Brotherhood of Saint Mark (Marxbrüder)

Quick Facts

Country of OriginGermany

Founded1487

RegionEurope

Primary FocusWeapons

Character & Origin

Training

Organisation & Competition

What the style is built from

Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.

About Brotherhood of Saint Mark (Marxbrüder)

The Marxbrüder, the Brotherhood of Saint Mark, was a German fencing guild and the most important institution of European historical fencing. Its full name ran "Bruderschaft unserer lieben Frauen und reinen Jungfrauen Marien und des heiligen und gewaltigen Himmelsfürsten Sanct Marxen", which ordinary speech shortened to Marxbrüder. The brotherhood arose in fifteenth-century Nuremberg; the exact date is not documented and the earliest written record dates from 1474. The fencing master Hans Talhoffer is sometimes counted among its co-founders, but that too is a hypothesis. The decisive year is therefore 1487, when Emperor Frederick III granted it a privilege: the monopoly on the title Meister des langen Schwerts, master of the long sword. From that point no one else in the Empire could confer the title, and the brotherhood became a guild in the full sense, controlling who was allowed to teach fencing publicly. More than the longsword was taught: the dussack, the rapier, the spear and the quarterstaff are all attested. The brotherhood moved to Frankfurt, where it met annually and elected a new Hauptmann every two years. Among the names recorded are Peter Falkner (captain 1502–1506) and Anton Rast (1522–1526). The monopoly lasted less than a century. In 1570 a rival society, the Federfechter, was founded in Prague; Frankfurt recognised it in 1575 over Marxbrüder protests, and from 1607, after a letter from Emperor Rudolph II, the two held equal privileges.

Similar styles

Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.