domestic cows that was prized for its leather and hunted to extinction by the 17th cen. Unlike domestic cattle, the aurochs had large horns that pointed inward.
  104. ↑ Albern is an adjective meaning “foolish” whereas Alber is a noun meaning “poplar tree”; Joachim Meyer interprets it as the former, which he justifies with the explanation that only a fool would use such a worthless guard; Paulus Hector Mayr reads it as the latter, and his Latin translator renders it ‘populus arbor=poplar tree’ without any explanation (PMM: 89r.2–90r.3). There’s no way to be sure which one Liechtenauer intended, but PD: 2r renders it Alwer, a MHG word meaning “simple or worthless”, and Hans Medel uses ‘alberlich=foolishly’ in relation to it (HM: 32r.5), giving the barest suggestion of a shared understanding early in the tradition.
  105. ↑ Could also be ‘von Dach=from the roof’. I went with “day” to match the pastoral theme of the others, and for the similarity to H. Beringer, which uniquely has ‘von himmel=from the sky’.
  106. ↑ Or “flee”
  107. ↑ In the 15th century, the word Versetzen encompassed both ‘versetzen=to move or shift location’ and ‘vorsetzen=to place in front’, and in this text it usually refers to a defensive action we might label a “parry”.
  108. ↑ The various glossators uniformly ignore the word ‘auch=also’ in this line: the author of ms. 3227a focuses on the first line and introduces four parrying actions without discussing guards, while RDL focuses on the second line and alludes to ways of attacking guards that were covered earlier in the five strikes with no mention of parrying.
  109. ↑ This line might instead have been intended to be combined with the previous ones as two long lines of a single couplet: "nun lerne in daß / den alten schnit mit macht".
  110. ↑ Hier hat der Schreiber offensichtlich ein Häkchen vergessen.
  111. ↑ The second word in the name of this piece is sometimes spelled ‘myn=form’ and sometimes ‘nym=take’. Myn tends to appear more commonly in the 15th cen. and nym in the 16th, but both appear in the earliest witnesses so it’s hard to say which one is the original term. Either would capture the essence of the piece, which is actions from a bind on the “outside” (left) instead of the “inside” (right). I decided to use both in this translation.
  112. ↑ This couplet is very close to 109, in the section on the turns.
  113. ↑ This couplet uses similar phrasing to 56, in the section on the misser. The “old slice” is probably meant to convey ‘the previous slice’, referring to that verse.
  114. ↑ This is ‘overrunning’ in the sense of a river that overruns its banks or a cup that runneth over.
  115. ↑ This couplet uses similar phrasing to 32, in the section on the cut of wrath, and dueling couplet 36.
  116. ↑ This couplet uses similar phrasing to 45, in the section on the curved cut.
  117. ↑ This couplet uses similar phrasing to 108, in the section on the turns.
  118. ↑ Or “counters”
  119. ↑ Or “him”
  120. ↑ should be "dreffen"
  121. ↑ Both durchwechseln and zucken are sometimes translated as “disengaging”, presumably in a misguided attempt to impose terminology from Modern Olympic Fencing on Liechtenauer's teachings. It isn't the literal meaning of either verb, and imposing it on the text just seems to add more potential for misunderstanding.
  122. ↑ This section is followed by one titled "Von durchlauffen ab seczen", which repeat the verse on Absetzen.
  123. ↑ This couplet is very close to 35, in the section on the cut of wrath, and dueling couplet 63.
  124. ↑ Or “crushing”
  125. ↑ Or “yell”
  126. ↑ “To hang” is the cognate for hengen, but as much as I like cognates, “angle” is the definition that will make the most sense and be the most actionable for most readers. Paulus Hector Mayr’s Latin translator agrees and used ‘inclinatio=inclination or angle’.
  127. ↑ This line is the same as the second line of couplet 30, in the section on the cut of wrath.
  128. ↑ Sprechfenster is often read as Sprachfenster, literally “window for speaking” and the term for the screen through which cloistered monastics could communicate with the outside world (but not, as far as I can tell, a small window inside a door that can be used to talk without opening the door). However, Paulus Hector Mayr’s Latin translator renders it ‘fenestra patula=spread-open window’, which seems to be based on reading it as Spreichfenster from ‘spreien=spread’. This is an intriguing possibility, and I incorporated both meanings here. (Liechtenauer could, of course, have also intended it to be read both ways.)
  129. ↑ This could equally be meant as ‘freilich=freely’ or ‘safely (due to freedom)’ or ‘fröhlich=joyfully, cheerfully, or funnily’; both spellings are attested in early witnesses of Liechtenauer’s Record. (Again, it could be intended to encompass both.)
  130. ↑ This quatrain is very close to 40–41, in the section on the four exposures.
  131. ↑ Or “spraying”, or possibly “speaking”
  132. ↑ Illegible word. Could be read as either ‘zo’ or ‘w’. In the glosses on 37r it says ‘zw’.
  133. ↑ A guide letter “w” is visible under the “U” (apparently ignored by the rubricator), making the intended word “Wer”.
  134. ↑ Covering a deletion.
  135. ↑ Apparently the writer misplaced the space here.
Early Germanic Traditions
Common Fencing Johannes Liechtenauer reversed.jpg
Wrestling
Liechtenauer
Tradition
Beringer Verse
Augsburg Tradition
Other Works
Fabris Tradition
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