Articles

• Hans Talhoffer's dagger
• Myth of "20 to 30 pound broadswords"
• Dagger techniques from Talhoffer's Fechtbuch 1467
• Simplified method for instructing dagger techniques. (500kb pdf)
• Talhoffer's Tafel 172
• Dagger techniques from Achille Marozzo
• Defence against a dagger from Fiore dei Liberi
• Our first attempts at Talhoffer's dagger.
• A buckler from an IKEA salad bowl.
• Thoughts on sharing of research.
• Recommended Literature and book reviews
• Links

Sources

• Vollstandiges Ring-Buch of Johann Georg Passchen.
• Nicolaes Petter's Klare Onderrichtinge der Voortreffelijcke Worstel-Konst.
• Some dietary rules.
• Hendrick van Buren's Drilkonst, (1672) (pdf, 4Mb)
• Illustrated translation of chapter 3: handling of the pike, from the above.

Vollstandiges Ring-Buch

This is an interesting little 17th century wrestling manual, with focus on unarmed defence, and surprisingly complete in the types of techniques covered. It is also boringly repetitious and the explanations are not extraordinarily clear. The clarity is not improved by a paragraph numbering scheme that doesn't match the picture numbers, and the hard to read, fraktur-style typeface. I have omitted the paragraph numbering as I found it more confusing than helpful. The original has the pictures grouped, I have placed them with the relevant paragraphs.

The work is divided in a first part, an other part, and a third part, for no obvious reasons.

Most techniques have an inwendig and auswendig variant, the illustrations annoyingly show left and right versions for one variant, but don't show the other variant at all. I have translated these terms as inwards and outwards, for lack of better alternatives. Inwendig seems to mean mostly that the technique happens between your or his arms, and auswendig, outside of the arms, sometimes auswendig seems to mean from the center outwards, though, so the terms or at least my translation is not very consistent.

I left the latin words like Adversarius (opponent) from the original.

This translation is based on the version included in "Chronik alter Kampfkunste", Weinmann, Berlin, 1997 (isbn 3 87892 031 8). My notes are in square brackets [like this].

Vollstandiges
Ring-Buch

1659 [this date is in a non-matching type and seems to be added later]

To the gentle reader

Wrestling ['Ringen'] is a useful exercitium, and well-known history shows that it was practiced by our forefathers not only for fun, but also in earnest, because it not only improves the condition of the whole body, but so also a weaker person can, by knowledge of this science, and fully trained therein, defend himself against a stronger one, and resist him. As high as it was esteemed by our forefathers, so little is it known in our time, and these days everyone relies on their size and strength, yet they feel in danger when confronted by a smaller man trained in wrestling. These circumstances have prompted me to bring some things to light in this print and coppers. Do not hesitate, lovers of wrestling, to willingly accept this little work by me, which I place in God's care.

Ringen

First Part

Other Part

Third Part