[Christian Henry Tobler]

Hi David,

I agree, and we should all remember that bad news travels faster, and with greater interest, than good news. For much the same reason that CNN's headline this morning wasn't "Couple Living Happily in Missouri!!", news of good online exchanges don't get talked about nearly as much as news of the latest internet row.

This is true for not just WMA discussions, but dust-ups among swordmakers, arguments about historical accuracy, etc. on a forum like this. As for WMA having unique online problems, I'd advise that anyone thinking this is bad to go read a website like bullshido.net, a popular, usually free-for-all martial arts discussion forum, for a while. The discourse here is very civil compared to what happens there and on many other martial arts sites.

Cheers,

Christian

[Todd M. Sullivan]

Hi Chad,

I say come to Chivalric Weekend 2009 this July. Like WMAW there are about 8 different WMA groups, including students that are not in organizations, in attendence, and there is none of this "political...I'm right, you're wrong". It is truely an event of friendships. The saddest part of CW is the last hour of the last day.

I even offer you free tuition in an effort to offer you a better understanding of the WMA community.

All the best,

Todd Sullivan
Lake Ontario Fechtschule

[Bill Love]

Peace begins with respect and understanding. It ends when a single person decides that they know what is best for everyone.
Erik A. Christiansen

All of you know nothing. I alone know something. I alone decide.
Kaiser Wilhelm II

This is pretty much it in a nutshell. Nobody, regardless of the depths of their secondary source expertise or the seriousness with which they take themselves, can ever begin to know exactly what was going on in a vanished era. This is true for a generation ago, never mind half a millenium. A perfect illustration of this delusional mindset happened a few years back, when two sides of a panel debate on the exact number of bones that divided a dinosaur from a non-dinosaur became so ugly and entrenched in their respective opinions that a wealthy and well-known potential donor got up and left in disgust with his checkbook in tow. The heretical notion that all species have yet to be discovered and that the truth might therefore be somewhere in between never even occurred to either side. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

[Jean Henri Chandler]

I'm real sorry to hear how you got turned off by HEMA Chad and I definitely agree with Scott in that you really raised a good point and are talking about something real, especially here in North America. I commend Chad for honestly raising this point and Scott Brown as well for his candid reaction.

The one point where I part company with Scott a little bit is, I don't think it's a matter of the 'leaders' behaving better, I think the whole emphasis on leaders is part of the problem. Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.

The funny thing is, the HEMA revival kind of started in the US. It spread from some people in the SCA passing around mimeographed copies of Tallhoffer and DiGrassi manuals and a few key guys like Hank Reinhardt and John Clements starting to really dig into them, as well as a few of the other 'names' around SFI etc. But the early pioneers of HEMA had a tough row to hoe. The very idea of European Martial Arts was a very hard sell on this side of the pond, I don't know for sure why but I personally suspect it's because for some very odd reason many people here in North America who like things such as swords and knights and Vikings tend to actually prefer a kind of cartoon fantasy version, and they can get real grumpy when that version is challenged in any way. In Europe, by contrast, people who grew up next to 15th Century Cathedrals and Castles and saw real swords and armor growing up were perhaps able to put the idea into context easier.

For whatever reason, there was a particularly nasty backlash here against the very idea of HEMA in the early days, and perhaps this contributed to a certain hardening of attitudes. But there was also a tendency for a lot of people in the early HEMA scene to act like they were already Masters (and in some cases literally give themselves titles) before they were truly even neophytes.

Lets face it, most people in the very early days didn't know a whole hell of a lot about HEMA other than the fact that there were some fencing manuals out there, there were some guys with funny names and some pictures nobody really understood and some things like guards and mastercuts and counters that made it seem like there was a real fighting system in there somewhere.

I personally believe the Europeans have leap-frogged past the North Americans precisely because they started off with very few self-proclaimed leaders, but instead had a structure of a lot of people, amateur enthusiasts from several countries, who were linked together through the HEMAC mailing list. They cooperated, shared ideas, sparred with one another, emailed translations and scans of documents around, examined antique swords, tried out techniques, cut things, shared videos, tried out drills, etc. etc. Gradually they got better, and eventually some of them got pretty good, and a few of them have perhaps now earned the role of being leaders, but to me everyone into HEMA, 'leaders' or 'maestros' or 'names', those who have published books and those who haven't, are all still neophytes. How many interpretations from ten years ago are still valid? Even from five years ago? Three years ago? The truth is, we have only begun to scratch the surface of this. Those who can still remember that and are willing to share ideas freely are going to continue to move HEMA forward. Those already eager to put the Masters crown on their heads, who continue to hold grudges from internet flame wars fought ten years ago, who continue to insist that only they (or their pals) can truly understand HEMA, are contributing to this ongoing problem Chad experienced.

Fortunately not everyone in HEMA thinks or operates this way. I think things are changing in North America. There are some new federations around who have a different approach, and I suspect we will see these become the epicenter of a new flowering of HEMA in North America in 2010. Maybe it will be a good time for Chad to take another 'stab' at it.

J

[Nathan Quarantillo]

hi all, since i only had the pleasure of reading the first 3 pages of this thread before i had to run, im probly re-inventing the wheel here, but i couldn't resist putting in my 2 cents. as far as group dis agreement goes, remember that they are martial arts. the goal in the most pure form is death of the opponent in a martial setting. this seems pretty simple, but remember, there are literally thousands of ways to kill someone, and probably at least 50 ways to kill someone with a longsword, or any given weapon. and when it comes to killing someone, what works works. so in affect, were reaching for the same goal, but we dont even have to reach the same conclusions to get there successfully. whenever someone figures something out by interpretation and it works consistently enough against someone(sparring partner) that you would trust your life to it in a martial setting, then i imagine one would be a bit hesitant to admit somethings better.

look at it this way, during a bind (blade contact in longsword lingo), you go soft at the blade, letting the opponents force carry him out of control. you let his blade slip and be caught on your quillon, at the same time thrusting upward into him. dead opponent. (btw, this is unarmoured, and your opponent is going hard at the blade in the second scenario too) in the same instance, you could make a passing step (diagonal) away from his cut and closer to him and chocke up the distance, and as his momentum slips him away from you, bring around your blade and make a middle cut from the roof (well, not THAT high, but at about head level).

2 ways of killing your opponent, both requiring skill and good movement, but one could argue either, as saying that one was faster, or more skillful, ect. but i bet the swordsman who's trained (and successful) response dispatched his opponent in one of the 2 manners is going to stand by it, as it worked, and if an an opponent did it again, it would probably work then too. but we can see the argument here