Royal Armouries Ms. I.33

It was created around 1300 in Franconia and is first mentioned by Henricus a Gunterrodt in his De veriis principiis artis dimicatoriae of 1579.

[1] The manuscript including the text date to about 1270-1320 AD[3][4][5][6] It is first mentioned by Henricus a Gunterrodt in his De veriis principiis artis dimicatoriae of 1579, where he reports it to have been acquired (looted) by a friend of his, one Johannes Herbart of Würzburg when serving in the force of Albert Alcibiades, Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach in the campaigns of 1552/3.

115) until it disappeared in World War II and resurfaced at a Sotheby's auction in 1950, where it was purchased by the Royal Armouries.

The treatise expounds a martial system of defensive and offensive techniques between a master and a pupil, referred to as sacerdos (priest) and scolaris (student), each armed with a sword and a buckler, drawn in ink and watercolour and accompanied with Latin text, interspersed with German fencing terms.

The seven basic wards are: The German terms appearing in the Latin text are the following: Sporadic dialectal elements in these terms (notably nucken and halpschilt) suggest a location of composition consistent with the reported discovery in a Franconian monastery in the wider area of Würzburg.