There are more places than Leeds, try The Wallace Collection in collection, that is just pure art , and especially Fort Nelson at Portsmouth, they have the really Big Boys Toys down there, includding the Mallet Motar.

Soory Guys! Wallace collection is in London.

Valpurgis

Walpurgis*

The last leaf is missing unfortunately, so we can't tell.

“Hi Pete, glad you liked the film, and thanks for the query. If Walpurgis is intended to personify evil, we can assume that the priest would win. In the play in which Walpurgis is present, she is executing a technique that we have seen a number of times previously, and it ends with her holding the upper hand. As it stands therefore, she is the winner, but we cannot be certain that the sequence has ended or if there are some now missing additions, so we can’t be sure whether she wins or not. There has been quite a lot of debate as to whether Walpurgis was a real person or just a character or personification. It has been suggested that the figure in the manuscript was a personification of Saint Walpurgis (who historically was active in Franconia), but this is now generally dismissed (see Eads & Garber (2014), “Amazon, Allegory, Swordswoman, Saint?” in Mondschein (ed.) Can These Bones Come To Life? Wheaton: Freelance Academy Press, p. 5-23). Though we can’t dismiss the idea that Walpurgis was a personification of something, we certainly cannot confirm it either. It is possible that she was a real person who was in some way related to either the author or fight master behind the manuscript, and therefore had the privileged position of being able to take part. Alternatively she may be entirely fictitious and some form of medieval joke. So, the short answer to your query is; we don’t know! It’s just one of the mysteries relating to I.33 that we may never get to the bottom of. At least it keeps us thinking! Stuart.

Thanks for the reference there. An "I dunno" would have been fine, but out of character. Need to catch up sometime. There may be beer.

Anticlericalism is common in 14th century literature- e.g. in Boccaccio's Decameron or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It shouldn't be presumed that a priest is automatically equated with virtue in a 14th century book- he could well be intended as a villain. In fact, a common literary trope of the era was to portray priests as licentious sexual predators. Walpurgis might be defending her honour. Or it could all be a joke about how both characters are behaving in a way inappropriate to their ostensible roles in society. Also, having two characters with very different clothing and appearance means that even if the book was reproduced without colour illustrations, by a less skilled artist, then the two figures remain distinct, even when the angle is reversed- it's an artistic decision with some clear practical benefits.

@@RoyalArmouries Priests were often licentious villains in 14th century literature.

It is more likely that the scribes were commissioned to capture the work of an unknown master in a treatise. His masterwork. I think it is unlikely they would put so much effort into something like this if they were not getting paid.

I was comparing the scribes to the modern writers. They either dramatize too much or missunderstood some of the informations they must put in their work. Of course they would give all their best and they were well paid but the problem is a fencing trainer or something like that would be able to describe the manual more correctly. Yet the problem was not most of people knew to read of write. So for me is very very vague how we can take an information as good or bad.

For all intents and purposes, this work was possibly written by someone who actively handled a sword at the time of its writing and the illustrations were commissioned to go with it. As things that are written inside (at least looking through interpretations) are martially valid.

But how do you know that ?

Havock, regarding validity, I would suggest "historical experimentation." Where you are recreating the art, and testing it against other forms of sword play. Is this form of martial combat effective against other contemporary or even modern forms of combat. If it is, then there is a high probability that it was martially valid.

Carbon dating results always come with a considerable confidence interval, that is generally larger than the accuracy of the estimation made by the "material cultural" method. Therefore, even if they'd do it, it wouldn't give us a more accurate date.