This has offered us the chance of rendering accessible to all friends of the arts and history this precious document which allows us to understand the methods of judicial duels and other singular (one on one) fights in Germany during the Middle-Age.
This Manuscript can be found at the Imperial House of Austria’s Library, which is a collection of history and art-(Ambras collection), it consists of a small folio of thick paper, with a parchment cover on which is found the following words: “Ro. Kay. M… Kamphpuech Khymmseckg.”
The first page is filled with the rules of combat and the second page contains a work of prose. We reproduce these two pages and offer a translation.
The Majority of the work deals with serious fights using the two handed sword to which is also added, fighting with dagger, fighting with lance and a sword, wrestling, as well as fighting on horse back with lance and sword.
In the introduction we give a detailed and precise description of the manuscript as well as discuss other manuscripts (to avoid confusion the editor has added these in the Appendices at the end of this modified edition) bearing the name Talhoffer in order to give an overall and complete overview of the important manuscripts for the history of art.
The Ambras manuscript (1459) consists of sixty five pages, including two pages of text and 114 plates, fourteen pages are blank. In the remaining fragments of a torn out leaflet we can see the light contours of wrestling.
The pagination of the manuscript is not clear, on the fist plate we can see the number 50 and the pages seem to follow after that, but at other times the order of the pages do not follow the numbers on the previous pages so that we are unsure about where to start.
In this publication we have decided to follow the order of the plates found in the original.
The fights often follow from one page to the next and so with the Ambras (1459) manuscript we have had to organise the plates so that the opponents face each other. This is the reason why this manuscript differs from the other two by Talhoffer.
By translating this work we hope that we have met the goals we set out for ourselves; that we have introduced to the friends of history and art a precious document for the history and development of civilisation in the middle ages, in Germany.
Prague, June 1890
The Author.