There seems to be a sound issue with the data from 32min onwards... which is super strange since nothing changed and is just present in this recording... sorry about that.

The premise that you don't see rules in medieval fightbooks is not necessary in that strong form to support a claim that there was a change in didactics from the medieval to the renaissance period, nor do I think that Adrian is bringing it forward in that strong form. The pointhe is making is, as far as I understand, first, that the medieval fightbooks overwhelmingly use a didactics that follows the ideal of Aristotelian epagoge (as they follw the scholastic Method, that ows a lot to Aristotelian ideas of epagoge): You have an example and from that example the student arrives at the general principles. And second, that Agrippa goes the other way of deucting from principles or that of apagoge. (One should be aware here, that rules are not the same as general principles: "If you thrust, do so in a straight line." is a rule. "The most direct way between two points is a straight line." is a principle.) The renaissance is not a monolithic movement and it's clear that it was an extension out of the medieval (where else should it have come from?) in a certain sense. That said, though, I think one can identify a lot of differences indeed, especially in regard to the didactics, which change. That said not every book was follwoing that movement either. Mayer is areguably more a child of the Late Middle Ages or the Nordic Renaissance, that is in a way an answer to the Italian Renaissance. The same goes for Destreza: Destreza is an entirely late scholastic Reply to the (italian) Platonic renaissance Humanists. That doesn't mean that there was no Renaissance or that there isn't a break in didactics from the medieval to the early modern era. It just says that there were reactions to that break and that those were immediate. That said, if you compare the learly medieval fight books and compare them with those belonging to the early modern era, then you will see that the medieval books were dominated by a scholastic (Aristotelian epagoge-style) didactics, expecting you to look at examples and from that understand the rules and principles (which might or might not be given explicitly). With the reanissance you see a rise in another style of didactics: One that is based on espousing the principles first and expecting the student to deduce the right fencing actions from that. Agrippa is indeed a prime example for that: He gives the principles, then rules and his examples are not meant to explain how to fight, but to show that those principles work. Everything else is for the student to deduce. Fiore is not a very good example for strictly medieval fight books, by the way, as when he wrote his book and where he wrote the book it was already at the cusp of the blossoming of the renaissance. Of course we can expect some foreshadowing there. Furthermore, scientific proof in the Aristotelain style is nothing that is opposed to learning (and neither is anamnesis and deduction in the Platonic sense) opposed to learning. Rather, it is a type of learning! And that idea is still very active in the late scholastic writing of Carranza and Thibault. Late Scholastic works are usually a reaction to platonic-style renaissance didactics, that change from epagoge- to apagoge-style teaching/learning, where the reaction consists in remembering that the Aristotelian/scholastic tradition knows both, employing both in conjunction and then claiming, that even the apagoge is done better by Scholastics then non-Scholastic platonists. The two kinds of fight books you speak about are exactly the result of differences in didactics Adrian speaks about. And if you go through all the books available, categorize them and look at when they were written, then you will see that the 'type one' books are typical of the medieval period, 'type two' books are more typical of the 'renaissace' (or early modern) period - and that the examples from those respective periods are more clearly belonging to the type that's typical for that period than vice versa. (And of course, the Scholastics would claim that their method is 'scientific', just as the platonic humanists claim theirs to be. I think one shouldn't get too hooked on that terminology there, Adrian is clearly using that cum grano salis, referring to Agrippa's claim of being the 'more scientific' one than the scholasitcs, against whom his book is [amongst other things] clearly a jab - pun intended.) I think one can only disagree with what Adrian is proposing here, if one makes the mistake of thinking that a book of the renaissance era claiming to be giving 'scientific proofs' is not meant to teach. That idea is an anachronism born from a modern understanding of what 'scientific proof' is. No, the claim e.g. Agrippa makes is that teaching by scientific proof is superior to teaching by examples (and 'rules of thumb') as the Scholastics do - or he accuses them of doing. The idea of teaching (through books giving explicit instructions for) drills is an even later one. Neither a book like I.33 or of the Lichtenauer tradition does that, nor does Agrippa or Carranza do so. Of course, you can use the plays of I.33 or the 'Stücke' of the Lichtenauer tradition fight books as if they were drills. You could do the same with Agrippa's examplary demonstrations of the validity of his principles. But it's not really what they are intended for. To conclude, no one claimed >that all of "how to stab literature" shifts