Lecküchner: Kunst und Zettel im Messer (Facsimile SC)

The Bavarian State Library Cgm 582, by Hans Lecküchner (author) and Michael Chidester (editor).

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek manuscript Cgm 582 is a German fencing manual commissioned by Hans Lecküchner in 1482.

Two potential autograph copies of Lecküchner’s treatise are preserved: Heidelberg Cod. Pal. germ. 430, completed in 1478, and this manuscript, completed on 19 January 1482 (less than a year before his death). The latter mentions in the last paragraph that a previous draft had been produced, which was likely the source for the shorter version included by Hans von Speyer in the Salzburg ms. M.Ⅰ.29 in 1491.

Cgm 582 excels these other two contemporary copies of Lecküchner's teachings both in its length—it is half again as long as CPG 430—and in that nearly every page includes a lavish watercolor illustration by an artist from the circle of Michel Wolgemut. Indeed, there is no other 15th century fencing treatise comparable to this manuscript, and it would not be equaled until the writings of Paul Hektor Mayer in the 1540s and Joachim Meyer in the 1560s.

Softcover, 432 pp., num. ill.