Historical Fencing and HEMA Treatises

As stated in our constitution, the Dawn Duellists ‘study and practice the methods of European swordplay from the 13th to the 20th century’, so all the fencing we do comes from fencing treatises and manuals, most of which are translations of period originals and some of which are modern interpretations. For that reason we classify publications by the age to which they pertain even if they are written much later by modern masters and academics.

Treatises

Please remember that with online sources of treatises, translations are the property of the author(s) and are a labour of love not a professional publication.

Distributors

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Lulu - www.lulu.com
American distribution and print company with reasonable shipping rates who sell and reprint books (copyright allowing). Many treatises can be found here, including the hard-to-get Sword and Buckler recommendation.

Online sources

Bibliography of treatises
Not so much a source ot treatises but a very comprehensive treatise bibliography from the American HEMA group, Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. This should help you find titles by masters or in eras you are interested in.
German longsword tradition
English translations in part or in whole of various treatises, concentrating on the German longsword tradition, by members of the German HEMA group, Ochs Historiche Kampfkünste.
Renaissance treatise collection
Facsimile, therefore untranslated, copies in pdf format of original Renaissance treatises, provided by the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies. Treatises in English, such as Di Grassi's, are obviously instantly usable but this is a good place to see the illustration plates in foreign language treatises.
Tower Manuscript I.33
English translation with interpretation of the Tower Manuscript I.33 for sword and buckler by Swiss re-enactment group, Freywild.
Please note that whilst these suppliers have in the past proved to be satisfactory to DDS members, the DDS are not able to guarantee your experience will be as good.
We recommend the following treatises and translations for our current set of classes. It's best to shop around the websites selling those which are published books to see who has the lowest price.
  • Longsword
    Goliath Fechtbuch
    By Johannes Lichtenauer (English translation / online source)
    Fechtbuch des Sigmund Ringeck
    By Sigmund Ringek (English translation / online source)
  • Rapier / sidesword
    Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise
    By Camillo Agrippa (English translation / book)
  • Sabre
    Cold Steel: The Art of Fencing with the Sabre
    By Alfred Hutton (English language / book)
  • Sword and Buckler
    The Medieval Art of Swordsmanship: A Facsimile & Translation of the World's Oldest Personal Combat Treatise
    by Dr Jeffrey L Forgeng (English translation / book)

If you are using the Amazon store, please note that some items such as digital materials and items sold via Amazon sellers cannot be purchased directly through our store and will be linked to on the main Amazon website. These items will go in a seperate shopping cart on the main website and not in our store shopping cart but the DDS will still get contributions for such sales. We hope Amazon will integrate shopping carts at some point to make things easier.