A few months ago I wrote a blog post entitled "Trust Your Art," in which I discussed the need to look upon the illustrations in the historical documentation as generally reliable and accurate.
I made the argument in that post that we in the modern era very often take a somewhat dismissive and arrogant view of these illustrations. We seem to assume the artists didn't understand human anatomy, and so drew things that were physically impossible. As such, any failure to accurately execute an illustrated move is due to the documentation and not our misinterpretation.
Although this dismissive attitude extends to all of the early treatises, it seems to be most commonly towards the illustrations in MS I.33. Drawn in a classic Medieval style, the figures certainly do have a unique appearance to them. unique and. Given the difficulty of properly executing the moves, it can be all too easy to blame these stylized illustrations rather than your interpretations.
And, as is often the case, if we enter into things with preconceived notions we will tend to misinterpret things. After all, looking at the illustration above it looks like the fighter on the left is executing an utterly impossible Oberhau (impossible, that is, unless he wants to break his own arm due to that awkward hand position!). If we then conclude he's actually making an Unterhau it begins to make more sense, but then the hand position is still awkward and the attack is rather weak, easily deflected.
This is typically when a HEMA practitioner would assume the illustration is entirely wrong and that the artist was too foolish to realize he drew the hand backward, and reject it out of hand (no pun intended). Then, feeling flush with the excitement of having figured out what was really going on, this practitioner would go forward with an interpretation that moves hand into another position -- and, therefore, develop something that is historically invalid as a result.
However, what if we go into our interpretations with a more open mind? What if we assume they are accurate and that we need to allow them to guide us? What if we assume the illustrations are there for a reason, that they present valid information provided by the Master himself, and that if we allow them then will lead us to where we need to be?
I know, right? What a trippy concept!
The following video is from a recent seminar by Roland Warzecha in which he discusses this precise concept. Working from the assumption that the interpretation he and his students had been working from was wrong, he reexamined the illustration and came to the conclusion there was a perfectly good reason for the illustration that also guided him to a more effective move.
Now, the point here isn't if you believe all of Roland's interpretations or not, nor if you agree with this style of I.33. The take away here is how allowing ourselves to be guided by the art in the treatises rather than dismissing it entirely opens us up to new and wonderful, but still historically valid, ways of understanding things.
I believe we have to start with the assumption that the illustrations are deliberate and that when there are issues with matching what we see it's because we are doing something wrong, not that the illustration is wrong. We need to remain open to different possibilities and in so doing come to what may well be the best historical interpretation.
And that, to me, is a great part of what HEMA is all about.
Stay loose and trust your art!
-- Scott
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