Historical European Martial Arts (H.E.M.A.), the Rondel or medieval dagger, and the Fiore Dei Libri manuscript

The study of history need not be a static, sedentary thing. For one thing, there's a lot there, like everything that ever existed, and much of it involved doing things.

Which brings us to the modern activity of "Historical European Martial Arts" (Also Known As "H.E.M.A."), a 600 year old book called "Fiore Dei Liberi's Armizare", and a medieval dagger known today (but not in medieval times) as "the Rondel." 

Late Medieval European daggers 

Going in reverse order, the Rondel is the modern name for a medieval dagger that resembled a large ice-pick more than it did a modern fighting blade. While most modern fighting knives are designed for slicing and cutting, techniques that can be deadly in most hand to hand combat situations, the rondel was adapted for fighting opponents in plate mail. A modern sharp bladed dagger would not do much damage against an enemy encased in medieval plate armor. Attempts to cut the plate would most likely do little damage to the person inside, while dulling the blade. By contrast, the long, narrow, sharply pointed rondel, if stabbed forcefully had a better chance of both piercing the plate than a wider knife, it also could slide through the cracks and joints in the armor, thus reaching the person inside. The rondel was a common weapon in the days when Europeans fought in heavy armor.

An excellent book on the use of the medieval
dagger as taught in the Fiore Dei Liberi
manuscript aimed at a modern audience.

But how exactly did people fight, or train to fight, with the rondel? How did they move? How did they hold their hands and move their fight when they did? Were their techniques and movements, or series of movements and techniques, which they practiced during training?

Although much of the details are conjecture, speculation, and, at best, educated guesses, we do have some information on these matters due to the existence of a 600 year old book known as Fiore Dei Liberi's Armizare. This was a hand drawn, Italian book dating from 1410 on fighting from the time, and it is often considered the oldest known comprehensive manual on hand to hand armed and unarmed combat in the European tradition. Four copies of the book, each slightly different, have survived and are located in museums around the USA and Europe.



Although the Fiore Dei Liberi manuscript describes

a good quality plastic reproduction of a
medieval dagger from the Cold Steel
company built for safer training

 techniques for unarmed combat, swordsmanship (using the hand and a half sword of the time), axe, spear, as well as other weapons, a large portion of the work covers techniques for attacking with the rondel. For each of these techniques there is then a counter, called "a remedy" in the terminology adapted for the book, and then each of these counters has its own counter, charmingly called "the remedy master."

The work and its illustrations give clear descrptions of what each technique is supposed to look like at various points in the process.  However, there is some debate over what happened or should have happened at the points in between the illustrations. Furthermore, as the art and techniques described in the book died out at some point centuries ago, unlike some Asian martial arts, there does not exist a lineage of living masters of the art who passed the teachings down from one student to another.

The author on the left preparing to defend
himself from a simulated medieval dagger
attack at a training session in the Boston area.

Nevertheless, some people today, in organized groups or as individuals, do attempt to recreate and practice the techniques in this work. For obvious reasons, what they are doing is an interpretation and may or may not be what the author of the book intended when he wrote and taught in the fifteenth century. But in most cases, students of the art have put much time and effort into learning what they can about body mechanics as well as fighting techniques, in order to try and achieve recreated techniques that are reasonably sound in practice and thus more likely to be close to what the original practitioners of this art did.

Such groups fall under the umbrella term of "Historical European Martial Arts" or H.E.M.A. I've participated in a small way with two different H.E.M.A. groups and enjoyed the experience. They were fun people and their gatherings were both fun and good exercise.

More on the Rondel and how it was used as taught in the Fiore Dei Liberi's Armizare is below.

An Excellent Series of Training Videos from the North West USA

Further Reading

http://myarmoury.com/feature_spot_rondel.html