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Wiktenauer:Main page/Featured
| Lew | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Fencing master |
| Ethnicity | Jewish (?) |
| Movement | Liechtenauer Tradition |
| Genres | |
| Language | Early New High German |
| Principal manuscript(s) |
|
| Manuscript(s) |
MS Dresd. C.93/4 (1542)
|
| Concordance by | Michael Chidester |
| Translations | |
Lew or Lewe is the presumed name of a 15th century German fencing master. He seems to have stood in the tradition of Johannes Liechtenauer, though he was not included in Paulus Kal's ca. 1470 list of the members of the Fellowship of Liechtenauer.
The name Lewe means "lion" and might have been a nickname or pseudonym. The colophon to the Cod. I.6.4º.3, which states "Here ends the Jewish art of the man called Lew", has lead people to fabricate names like Jud Lew or Jude Lew (meaning "Lew the Jew"), even though such a name doesn't appear anywhere in the historical record, and even to speculate that Lew might be a Germanization of a Hebrew name like Levi.
Lew is sometimes erroneously credited with authoring the whole of the Cod. I.6.4º.3, which is an anonymous compilation of various fencing treatises created in the 1460s. His name is actually associated with just two sections of that book: he is credited as the author of an armored fencing treatise which was really written by Martin Huntsfeld, and is mentioned at the end of a gloss of Johannes Liechtenauer's Recital on mounted fencing (by convention, the gloss of Liechtenauer's Recital on long sword fencing that almost always accompanies this mounted gloss is also attributed to Lew). Though this colophon is generally regarded as indicating that Lew authored the gloss (which is one branch of the larger Pseudo-Peter von Danzig gloss family), it could alternatively be interpreted to mean that Lew was the scribe or client for the whole manuscript.
Textual History
Manuscript Stemma
Early on in its history, the prototype of the Pseudo-Peter von Danzig gloss seems to have split into at least three branches, and no definite copies of the unaltered original are known to survive. The gloss of Sigmund ain Ringeck also seems to be related to this work, due to the considerable overlap in text and contents, but it is currently unclear if Ringeck's gloss is based on that of pseudo-Danzig or if they both derive from an even earlier original gloss (or even if Ringeck and pseudo-Danzig are the same author and the "Ringeck" gloss should be considered a fourth branch).
Branch A, first attested in the Augsburg version (1450s) and comprising the majority of extant copies, has more plays overall than Branch B but generally shorter descriptions in areas of overlap. It also glosses only Liechtenauer's Recital on long sword and mounted fencing; in lieu of a gloss of Liechtenauer's short sword, it is generally accompanied by the short sword teachings of Andre Lignitzer and Martin Huntsfeld (or, in the case of the 1512 Vienna II, Ringeck's short sword gloss). Branch A is sometimes called the Lew gloss, based on a potential attribution at the end of the mounted gloss in a few copies. Apart from the Augsburg, the other principal text in Branch A is the Salzburg version (1491), which was copied independently and also incorporates twelve paragraphs from Ringeck's gloss and nineteen paragraphs from an unidentified third source. Branch A was redacted by Paulus Hector Mair (three mss., 1540s), Lienhart Sollinger (1556), and Joachim Meyer (1570), which despite being the latest is the cleanest extant version. This branch was also one of the bases for Johannes Lecküchner's gloss on the Messer in the late 1470s.
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