The paper aims at reinterpreting the so called ‘Teutonic estoc’ (inventory number: MNK XIV-49) from the Czartoryski Princes Collection, Cracow, Poland. Due to the weapon’s unusual construction it has been necessary to draw up precise documentation - written, drawn and photographic. It has been supplemented with research in historical sources and scholarly literature on the subject. The results obtained indicate that the researched weapon is not a typical estoc. It seems that it is a specialized anti-armour sword (Kampfschwert in German) designed for fighting against a heavy armoured opponent in judicial combat. If this conclusion were correct, the ‘Teutonic estoc’ from Cracow would be the only known artefact of this kind to have survived from the Middle Ages. In order to falsify this hypothesis the artefact’s authenticity has been examined. An analysis of Royal Inventory records spanning from the year 1475 to 1792 and younger remarks about the researched weapon in press, private letters and scholarly literature has been conducted and briefly reported hereby. Its results seem to indicate that it is not a hoax.

SummarySeveral subdisciplines within historiography, most notably the arms and armour or martial arts studies, are interested in inferring physical qualities of historical material objects from historical sources. Scholars from these fields face serious deficiency of written accounts when it comes to various crucial information regarding their subject matter. Therefore, researchers’ attention is often drawn to iconographical sources, sometimes resulting in certain fascination with the material culture depicted in primary technical literature (Fachliteratur). This tendency seems particularly strong in studies on HEMA which rely heavily on pre-modern combat treatises known as ‘fight books’ (Fechtbücher) and are tempted either to treat the available iconography as a faithful representation of its corresponding material reality or to interpret apparent mismatch between icono-graphical representations and their material source domain as evidence for the inferior skills of the illustrator.We would like to put forward that there is a fundamental oversight in such approach to Fachliteratur in general and fight books in particular, namely the lack of consideration for the artwork as a diagrammatic representation of the functional aspects of depicted embodied technique, where proportional ‘realism’ is of lesser priority. It may be fruitful to develop a more nuanced method of ‘reading’ such images. Our survey of select late-medieval fight books shows that equipment, and even body parts, are regularly distorted in their depictions in the fight books to better communicate the subject matter, especially where textual descriptions would be complicated. Interpreted in Gestalt terms, this phenomenon may serve as an example of historical pragmatic application of the cognitive principle of holism – that the whole is something different than the sum of its parts.

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Material culture is seen as a sort of adaptation in humans' (and some animals') struggle with the natural environment. In this context, it is possible to say that culture integrates three aspects of embodied agency: the mind creates projects, the environment supplies materials, and the body provides the basic tool. This observation is important for reconstructing past manifestations of human embodiment, e.g. tools, anthropogenic landscapes, or somatic skills and practices. The present paper discusses the neo-materialist perspective on the objectives and methods of historical sciences which postulates extending the agenda of historical research by supplementing text-and discourse-centred studies with the 'mute', material relics of the past as yet another source of knowledge. This stems from the conviction that, as researchers engage physically with investigated objects and experience their affordances, they can gain crucial information which would be impossible or very problematic to convey in a written form. What this means for the reconstruction of material relics of the past or historical somatic skills is that the most complete source of knowledge is provided by a combination of historical context, especially the relics' culturally-defined function, and methodical practice (praxiography), which often enables overcoming difficulties posed by the inadequacy of available written accounts. The above observations were illustrated with three case studies presenting reconstructions of elements of historical material culture: the so-called 'Antikythera Mechanism', the 'Teutonic estoc' from the Princes Czartoryski Collection, and a medieval sword-fighting technique known as schiessen.

This paper aims to trace potential links between the military reform undertaken by King Maximilian I Habsburg, initiated by forming the first Landsknecht regiments in 1486, and the privilege issued in 1487 by his father, Emperor Frederick III, for the first association of fencing masters in German history, the Brotherhood of St. Mark (Marxbrüder).   The analysis presented in this paper begins with a description of the Army of the Empire (Reichsheer) prior to its reform at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, with particular focus on the role and military potential of the ministeriales. Next, the socio-cultural contexts and outcomes of the aforementioned reform are discussed, which serves as a backdrop for tracing the evolution of social perception and functioning of professional swordfighters in Germany. Especially important from this perspective is a change in the social standing of this group – from marginalisation as lose Leute to integration with the urban community and achieving the status of craftsmen. This process saw its culmination in an imperial privilege issued for the Marxbrüder by Frederick III in 1487.  In the final part, somewhat contrary to previous studies (which have presented the aforementioned social advancement of fencers as a natural part of the formation of the urban guild culture), this paper posits that the imperial privilege for the Marxbrüder happened, in fact, not on Frederick’s, but rather on Maximilian’s initiative. Such a view seems to be supported by Maximilian’s strong connections with the martial arts community of the period and his war experiences in the Netherlands, as well as his personal involvement in designing and realising a thorough military reform. In this context, it may be hypothesised that by procuring imperial privilege for urban fencers, the young monarch hoped to initiate social change within the German urban community which would facilitate incorporating burghers into the structures of the new military model.