A Long-Distance Relationship: Staff Weapons as a Microcosm for the Study of Fight Books, c. 1400-1550

  • Iason Eleftherios Tzouriadis The Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers
  • Jacob Deacon
Keywords: staff weapon, fight books, fighting system, martial arts, arms and armour, warfare

Abstract

The fifteenth-century fight book author Filippo Vadi wrote that the sword “is a cross and a royal weapon”: this inherent chivalric symbolism associated with the sword has led to a wealth of scholarship on the weapon but seemingly at a cost to research into other forms of weaponry used in medieval and early modern Europe, particularly various typologies of staff weapons. This article presents an analysis of the appearance staff weapons in the heterogeneous fight book genre. It uses their limited appearance, in comparison to swords, as a means of creating a microcosm through which several questions about the wider fight book genre can be assessed.

Published
2020-10-15
How to Cite
Tzouriadis, I. E., & Deacon, J. (2020). A Long-Distance Relationship: Staff Weapons as a Microcosm for the Study of Fight Books, c. 1400-1550. Acta Periodica Duellatorum, 8(1), 45–72. https://doi.org/10.36950/apd-2020-004