Those of us who were part of the traditional fencing/WMA scene as long ago as the early 2000’s (yes, the ancient times) will remember the edge vs. flat debate: several stalwart proponents of the time were arguing that the flat of medieval and renaissance swords were used to parry, rather than the edge, and the topic was hotly debated on internet forums until people finally caught on that the whole argument was essentially missing the point (so to speak) entirely.

Well, here’s the question reborn: when defending with the buckler, is the flat (i.e., the face) or the edge more appropriate to use? Or when is it better to use one or the other? What do the sources tell us about this? Well, explicitly, not very much. So we have to look carefully and compare sources to build a picture of contemporary practice.

I think I.33 is a good place to start this discussion since – well – since it’s the beginning. At least as far as we are concerned. The first thing that we can really note about the MS is that it actually depicts very few instances of the buckler being used to intercept an attack directly. It is often shown with its front face being used to displace the opponent’s weapons or block a line of attack (for example, in all the various protective positions near the sword hand), but we do not see it really accepting a blow the way we see in sources such as Kal. That said, we have to assume that the I.33 author is intrinsically stating that the buckler must be used to receive attacks at least sometimes, otherwise it wouldn’t be put in the defensive positions it is assuming in the various custodiae, obsesseos, and other schutzen. And we do see it used to turn aside thrusts. But in all cases of schutzen (coverings), the buckler face is presented toward the prospective line of attack, and the face is used to turn aside incoming attacks when they do occur, as in the image above. In my view the only potential play in the manuscript where one might argue that the edge is actively being used for defense is in the student’s response to the priest’s fiddlebow ward, but this sequence is so sparingly explained in the text and so widely open to interpretation that I hesitate to make any concrete statements from it (the student is by no means necessarily giving the priest an attack here, he might just be presenting the priest his blade along the edge of the buckler).

Our next early-ish example, the text from Andreas Lignitzer in the mid-1400s, does not provide much more insight. It is possible that there is a description of the shield being used in concert with the sword to intercept an oberhau in the first play, but even if this is true we are not told how this is done. However, as we get a bit later, the German tradition does start to depict the buckler being used to parry more frequently, both in conjunction with the sword and alone. In Talhoffer and Kal, we exclusively see the face of the buckler being used to meet an opponent’s blows. This seems to match what is shown in I.33, in that the face of the buckler is used to the exclusion of the edge. Mair likewise shows the face of the buckler being used to redirect thrusts. But Mair also illustrates use of the buckler’s edge to displace a thrust (e.g., plate 38), and this is clearly coming from his fairly early set of source images.

Stopping a blow, from Talhoffer Stopping a blow, from Kal

So of all the German sources, we have a clear preference for using the buckler face to provide defense of blows and thrusts, though Mair’s manuscript demonstrates that they did use the edge to displace thrusts at least occasionally.

Displacing a thrust with the buckler face, from Mair Displacing a thrust with the buckler’s edge, from Mair. We don’t have explicit context for the source image, which is uncaptioned.

What about in Italy?

These sources don’t provide much information, by and large. For the most part they tell us “the buckler is used similarly to the dagger” – an expression used in both Digrassi and as late as the 1600’s in Giganti – but that doesn’t help us with the mechanics of the buckler itself because a dagger doesn’t have a face.

Altoni does advise, ca. 1530, that the thumb be held extended along the buckler handle (a rare example where I have seen explicit advice in this regard, contrary to the more common practice I discuss here), and that the thumb be turned clockwise against a mandritto and counterclockwise against a riverso. Experimentation shows that in doing this, the face of the buckler is presented toward the incoming steel. The Bolognese masters don’t explicitly describe this, though the way they discuss using the buckler as a mirror to the adverse steel suggests that they are telling us to keep the face of the buckler toward the enemy’s sword to catch it when an attack is made.

So once again it seems that the buckler face is what is primarily used to defend. That said, Giganti does explicitly mention that the edge of the targa or (by extension) the buckler can be used to deflect a thrust, so this seems to be accepted practice – though this is several hundred years removed from I.33 and Lignitzer. Giganti also mentions that the rectangular shape is better for this. The implication is that one would not use the edge to catch a cut, which matches what the German sources and Altoni seem to be saying.

So in sum, the evidence from German and Italian sources seems to emphasize using the buckler face as the primary means to intercept blows and displace thrusts, though we can also see that the there is occasional advice to use the buckler edge (from Mair and Giganti) to displace thrusts. The danger here is conflating place and time — obviously these different authors were operating in very different contexts, with different styles and weapons from each other that the I.33 author. So for medieval reconstruction, take these later sources with a grain of salt.

The contents of this post reflect my own views and opinions, and do not necessarily represent those of my masters at Martinez Academy of Arms. Any errors are fully my own, as I am still in training and have been encouraged to research to further my studies.