About

Discovered HEMA while looking for a different martial art to get into, having previously studied aikido, karate and pencak silat, and while getting into archery and horsemanship.

An initial interest in rapier after Capoferro gave way, perforce to class availability, to longsword per Fiore dei Liberi’s art in 2009, pursuing it exclusively thereafter to get a good grounding in basics for a good year or so (with a glorious period of thrice weekly sessions, alas that it cannot still be so!) before any serious study of any of the other HEMAs. 

Sword and buckler perforce gave way owing to an elbow injury to military sabre, left-handed.

Arm healed and brain oddly rewired, I found myself able to, at last, resume my fun. 

Looking for a teacher, but not bereft without, having a plethora of tools, comrades and sufficient HEMA grounding to usefully – I pray – apply the resources so generously researched, translated and brought to light.  I began.

So this is:

My personal log and route-map in studying and training in the martial arts of the Bolognese masters of the 16th century.

And this blog is meant as a tool, not a podium.

Log – the minutiae.
Commentary and musings, records of every little thing, consequential or not. No doubt a lot of dross.

Route-map – The essentials.
Where the log is akin to a travelogue, the map is noting the stripped down essential signposts and landmarks and key paths I’ve explored/pursued.
The main purpose is to help me not blunder about aimlessly.
Thus if I come a-cropper, I can retrace my steps and seek alternative routes; or ask others to see where I am, how I got there and where they recommend I go next.

Studying.
It cannot be escaped that these are preserved in books, not through generations of teachers teaching the next.
The only few-and-far between teachers are those that have studied, interpreted and have deservedly forged ahead on the path of competence.

Mastery may be beyond our grasp in this era, studying and training is not.

Training.
Mere theoretic learning is useless without the endless practice to put it into muscle-memory and striving to improve its performance.
Supposedly, only after repeating a movement 1000 times one can say one has learned it, let alone mastered.
Axiomatic in Archery and should be no less in HEMA as well.

Martial arts.
Martial art or martial sport?
Duelling or display?
Battlefield or civilian?

Whatever. All.

Bolognese masters.
Yes indeed, the European region has a fine history of martial arts and sports.

Actually very detailed and go back longer than many modern eastern arts today.
But no need to be apologetic or anti-EMA, its just that EMA == martial arts in modern western society, whereas space could and should be made for recognition of the Westerners’ own martial heritage (true for eastern non-oriental societies as well,  kuhrotty – or more recently, ‘MMA’ – eclipsing indigenous arts eg silat in malay culture, kalaripayattu in south indian culture, kushti in indo-persian cultures. FMA fought back by the same route, inserting itself via the west back into its homeland, ironic.. possibly silat will too, but I digress..)

Can Bolognese martial arts be studied without learning something of the history, the regional context?
Of city states and society?

16th C.
… or their place in the temporal continuum and their temporal context?

The Renaissance milieu – and can the fighting arts have value in our modern HEMA setting?