Wolfenbüttel Picture Book (Cod.Guelf.78.2 Aug.2º)

The Wolfenbüttel Picture Book is an anonymous pictorial compilation on fencing, wrestling and warfare, dated to roughly 1465–1480. We have not been able to establish the scribe, the illustrator, the patron or the place of origin. The manuscript is kept in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel under the shelfmark Cod.Guelf.78.2 Aug.2º. It is on paper, in a modern binding, measures 210 × 295 mm, and has 158 numbered leaves and six unnumbered introductory leaves. The leaves are written on both sides and each side carries one illustration, while the text is only scattered in places and written in Early New High German. The compilation opens with a recital by Johannes Liechtenauer, followed by longsword fighting without armour after Die Blume des Kampfes, polearms and spears, an extensive section on armoured fighting from the Gladiatoria group, wrestling without armour after the manuscript of Hans Talhoffer from 1448, sword and buckler, and finally Konrad Kyeser's Bellifortis on siege technology. Below most of the pictures a blank space was left for text that was never added, so the plays lack explanation. The manuscript is one of the versions of the Gladiatoria group, but compared with its oldest versions it adds a great deal of further material, mainly in dagger fighting. The Herzog August Bibliothek makes a digital copy of the manuscript available.

Martial arts in this work

Contents

The manuscript begins on the unnumbered introductory leaves, where a recital by Johannes Liechtenauer is written on folio III recto and verso. Folio 1r and folios 29r–31v and 40v show polearms and spears. Longsword fighting without armour after Die Blume des Kampfes occupies folios 1v–28v and returns on folios 70r–71r. Armoured fighting from the Gladiatoria group, that is fighting with spear and sword, wrestling and dagger fighting, is spread over folios 32r–37r and 41r–80r. Wrestling without armour taken from the manuscript of Hans Talhoffer from 1448 appears on folio 79r and on folios 112r–123r, and sword and buckler falls on folios 113r–117r. The final part, folios 124r–157v, consists of Konrad Kyeser's Bellifortis, a treatise on siege technology.

Origin

Neither the scribe nor the illustrator of the manuscript is known, and we did not find in the sources who produced the compilation or for whom. The appearance of the leaves shows that the work remained unfinished: below most of the pictures an empty space is left, into which an explanation was apparently meant to go, but it was never written. Among the versions of the Gladiatoria group it therefore stands apart. Compared with the three oldest versions from the thirties and forties of the 15th century it offers considerably more material, most of all in the section on dagger fighting, but without accompanying text it is difficult to place these additions in context, and we have not been able to establish their origin. Plays that have no counterpart in another version of the group are therefore not included in the usual description of the Gladiatoria group, and the manuscript is classed rather with the mixed anthologies.

People and martial arts

• Johannes LiechtenauerAuthor
• Konrad KyeserAuthor

Details

Form

Manuscript

Repository

Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Shelfmark

Cod.Guelf.78.2 Aug.2º

Folios

158

Material

Paper