Episode 37
For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to https://swordschool.com/podcast/medieval-swords-and-research-episode37/
To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
James Hester has been involved with HEMA since the age of 15, when he began performing fight shows throughout New England. He then set his course as an academic and educator, working in museums before completing an MA in Medieval Studies in the UK. He then joined the Royal Armouries Museum, rising over five years to become Curator of Tower Collections at the Tower of London. In 2015 he was awarded the Arms & Armour Heritage Trust Studentship to complete a PhD focusing on late medieval martial arts at the University of Southampton. A summary of the PhD thesis is here.
In this episode we talk about James’s exciting research, particularly about matching up the treatises and other sources we have from the period with the notches and dings found on weapons and skeletal evidence from battlefield graves to work out whether the techniques detailed in the fencing treatises were ones that were actually used at the time. Is it possible to extrapolate from a fencing treatise that this is how people actually fought? Click on the link for a video lecture on some of James’s research into damage on arms and armour.
We also talk about the passage of arms events James has organised, and his attempts to make the armour at these events as historically accurate as possible, i.e. not what we would think of as “safe” by modern standards. To read more about the 2018 passage of arms at the beautiful Château de Castelnaud in the Dordogne, France, see here: A brief write-up of the 2018 Judgement of Mars with some photos. For more photos, see this link from Facebook: Photos by La Mesnie du Blanc Castel of the 2019 Judgement of Mars on their Facebook page.
In the introduction I mention photographs of the treatises at the Fencing Museum in the U.K. You can see these here: https://guywindsor.net/2017/06/a-great-week-for-historical-fencing/
For more information on James and his work, see:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/schoolofmars
Website: http://www.schoolofmars.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/schoolofmars
Twitter: @schoolofmars
Living the Nobler Dream, with Christian Tobler
Episode 100: Duelling and a Day in the Life of Guy Windsor
A Two-Handed Sword to Fight a Griffin, with Marie Powell
Mastering Movement with Dan Edwardes
The Last Duel, or was it? With Ariella Elema
Frog DNA and Indonesia with Pradana
Laser Focus, Thought Control, and Jousting with Sarah Hay
Harps and Sharps with Andrew Lawrence-King
Startling Burglars with Ariel Anderssen
Monte with Mike
Forged in fire, quenched in oil. With Stephanie Aiuto
Swords in the Movies with Peter Lyon
Wooden Weapons and Wing Chun with Carina Cirrincione
A Whole Lot of Tasty Bolognese with Joshua Wiest
Ballet for Swordfighters with Anna Beard
The Two-Handed Sword with Neil Melville, and a Review of the Year
The Mathematics of Fencing with Pamela Muir
Katanas and Koryu with Jaredd Wilson
Swordsmanship is Woodwork, with Shanee Nishry
Your Challenge for December
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
That Don‘t Sound Right
Adeptus Ridiculous
Gun Talk
来都来了 | 听了再走
The Journey On Podcast