Interview with Rob Runacres: Fencing and Royal Education

The Royal Studies Podcast

In this episode, Rob Runacres (University of Winchester) speaks about aspects of his doctoral research on fencing and HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) in early modern European courts and royal education.
Rob’s two translations from French primary sources are available from Fallen Rook Publishing (https://www.fallenrookpublishing.co.uk/). The Free Master of Arms (1653) can be found here and The Book of Lessons (mid 17th century) can be found here. The latter contains the 71 colour pictures from the manuscript in the Swedish Royal library. There are other authors on the same site.

You can follow Rob’s research via his Academia.edu page.

AGEA reproduces a large number of Spanish fencing treatises, including those of Royal fencers, available online here.

Rob’s latest article was published with Acta Periodica Duellatorum, an open-source HEMA periodical, and is on the Bolognese Tradition (Vol. 10 No. 1 (2022))

A general introduction to the topic can be found in "The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe" by Sydney Anglo. For French readers, a comparable work is "Croiser le Fer" by Pascal Brioist, Hervé Drévillon and Perre Serna. Much research has moved on from these works, but they remain significant pieces.

Rob recommends articles by Eric Burkart, Daniel Jaquet, Hélène Leblanc and Iason Tzouriadis and also recommends this huge wiki of fightbooks, with scans or links to scans of originals. Most of the background information is sound but, as per any wiki, relies on contributors.