Intro

Terminology and the Longsword Guards

Authors note. I wrote this aticle some years ago, some of my views and opinions have changed since.

One of the areas that can cause the greatest confusion within the research of historical fighting styles, is that of terminology. This is something of a paradox, as after all we give things names to distinguish them one from another and to make it easier for us to know to what we are referring. While this is good in theory it is seldom the case in actuality. Firstly different teachers use and have used different names for the same things; there has been little agreement between teachers even in the same location or time. More confusing, are those that use the same terms but give them different meanings. Another problem is that the use and meaning of the terminology changes over time, this can be very misleading when we see a word that we recognise and assume we know its meaning only to find out later that it means something else. Similar problems arise when we deal with foreign words. All the previously discussed issues are encountered here, however we must now add the possibility of misunderstanding any subtle nuances that would be obvious to someone fluent in the language but may be lost on someone not familiar with it. Of course knowing what a word means in modern German or Italian can be different from understanding its common meaning 500 years ago!

Historical combat research is not the only area where these problems are found of course, you can find them in Asian martial arts and in modern fencing. However at least in these areas we can go and talk to the different teachers. The problem encountered when researching European historical combat styles is that we are working at a distance from our subject and ultimately everything thing that we do is interpretative, as we have little or no direct evidence of how things were done.

Within the Guilds syllabus we carry on the teaching style of John Waller. His approach has been to keep the training as simple and as uncomplicated as possible. This includes using easily understood terminology. Therefore the decision was made to avoid using period words for all the reasons mentioned above, also for one other reason. We believe the use of obscure/historical terminology can create, often unintentionally, a divide between those who know what the words mean and those who do not. This of course has an historical precedent; masters of the past would often use secret words and phrases to prevent the uninitiated from obtaining their knowledge. However as one of the main objectives of our modern research is to improve the general understanding of historical combat, I believe that the use of such language can be counter productive. The language of the Guild is English and so the terminology used within the syllabus is also English. With members from so many countries speaking different languages, the decision was made to use as much as possible one language within the teaching. Initially this simplifies the teaching process, however once overseas members become familiar with and understand the Principles they can and have translated them into their native tongue to allow them to more easily teach their own students. Again we come to the problem of translation. If we as English teachers chose to use German or Italian terminology to describe the principles, it would be based on our interpretation of what that word actually meant. We would then use it to teach students who may be more familiar with these words in their native tongue and would have their own interpretation of what they mean. This could very easily cause confusion and a misunderstanding of the principles being taught.

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Longsword Guards Used By The Guild

Going along with this approach we have decided to make use of a generic set of guards that may be used with two-handed or hand-and-half swords. We also decided to simplify the names that they are given. All of those used can be found within the manuals of the historic masters although not all guards are common to all masters, some show or talk about only two or three guards while others show many more. Even when the guard positions themselves appear similar, the names they are given often vary from master to master and country to country.

For example the Guild Front high guard (right) is generally known as the ‘Ox’ in German manuals...

... while in the manual of Fiore dei Liberi, an Italian, it is called the Porta reale di vera finestra, royal or real window position.

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Some masters show guards that seem to be very similar, but are named differently; they ultimately seem to be subtle variations of one basic guard. Some examples from the work of Fiore dei Liberi are shown below.

Dente di Cinghale (Boar's Tooth)

Porta di ferro mezzana (Iron door middle position)

Guild's Front Low Guard.

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As you can see, all three guards appear very similar, with Fiore changing the sword position and center of gravity by changing the position of the back foot. We decided that to try to recreate each individual guard found would be over complicated and would work against our aim of giving students a basic physical vocabulary in a simple and easily understood form.

We feel that the guards listed below allow the scholar to gain a general understanding of the starting positions from which attacks and defences may begin. We have simplified their names by dividing them into ‘Front’ guards where the sword is held toward the opponent and ‘Rear’ guards, where the sword is held away from the opponent. These can then be divided in to High, Middle and Low, with the addition to the Rear guards of a High Sloping guard where the sword is held with the point lower than the hands. A further division can also be made between which foot is in front when assuming the guard.