Historical fencing - Definition and Overview

Historical martial arts reconstructions are attempts at reviving martial arts with no living tradition. In recent years, with the resurgence of interest in martial arts, schools of fighting long since discontinued have generated enough interest for individuals and organizations to reconstruct them from historical sources.

The reconstruction of a martial art is very difficult indeed, and opinions on how it is best done differ quite a lot. Usually, written material is used, along with paintings and diagrams of movement. This is, however, usually not enough to capture the dynamics of a martial art, and practical experimentation becomes necessary. Normally the people attempting to reconstruct a martial art have experience in some other, similar martial art with a living tradition, and they normally fill in the gaps with this martial art.

Examples of martial arts reconstruction are Pankration and the various historical European schools of fencing. The term Historical fencing refers to any fencing system that predates the three classical fencing weapons. These systems may reconstructed, or part of a surviving tradition.

See also

• Historical European Martial Arts
• German school of swordsmanship
• fencing

External links

• The Association for Historical Fencing (http://www.ahfi.org/)
• Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (http://www.thearma.org/)
• Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts (http://www.aemma.org/)

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