Amazon.com description: Product Description: The Walpurgis Manuscript (Royal Armouries Manuscript I.33) is the world's oldest known personal fencing manual. This fascinating manuscript is a window onto a style of sword and buckler fencing that was a popular sport and probably a means of waging war in Germany in the late 13th or early 14th century. This book will take you through a series of instructions designed to have you fencing in this ancient style in a way the authors of the manuscript would have immediately recognized. The instructions include many photographs and a graded series of practice exercises. Rediscover this ancient fencing style for yourself and enjoy and experience a medieval fencing technique which fascinated our ancestors more than seven centuries ago and is still intriguing fencers today.