In December 2022, I presented this paper at a conference in Brescia. The journal that is publishing the proceedings is taking forever to actually get the issue out, but I recently found out that I'm allowed to release pre-print copies, so here it is! An appendix includes my complete Meyer Census.

After four months of tweaking and poking and rewriting and reconsidering, I've completed another revision of my Zettel translation. It's starting to sound pretty good now. I've also expanded the footnotes in a lot of places, including adding more variant readings and more terminology discussion.

Holy crap, this one is beautiful. I paid out the nose for this one, but I now have every painted Thibault print I can locate for sale, apart from a few that I passed by because they're duplicates and not better than what I have. Now we can plan the scanning.

We now have 30 Thibault prints to digitize for Wiktenauer! If you or someone you know owns a painted Thibault page, HEMA Bookshelf has offered to pay for shipping to Massachusetts and back to get it digitized with the rest (and also provide advice about how to package it so that it travels safely).

At SCSF, I brought 26 original ca. 1630 painted prints from Girard Thibault's treatise to display alongside Brian Stokes' first edition (on the red velvet throne to the right).

A Meyer coloring book! This book includes all 62 prints from Joachim Meyer's 1570 treatise. We took Hans Christoff Stimmer's woodblocks, cleaned them up, and printed them at 150% of their original size. Whether you want to color them or simply appreciate their details in B&W, this book is for you!

New book alert! 𝘍𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘰 𝘎𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘪'𝘴 𝘙𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘒𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘌𝘹𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘴, a new edition of this important 1587 fencing treatise by Mike Smallridge! It includes a complete English translation, a transcription of the Italian text, all of the illustrations from the Bnf's copy, and an extensive biography.

I wrote this little eulogy for Mike on my Wiktenauer account a few days ago. Hope to see and reminisce with a lot of you at the memorial service this weekend.

Are you ready to buy the biggest book you've ever seen? This project has 2 goals: 1. To publish Thibault’s illustrations in as close to their original size as possible — to do this, we need 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝙥𝙧𝙚-𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨. 2. To fund the digitization of complete, painted illustrations to release on Wiktenauer.

So much Thibault...

One original 1620s painted Thibault print has arrived, and nine more are on the way.

Thibault is large

Preparing for a new project

The last post I made here was the rhyming translation, so here's a revised version! This is the version I added to the wiki, including 225 footnotes and a new transcription I did from the Rome ("Danzig") manuscript. If the footnotes are too distracting, you can go to page 29 for a clean copy. Enjoy!

I keep forgetting this platform exists. I was never really a Twitter-user, and apparently I'm not good at not-Twitter either.

I spent April-June working on an English translation of Liechtenauer's Zettel written in verse like the original. You can read the results on Wiktenauer, along with a mountain of footnotes explaining choices: wiktenauer.com/wiki/Johanne... (My introduction to the project is in the discussion tab.)

More revisions to the Lignitzer article: new translations by Christian Trosclair and Per Magnus Haaland, more dagger thanks to Bart Walczak and Bartosz Starko, a timeline of contemporary research, and this provisional stemma. Enjoy! wiktenauer.com/wiki/Andre_L...

Today in updates no one asked for: Andre Lignitzer! wiktenauer.com/wiki/Andre_L... This page has received several new transcriptions and also the modular column upgrade for easier comparison between manuscripts. Pictured: Short sword fencing from the Cluny, which has nothing to do with Lignitzer.

It's time! Announcing our next facsimile project: Philippo di Vadi! In addition to the "standard" facsimile, you can choose the "metallic ink" add-on to get a version that restores the gold and silver illumination of the manuscript (which has been partly lost to the ravages of time).

While I know people always judge books by their covers, I didn't consider that in-person, when they can't see a plaintext title, people would glance at the cover, see a word they don't recognize, and move on. So I'm working on an alternative for in-person sales to leverage the name Ringeck properly.

Now on Wiktenauer: BnF ms. Arabe 2824 is an Egyptian fencing treatise written in 1470 in Arabic, containing teachings of the Mamluks, the elite--but indentured or enslaved--warrior class of many Islamic nations in the medieval and modern periods. It was written by Pseudo-Ibn Akḥī Ḥizām.

Prepping for the next facsimile campaign. I guess now we find out the extent to which paper prices have gone insane. What's coming up next? Here's a *tiny* hint...

In a blatant cash grab, #Google is now raising prices on my Workspace subscription and forcibly bundling in their plagiarism engine #Gemini. Wish my web host provided a different email option.

One of the things I researched a bit but didn't end up including in the introductory chapters to my new book *Pieces of Ringeck* was a duel between Heinrich von Ramstein and Juan de Merlo in 1428. This is a free public post on Patreon, so please share with all your friends!

Not to distract from *gestures vaguely all around*, but at some point we, the people who trust science and research, probably need to deal with how utterly broken the system of peer review and publication has become. "The science" seems to become less trustable year by year.

A while ago, I created this visualization page to show the relative sizes of various fencing manuscripts. wiktenauer.com/wiki/Wiktena... I was tinkering with this page recently, and to make it more useful, I also created a few subsections that only cover related manuscripts for easier comparison.

Still not sure the extent to which I'll be using this thing, but FYI, if I can't tell who you are then I probably won't be following you back. I'm generally disinclined to talk to people if I don't know who they are.

In the 3rd position on c. 12a of the Novati Facsimile and the lower register of f. 37r of the Paris manuscript--right before the plays of the final master of dagger, there's an interesting play.

Together at last.

Christmas came late this year, but the first copies of _Pieces of Ringeck_ are here!