What We Study

PLVA studies the combat arts of many weapons common to the late 14th to early 15th centuries. Primarily, we are interested in the longsword, dagger, and unarmed combat, though we also spend time looking at spear, pole-axe, and fighting in armor through the lens of 14th century Italian fencing master Fiore de’i Liberi, who writes on all of the above techniques in his manuscript The Flower of Battle.

In addition to Fiore’s The Flower of Battle, our curriculum has incorporated other sources and weapons into our study, including the wrestling section of the Bauman Fechtbuch (German: “fight book”), the langes messer (German: long knife), and sword and buckler.

The goal of our curriculum is to guide our students through Fiore’s manuscript, The Flower of Battle, with an eye towards developing fencing ability over memorization. From there, we want our students to explore medieval martial techniques according to their interests.

Will you become an expert in Fiore’s dagger? Will you join us at CLANG by getting into armor? Will you learn the secret Italian techniques necessary for taking down every other German-based club in the state? The choice is yours!