It is time to talk about why the Byzantines never wrote fencing manuals

John Dandoulakis
BA War Studies, MA European & International Politics

In our days, it is "common ground" for most HEMA practitioners and enthusiasts that a historical martial art cannot possess legitimacy, and in particular a distinct fencing method if this has not been recorded in primary sources: the Manuals. But is that really so? Let's have a look at a "hot" topic: that of eastern roman martial arts, known as byzantine hoplomachia.


Byzantine hoplomachia has lately been the "talk of the town" regarding its place among modern Historical European Martial Arts. There are two main points of tension that have been most often encountered: 

1) How can there be a byzantine martial art, since no written byzantine manual survives? 
2) How can byzantine hoplomachia include longswords? 

With regard to the second question the answer is rather easy. Arcehological evidence suggests that late-era byzantine armies employed the use of western european arming swords and longswords. It was a centuries-long Roman tradition to adopt successful foreign military customs and weaponry. Byzantines were merely continuously building upon that tradition. The same applied to the western european longsword. Following the collapse of the thematic system in the 11th century, the Komnenian military reforms, incorporated a large part of (then-new) western european armour and tactics. The Imperial Army attempted to assimilate western European heavy cavalry capabilities, yet only in appearance and not in their entire true nature, as we shall see below. Hence late Byzantine/Grecoroman higher military officials and the nobility were trained and used the longsword as a superior weapon of their era. It is also worth noting that in their thousand-years long history, Byzantines/Grecoromans used other two-handed weapons too, while the longsword was not alien to their culture: besides the spathion (σπαθίον), which was the classic one-handed roman sword, there is also sparse evidence of early byzantine two-handed swords and even bastard one-handed longswords(1). Other weapons included spears of all sizes and a wide variety of maces, with most famous the apelatikion (απελατίκιον), a massive two-handed mace which was favourite of the Akrites, and the ravdion (ραβδίον) which was a two-handed staff. 

And now comes the hardest part: question 1. Apart from a few written descriptions of duels and individual attacking moves in byzantine sources, and despite all the hagiography of military saints, there exists no written treatise or manual on the exact use of these weapons, but one can only safely argue that since, even in Western Europe, fencing manuals do not exist before 15th century, much like their contemporary European neighbours, Byzantines/Grecoromans had developed a similar fighting tradition and were in fact in communication among them.

One should bear in mind that, statistically, in their long history Byzantines/Grecoromans fought the greatest number of wars than most other medieval Europeans. This sums up to a mounting thousand-years long military experience and continuous tradition on the use of swords, spears, maces, bows and all sorts of weapons, but surprisingly no written evidence survives as to how exactly they used them. So how on earth did they manage to do it? 

The answer to this apparent oxymoron is also simple: Byzantine/Grecoromans never wrote manuals for individual combat because they simply did not have a need for them. So here we are going to explain why that is the case. 

Since the time of Alexander (who through the evolution of the macedonian phalanx had brought ancient greek warfare to its peak) the ancient greek order of rank and file in battle had been spread all around the Mediterranean. The rank and file order of ancient infantry was also adopted by Carthaginians and Romans who evolved and developed it even further(2). By the time of early middle ages, the Mediterranean bore a centuries long, very rich and robust military tradition and Eastern Roman Empire was the sole inheritor of all that rich tradition. 

However, unlike the East, western Roman Empire was overrun by invasion and in its lands settled nations who bore a different military culture. The western European infantryman was not the Athenian citizen-hoplite or the Roman citizen-legionary. In medieval western Europe, feudal politics left their imprint on the battlefield. The role of the individual noble knight was more important than the group performance of the lower-class infantrymen. Concomitantly, strong cavalry units made up of armour-clad knights were developed in medieval western Europe, as the main striking force and the military culture of the day became identified with individual knightly honour, valour and bravery. This led to an increased need for individual skill for the higher class soldiers, which led to an organised system around the training of the individual knight/killing machine (hence the need for written manuals), which led to the rise and mythology around one-on-one duels until the present day.

Eastern Roman Empire, on the other hand, was following a different military cultural tradition. It was none other than the tradition of the citizen-soldier, inhereted by ancient Greece and Rome. In this tradition, all members of society were equal in battle, regardless of their economic status and class. Especially during the golden age of the thametic armies, it was training and specialisation of arms that differentiated soldiers; not societal origin or class. The imperal byzantine army was a professional army. One that relied on strict discipline rather than individual strength and skill. As early as the 6th century (time of Maurice's "Strategikon") there is a vibrant production of tactical manuals by lesser and higher Byzantine officials (most of them are lost but they are reffered to in the ones surviving). What matters for our subject at hand is that at the same time we have this massive occupation of Byzantines with military tactics, on an academic level, not only there is nothing similar in western Europe, but most importantly western European armies do not start to seriously employ rank and file and military discipline up until the 14th century. Even the mighty and heavy medieval european knights who dominated battlefields from 11th century onwards, did not employ rank and file. Yet in ancient roman and byzantine greek literature, the order of rank and file in battle (τάξις), is what makes the difference between imperial roman armies (τακτικός) and "barbaric" armies (άτακτοι). 

Now of course, the question arises, how is all this information relevant to the question about byzantine martial arts in modern HEMA? For starters, since Byzantines/Grecoromans possessed such a highly sophisticated and thousand-year old art of warfare, which was the culmination of all ancient Mediterranean civilizations, it is impossible that they had not developed a distinct system for the use of weaponry in close combat, in other words a "martial art". We know that, through their rich military inheritance, they had combined all the best aspects of pre-gunpowder warfare: roman discipline and professionalism, greek ingenuity and tactical cunningness, persian armory and weaponry, scythian/hunnic/nomadic asian cavalry tactics. 

Given these undeniable facts, we are convinced we can talk about a distinct byzantine martial art, based on the traditional definition of what a martial art is (and not on the definition of "what HEMA is"): a martial art is not only a military training system, but it is the quintessential way of survival. Survival encompasses all aspects of a person's life; it is a way of life. A martial art was defined by the religious and cultural beliefs and also by the political-societal system of the time. There is nothing more uniquely identifiable and nighly exotic than byzantine culture. Arguably, it can only be paralleled in exoticness by chinese and japanese culture. It is therefore only natural to expect that the people of such a unique culture, had developed their own distinctive mindset and tradition about how to fight to survive.

More to the point, the main weapons that today symbolise western european and byzantine warfare speak of a cultural gap between East and West: western and northern Europeans used mostly heavy broad swords or the famous two-handed longsword. This weapon was devastating in the hands of a heavy armoured medieval knight who, even when fighting on foot, relied on the thrust of this powerful charge and who basically fought individually (he had to prove his personal valour and warrior strength, in order to maintain his position and power in the medieval feudal system of politics) and not in close, disciplined maniples, as was the grecoroman tradition. This is important, because this kind of chivalric culture is what later gave rise to the medieval duels, which later in the Renaissance developed into a kind of sport for the rich European aristocrats. Manuals of the 15th and 16th centuries, were among other purposes written also to serve this western european chivalric culture and masters, like Martin Syber and Johachim Meyer, aspired to win through their work the favour of their time's feudal lords. And it is exactly this kind of culture that was absent in the byzantine/grecoroman world. 

On the contrary the byzantine/grecoroman world was built upon very different socio-political settings. The byzantine world aspired to function in an “ecumenical” manner, stemming from the “koina”of the “polis”, based upon an anthropocentric social setting which was based and gave importance to the cohesion of local communites. This was perfectly mirrored into the thematic system: each imperial region made up its own military units, made up of brotherly bonded individuals who had been trained to fight in a phalanx. It was not the locally restricted Athenian democracy of Pericles, it was something even greater: an “ecumenic” communally based democracy headed by a commonly accepted and accountable Emperor.

Therefore Byzantines/Grecoromans were trained hard to fight in discipline and used either spears or one-handed swords of various sizes, intended to be used in a close phalanx formation: the grecoroman soldier always carried a shield on his other hand, a large scutarion if he was a heavy infantryman, or a smaller cheroscoutarion if he was a light auxiliary or an archer. Even heavy cavalry fought in strict discipline and close formation. When a military is thus advanced, the emphasis relies less on individual strength and skill and more on discipline and drilling, because in close formation one man covers the weaknesses of the next, and he relies on the protection of his companions. Byzantine soldiers would never have had enough space to wield a two-handed longsword in such conditions. So the attacks were simple: thrust with spear or cut with the sword. Simple, fast and automatic: this is the basis of advanced disciplined warfare. Anything more than that was considered by the Byzantines/Grecoromans as impulsive and reckless and largely characteristic of the “barbarians”.

This is the reason why emperors composed tactical manuals: they wrote professional treatises on warfare and strategy, which had been evolved into a science of its own. In such a context, a “fencing manual” (which can only include elaborate moves for individual attacks) could only be useless to such a large professional corpus, as the Imperial Army, which trained in rank and files, in massive formation drills, striving to achieve perfection in military discipline.

- But, one could now ask: and how can it be a "martial art" if it was not intended for individual combat/duels? Well: A) as expert martial artist Kostas Dervenis tells us, back in those days there was no distinction between real life-threatening situations and "sport" or "fun" activities. A man who was trained in arms might find the need to apply his skills in a real battle as much as in a street fight in the city or an ulucky meeting in the countryside. A soldier who was trained to fight in a tight formation could definitely handle himself in a battle as much as in a one-to-one duel. Besides, even in battles, tight formations often just broke apart and then duels did take place (apart from the fact that duels between the commanding officers or the strongest warriors of the opposing armies. often opened the scene of a battle). Hence, as far as the need for a "martial art", i.e. the necessary skills to survive in a fight, is concerned, no real distiction existed between battle and duels in those times. Therefore, Byzantines/Grecoromans fought individual duels too, but that was in no way the basis of their military culture. 

B) There is available evidence that Byzantines/Grecoromans had kept alive the unarmed forms of ancient greek wrestling. Those were practiced and evovled into a unique system of unarmed combat which could, however, also be applied to armed combat. Today is martial art has been revived through material sources and living traditions and has been officially recognised as "pammachon". What is notable about pammachon is that, it employs experimental archeology through reenactment, which has allowed us to realise that the combat tactics described in byzantine "Tactica" and "Strategica", follow very basic and universal princinples of fighting to survive, which are common across geographical space and historical time, from the very dawn of humanity to the modern age. And these principles have been recreated and are the key part of pammachon.

But what is HEMA really?

Coming back to HEMA, one has to note that it also originates from real combat on medieval battlefields. Moreover, as Timothy Dawson has very well pointed out, the Walpurgis Fechtbuch (Royal Armouries I.33) was clearly influenced by a much older byzantine military art tradition (Dawson, 2009). HEMA was not "invented" as a distinct "martial arts" out of the blue. Worth noting is also the fact that HEMA was obviously not called "HEMA" back in its day. The latter being a modern categorisation of the subject as a need to differentiate vis-a-vis non-European martial arts and most notably chinese and japanese. 

The German and Italian masters who wrote manuals, nowhere do they explicity claim their teachings to be a "german" or an "italian" martial art - not even european for that matter. Nor do they claim, at any point, that they invented something new, or that their techniques were employed in western Europe exclusively. As far as they were concerned, what we today know as "HEMA" was simply the method of "how to use a sword" in medieval and renaissance times, and by anyone in Europe who used those types of swords. Of course and for obviously practical reasons, those literary works became more known and circulated in the italian and german speaking parts of western Europe, hence they are today widely known as "western european". However, the weapons they include were being used all around Europe during the Middle Ages. This was evidently the case for Eastern Roman Empire too, which of course did not survive to see the full spread of gunpowder in late 15th century. Therefore this martial art was not and could in no way have been exclusively western european. 

Furthermore and relating to our talk of Eastern Roman martial arts, HEMA was originally defined as a set of martial skills intended to be applied in real life situations, not so much on the battlefield but certainly in a civilian environment, i.e. in street fights. It was the culmination of all that was brutal and deadly about the medieval european world, which included Eastern Roman Empire and was in fact culturaly dominated by it for quite a substantial period of time. HEMA was definitely not a sport as most martial arts are percieved today. Most importantly, when it did evolve into a sport, most of its "hard" martial elements were put aside and it essentially became what we, today, know as classical fencing. 

But, one has to bear in mind, the first western european manuals were written by the time western Europeans began to adopt a more professional attitude in warfare, hence abandoning the "barbaric" (as percieved in greek and roman literature) ways of their medieval past. By the time german and italian manuals began to circulate, the first western european regular infantry armies had appeared and the advance of gunpowder had rendered the use of close combat weapons rarer. Unlike in the past, where every soldier had to be able to fight with a sword (hence the knowledge was so common the need for manuals was non-existent), fewer people find the need to do so from 16th century onwards and fewer people bear that knwoledge any more.

The Italian and German freifechter masters did not write manuals with the purpose to create a distinct martial art. What they did was to record on paper methods and techniques for learning how to fight with the basic sword types of their time, for the very practical reason that this knowledge was fast disappearing and hence becoming a "rare commodity" of increased value. Like them, there existed sword masters all around Europe and in Eastern Roman Empire for centuries, long time before them. They were proffesional army trainers, but they never saw the need to write down their knowledge. So the Renaissance masters invented nothing different or new than what was done for centuries before them. Only difference being they tried to sell their knowledge and that at the time their audience and purpose of their work had changed significantly. But it is hardly imaginable they percieved their work the way people perceive it today.

With this in mind, one can understand a) why Eastern Romans did not need to write manuals for individual duels (yet they did produce unique tactical manuals from which the fashion of Renaissance manuals was influenced) and b) that European martial arts, byzantine included, existed without manuals long before that time. So the question now turns to the sources that can be used to recreate a historical martial art without a manual, and this is a subject we will deal with in future articles.

Footnotes:
1) "The types of byzantine swords", by Billy Blake, https://medievalswordmanship.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/the-types-of-byzantine-swords/
2) Philip Sabin, ed., The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, 2007

Sources:
-Jan Willem Honig, Warfare in the Middle Ages, London, Routledge, 2001
-Philip Sabin, ed., The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, 2007
-Ian Heath, Byzantine armies 886-1118, Osprey Publishing 1979
-Timothy Dawson, The Walpurgis Fechtbuch: An Inheritance of Constantinople?, Arms & Armour, Vol. 6 No. 1, 2009, 79–92
- ed. by Gerard Chaliand, The Art of War in Wolrd History - from antiquity to the nuclear age, University of California Press, California, 1994
-Anthony Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic - People and Power in New Rome, Harvard University Press, 2015
-George Georgas, Η Χρήση του σπαθιού στη φάλαγγα και στο τείχος ασπίδων, (4/1/2015), http://ellinondiktyo.blogspot.gr/2015/01/blog-post.html
-George Contogiorgis, The Hellenic Cosmosystem, vol. II, Athens, 2014
-Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford University Press, 1997
-Warren Treadgold, Byzantium and Its Army: 284-1081, Stanford University Press, 1998
-“Tactica” of Leo VI the Wise, 9th c. AD
-Epic of “Basilios Digenis Akritas”
- "The types of byzantine swords", by Billy Blake, https://medievalswordmanship.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/the-types-of-byzantine-swords/
- http://dimitris-a-skourtelis.blogspot.gr/p/blog-page_7.html 
- What is Pammachon, https://byzantineoplomachia.wordpress.com/what-is-pammachon/ 
-Κεφαλοθραύστες (the Byzantine Mace) http://protostrator.blogspot.gr/2010/12/blog-post_19.html