Last Modified 4/25/04
This guide will serve as an introduction to HEMAC, in terms of its goals, its ideology, and what it actually does.
The Historical European Martial Arts Club is a Registered Student Organization at UMass Amherst. You should examine the official charter to learn about its policies and structure (available on request from an officer and at the website at www.umass.edu/rso/swords). The mission of HEMAC is to promote and facilitate the study of historically accurate European armed combat from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
What exactly does this mean? HEMAC members are essentially trying to practice a martial art, albeit one with no real practical use today. This means physical training with facsimile and reproduction weapons, involving a variety of drills and exercises, mostly with a partner. We study and discuss historical fighting manuals and try to re-create what we see there. HEMAC organizes multiple weekly meetings, guest lectures, and other events. HEMAC exists to help you learn historical combat.
While our training curriculum is far from being set in stone, we do have some strong ideas about how our work should be carried out. The number one priority at all times is safety. This can hardly be stressed enough. What we do inherently has some element of risk, but none of us are medieval warriors: we do this for enjoyment and no one wants to get hurt. Nor is this a task which can’t be performed safely. After safety comes historical accuracy. While we all think historical combat is fun, we’re serious about it as well and what separates our work from various sports and games is our dedication to accuracy.
Towards the end of historically accurate technique we have two methods of learning that are intimately combined. The first is academic work, which consists of research into various materials from period sources and also contemporary interpretations. Our primary resource in this regard is the historical manuals themselves. Even if difficult to interpret, they were written by actual “masters” who used their weapons in war and in duels – something no contemporary book can claim. We study these manuals and interpret what we see there, combining what we find into our physical work. For both avenues of learning we have a method of quality control, and in academic work this is a commitment to faithful interpretations; that is, we try to adhere closely to what was written by the master fencers, and thus do as little speculation and invention as possible.
Our second method of learning is physical training. This involves partnered practice of various sequences and movements. We do this always with a mind towards precision and accuracy, which is our second mode of quality control and can be summed up with the phrase “physical excellence.” Physical excellence does not demand a body-builder’s physique or any extreme degree of fitness. Rather, it demands a close attention to form: it implies that while practicing, members care about how they are moving and that they do things correctly, not sloppily.
As stated, analyzing manuals and physical training go hand in hand, and one can’t be good at one without the other. We believe that when paired together, they pave the way for fruitful studies of historical combat.
HEMAC is not committed solely to learning swordplay and we consider any weapon technique of the relevant period fair game. However, at the present we are studying the longsword and specifically German longsword technique, as taught by the sixteenth-century fencer Joachim Meyer and others. The longsword has tended to be the weapon of choice for similar groups because it serves as a good basis for learning other weapons and there is a good deal of written material on it. Meyer wrote two treatises on longsword (and some other weapons): we’re working principally from them, but with reference to other works as well.