Short Summary

My name is Michael Chidester. I started HEMA in 2001, and for the past thirteen years, I’ve been leading a project called Wiktenauer. Wiktenauer grew out of a desire to set the text of our fencing manuals free from the page and put it into the hands of fencers. What I’d like to do with this project is different: put the page, and the whole book, into your hands as well—a facsimile of the Goliath Fechtbuch.

The Goliath Fechtbuch, folia 13v and 14r.

This beautiful manuscript, lavishly illustrated by Georg Lemberger, includes many of the most important texts in the Liechtenauer tradition, including the pseudo-Peter von Danzig gloss of Liechtenauer’s teachings, the writings of Martin Huntsfeld, Andre Lignitzer, Ott Jud, and Andre Paurenfeyndt, and dagger and wrestling teachings of uncertain origin.

By “facsimile”, I mean a careful reproduction of the entire physical book in every detail. In other words, it’s a book you can pick up and touch without endangering something priceless, but which will at least half-convince you that you’re holding the original.

The Getty Museum’s Fiore manuscript (left) next to our facsimile (right).

At various times, I have had the privilege of handling several 15th and 16th century fencing manuscripts, as well as copies of most of the printed fencing treatises published before 1600, and I wish everyone in HEMA could have that same chance. It’s a way of connecting to history that’s hard to describe.

In 2019, I started producing facsimiles of fencing manuscripts to try to capture at least a small piece of that magic, and give you a sense of what the origin of our fencing reconstruction really is. Each of them is contains lessons about fencing, but also about the cultures and ideas that produced them. So far, I’ve done the Copenhagen Talhoffer manuscript (2019), the Getty’s Fiore manuscript (2020), and the Munich Lecküchner manuscript (2021), Joachim Meyer’s 1570 book (2021), and the Bauman Fechtbuch (2022), with Salvator Fabris’ 1606 book funded in 2022 and coming out soon.

The first five HEMA Bookshelf facsimiles.

What We Need & What You Get

After two facsimiles of print books, I’m getting back to my roots with another manuscript, and not just any manuscript–at 570 pages with 132 painted illustrations, Goliath is one of the longest and most impressive fencing manuscripts ever made. At 200 x 214 mm, it’s also not terribly large for all its thickness.

Our replica will be printed on cotton rag paper and sewn using the correct quire structure. It will be bound in heavy boards covered in a maroon pigskin with gold-foiled tooling, just as the manuscript currently is. We will be turning once again to Grimm Book Bindery of Madison, WI to do the actual book construction.

(If you have religious objections to handling pig, we can also arrange a goat binding. If you prefer not to own animal skin in general, there are also synthetic options. Reach out after you place your order and we will make a note and replace the leather at no additional cost.)

The sheer number of pages involved combined with increases in the costs of materials over the past few years mean that this will also be our most expensive facsimile to date. At $400, it’s still less than half the cost of the I.33 and Gladiatoria facsimiles produced by other companies, but not “cheap” by any means.

Goliath Fechtbuch, folia 117v and 118r.

The Goliath Fechtbuch, folia 175v and 176r.