Referencing a Martial Arts Treatise Database to find Early English Language Sources
Plate LIII, British Manly Exercises by Donald Walker, 1835, wrestling chapter |
Today I found a great resource for researching martial arts treatises. It's called the Schola Artis Gladii et Armorum Treatise database and it's hosted by a martial arts school in Hungary. They offer over 3,000 entries contributed by users, many of which have working links to source material.
One of the best aspects of the site is the ability to select search parameters. For example, when I searched for English, grappling and wrestling, groundfighting, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling in armour, the search yielded 79 hits.
It's important to verify the search results. For example, the results of my query yielded the following first result:
Title: Cottonian MS Titus A. XXV
Alternative title: The strokes if ij hand swerde
Year: around 1457
Language: English
Secondary language: Latin
Located in: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München <-- Click the name for more information.
Located in: British Royal Library
Located in: Cottonian Library, Cambridge, England
Weapons / topics: dagger, grappling and wrestling, great sword / two handed sword , quarterstaff
However, I can't find any mention of "grappling in wrestling" in the short (two paragraph) document, hosted at Wiktenauer and elsewhere.
That said, here are the first eight entries, edited:
Zachary Wylde / English Master of Defence / 1711 / 40 pages
Sir Thomas Parkyns / The Inn-Play, or Cornish-Hugg Wrestler/ 1714
William Litt / Wrestliana; or, An historical account of ancient and modern wrestling / 1823 / 170 pages
Charles Layton / The Whole Art of Norfolk Wrestling / around 1835
Donald Walker / British Manly Exercises / 1835 / 298 pages; (I removed a second version from 1837.)
Donald Walker / Defensive Exercises / 1840 / 193 pages
Edmund Price / The Science of Self Defence / 1867 / 180 pages
Ed James / The Complete Handbook of Boxing and Wrestling / 1878 / 45 pages
The image at the top of the post is from Donald Walker's 1835 book. You can find the chapters from that book on wrestling and boxing in Google Books. I've created a PDF that you can access here (39 pages).
Have fun checking out the database!
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