Honors Retreat- Part the First

Today was a workshop from Bob Charron, an instructor from the St. Martin's Academy for Medieval Arms. Let that sink in a minute and absorb the awesome of that statement. In a word: Epic best describes that class. Let me list a few of the things that we learned:

• The medieval education system was universal, it was the baseline for everyone, everywhere
• Astronomy was very important to Medieval culture since they were an agrarian society
• This era was not squalid, it actually had a great deal of splendor with everything brightly painted and gilt in gold, not just plain stone
• The French term for "downward blow" is fendente which literally translates to "break your teeth"
• Modern metallurgy has found that quenching in blood and milk wasn't just superstition, it actually gives the metal a certain crystalline structure due to the rate at which these different liquids quench he metal
• Knights were itinerant judges, lawyers and jurors because the law was their #1 occupation with fighting being #2
• This society was very lawful and the laws were very clear. The goal for the everyday citizen was to always follow the law
• In sword fighting you always want to be the smaller number (will come back to this later)
• The first thing for children to learn was how to make a mind palace (so cool!)
• Math, music, astronomy are all involved in swordplay
• Swordplay is not just "technique" it's an artistic science that involves other sciences
• Because it's an art, if you're thinking about it, you die
• They believed that you had 3 souls
• Animal soul- social interaction, locomotion, etc.
• Contemplative soul- thinking, technical
• Plant soul- autonomic processes in the body
• In order to fight well you have to engage your animal soul

OK, that was a lot. However, that's only a small part of what we learned at the beginning. Then we got into actually playing with the swords (yay!). To sum up several hours of work: we learned blocks, strikes, how to steal our opponent's sword, how to place our feet, how to "be the smaller number" and a whole ton of other things. Out of all that, the thing I want to really talk about is the whole "be the smaller number" thing.

"Be the smaller number" means that between you and your opponent you make the least amount of motions (hand and feet), move the smallest distance or take the smallest amount of times. All of these are numbers and when you add all of these numbers together on both yours and your opponent's side, you want to be the smaller number and if you are that smaller number, then you have won. Here's an example: If I do and overhand blow while taking a step and my opponent simply takes a step back, they win because I have completed more motions and I had to cover more distance. In this case time=distance, if I create more distance then I have more time to move and if my sword is simply moving from scabbard to strike rather than over the shoulder to strike then it's less distance, meaning less time, meaning I would win if I was the smaller number. Once we understood this principle, we got way better at doing the drills.

The other thing I want to talk really quickly about is that we had to be using our "animal soul" in order to do this well. This meant that when we were completing the drills, there was no talking because if we were talking then we were using our contemplative soul. After about the first 20 minutes, there wasn't anymore awkward giggling or chatting, Charron would give us a command and we followed it immediately. We made eye contact with our partner and completed the prescribed motion on command. It gave me a whole new respect for the training style of the time and I feel like if this philosophy of the different souls was applied in other sports, it might make us more accurate in our play because we wouldn't be thinking, we would be moving and simply trusting our bodies. This is something I've tried to teach to people I work on swimming with and I think that this animal soul is the best way to explain trusting your body to move naturally because your body can do many things but it is bounded by your brain or you contemplative soul as the medieval man would say.

I hope that was at least somewhat understandable. It was a really great experience and I hope I get to try that again. Thanks for reading my ramblings!

Jessie Jane