History
HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) is the modern reconstruction of fighting systems written down in Europe's old fight books. The oldest, the "I.33" sword-and-buckler manual, dates from around 1300; the German school traces back to the 14th-century master Johannes Liechtenauer.
Italian masters such as Fiore dei Liberi (c. 1409) and later Capoferro, and Germans such as Joachim Meyer (1570), left detailed illustrated books. In the Victorian era Alfred Hutton tried to revive the old swordplay; the modern HEMA movement grew from the 1990s, with clubs and international tournaments.