User:Xavierbaecke

As an enthusiast, researcher and instructor of HEMA, I have been working in SwArta for about ten years, leaving it behind to focus more on equestrian HEMA as the manager and lead rider of the Scholae Artis Equestris. In this period I worked intensively analysing and practising the techniques described within the fencing manuals. My main interest laid with the 14th and 15th century manuals, on the main disciplines taught at SwArta: longsword, grappling and dagger.

Furthermore, as a professional historian, I worked over the course of five years both on the digitisation and cataloguing of both narrative sources and diplomatic sources of the Low Countries, contributing to both http://www.narrative-sources.be and http://www.diplomata-belgica.be. My personal research as a historian focused on knighthood in the High Middle Ages. Next to that, as personal project, I further investigated medieval and knightly martial traditions and techniques, as well as taking a profound interest in the history of Western Horsemanship, both as a technique, but also as a cultural development in an evolving social, political and cultural framework.

This brings me to my main focus today, which still lays with knighthood and knightly martial arts, but also with reconstructing the necessary horsemanship, in turn requiring a thourough knowledge of different traditions of Western Horsemanship, amongst which the works of masters from Traditional Dressage.

This led to the already impressive digital repertory, providing many links to sources and literature, on the website of the Scholae Artis Equestris, the Bibliotheca Equestris (https://equestris.weebly.com/bibliotheca-equestris.html).