#medieval combat

May be a commemoration of the battle between the snails and hares. (Image found on HEMA Facebook page)

More info on the snail-related marginalia here:

Photo credit unknown.

This image is poignant. It reminded me instantly of the following excerpt from The Blood of Kings:

Illustration from a 1467 manuscript of Hans Talhoffer's fight book.

This delightfully strange illustration from Hans Talhoffer's 1467 Fechtbuch shows a judicial duel between a man and woman—the man stands in a pit wielding a wooden mace while the woman circles above swinging a stone wrapped in a veil or loaded into her chemise sleeve, with the height difference meant to level any physical advantage.

Talhoffer made his living training aristocrats for trial by combat, and despite internet folklore claiming this was "divorce by combat," there are no known historical records of any marital dispute actually being resolved this way, and scholars confirm that nowhere except possibly the Holy Roman Empire were judicial duels ever considered fitting means to settle marital disputes, with no documented cases after 1200. What's genuinely wild is that Talhoffer once got arrested in 1434 for his connection to a murder trial, and his students literally fought each other so badly that the Zürich city council had to intervene and issue fines, which is either terrible advertising for a fighting instructor or proof that his techniques actually worked.

For further research:

Full 1467 manuscript at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

The Public Domain Review's collection

Ran dagger and buckler against dagger and buckler. Deeply stupid loadout. Stupid amount of fun

Got my hands cut up my said stupidity (worth it)

A member brought new gorgets! We have slightly more now, so more people can fight