Andre Lignitzer – treatises on short sword, sword and buckler, wrestling and dagger

Andreas Liegnitzer (in the sources also Andre Lignitzer or Andres Liegniczer) was a German fencing master of the late 14th or early 15th century, whose name probably refers to Legnica (German Lignitz). He died before 1452. His brother Jacob was also a fencing master, and both appear in the list of Liechtenauer's society compiled by Paulus Kal in 1470. We have not been able to document the exact date when the treatises were written. The work consists of four prose treatises: on the short sword (fighting in full armour), on sword and buckler, on wrestling and on the dagger. Liegnitzer is the only master of the Liechtenauer tradition who wrote a prose treatise on sword and buckler. The oldest surviving copy is the Roman codex Cod. 44.A.8 from 1452, which contains all four texts and expressly attributes them to Liegnitzer. All four treatises are also found in the Kraków Goliath Fechtbuch of 1535–1540, which according to Wiktenauer probably derives from the Roman manuscript. The Glasgow Fechtbuch of 1508 contains sword and buckler and wrestling under Liegnitzer's name, and the Dresden manuscript Mscr.Dresd.C.487 of 1504–1519 the complete text on sword and buckler without the author's name. Copies of the short sword in other manuscripts are usually attributed to Martin Huntsfeld, or carry no author's name. The text on the dagger is the only work of the Liechtenauer tradition that was translated into other languages in its own time: in 1538 into French and in the fifteen-fifties into Latin.

Martial arts in this work

Authorship

The attribution of individual texts is not the same in all copies. The oldest Roman codex of 1452 carries the full attribution to Liegnitzer. The treatise on the short sword appears in Codex Lew (Augsburg, the fourteen-sixties), in Codex Speyer (Salzburg, 1491), in the Vienna manuscript KK5126 of the fourteen-eighties, in the Nuremberg Pirckheimer manuscript from around 1500, in the Dürer manuscript MS 26-232 (Vienna, around 1505) and in the lost Ortenburg manuscript. There it is mostly attributed to Martin Huntsfeld, or the author's name is missing. The Dresden copy of sword and buckler was formerly wrongly attributed to Sigmund ain Ringeck. The question of authorship was addressed by the study by Daniel Jaquet and Bartłomiej Walczak Liegnitzer, Hundsfeld or Lew? The question of authorship of 2014, which according to Wiktenauer settled the dispute. We have not been able to document the details of the study's conclusions.

Editions and translations

Liegnitzer's texts found their way into early prints. Andre Paurenfeyndt's book Ergrundung Ritterlicher Kunst der Fechterey of 1516 contains sword and buckler and the dagger. The French translation La noble science des ioueurs d'espee of 1538 is attributed by Wiktenauer in one place to Willem Vorsterman, and in another it names Paurenfeyndt's edition as its source. The texts were also taken over by the book Der Allten Fechter gründtliche Kunst, which Christian Egenolff published four times between 1530 and 1558. Paulus Hector Mair included them in his German and Latin compilation Opus Amplissimum de Arte Athletica, which brought the first Latin translation of Liechtenauer's texts. Modernised German transcriptions have been published by Dierk Hagedorn since 2006, and from 2008 to 2013 translations appeared into Swedish, Italian, Polish and Slovenian. The first complete English translation was prepared by Christian Henry Tobler (Freelance Academy Press, 2010).

People and martial arts

• Andreas LiegnitzerAuthor
• Dierk HagedornEditor
• Andre PaurenfeyndtEditor
• Christian Henry ToblerTranslator

Details

Form

Text tradition

Editions

• 1516 · DE · Ergrundung Ritterlicher Kunst der Fechterey
• 1538 · FR · La noble science des ioueurs d'espee · Willem Vorsterman · translation
• 2010 · EN · Freelance Academy Press · translation
• DE · Der Allten Fechter gründtliche Kunst · Christian Egenolff