Like other towns in the Holy Roman Empire, Fribourg relied on its citizens to defend its walls during war. Moreso, possessing enough military equipment was essential for its inhabitants. The town itself stored a large quantity of small arms and armour in its arsenals, which had to be distributed to fighters during sieges and before military expeditions. To be able to retrieve the distributed weapons, the municipal authorities produced weapon inventories to trace the lent items. In this article, such an inventory will be presented, one which was written during the war against Savoy in 1447-1448.
Since 1440, Savoy and Fribourg (which was under Habsburgian authority) had contentious economic and diplomatic relations. The situation escalated in 1445, when Savoy closed its border to merchants from Fribourg, after 4000 florins were stolen from a papal envoy by a Habsburgian vassal. To prevent economic disaster, Fribourg prepared itself for war by raising an extraordinary tax, buying artillery, and distributing weapons to the male population. In December 1447, Fribourg attacked several Savoyan villages. However, the war turned in favour of Savoy, as they secured an alliance with Bern. Attacked on both sides, Fribourg surrendered in July 1448 and became a Savoyan subject in 1452[1].
On May 9th, 1447, a crossbow distribution took place in the town and the surrounding countryside. 443 people received – for the most part – a crossbow, with a quiver and a dozen bolts. A 12 folios long inventory was produced to keep track of each item, so that the city could retrieve them after the war. The inventory is not the only list in the main document, as the scribes wrote it after a series of other weapons and ammunition inventories. This type of documents was thus a work document, as the numerous annotations and marks show.
Fig. 1: AEF, Affaires Militaires, I-7, fol. 5r. Circles and crosses indicate that the inventory was updated later after the first writing.]
To illustrate this, the inventory’s first folio is transcribed here:
« Cy contient per escript le delyvrance de l’atilliement de messegniour de la ville de Fribor, delivree per la main de Hensly d’Englisberg et de Glaudo d’Autignie. Ordoney per messegniour le dilon apres feste Sainte Croyx en may l’an mil cccc xlvi.
o Item Jorgoz d’Englisperg ·i· arbelester por son garson riset et tot sen qui appertien mex Gorgo, ·vi· pfil, i wind.
l+ Primo Jacob d’Englisperg le Jone a· receuz ·una· dozaine de karre· bon und ein krieg winden me xii pfil guot, i totzen pfil.
o+ Item Hensly Ferwer a receuz ·i· dozaina de karre bon.
o+ Item Piero ·und· Johan Mossu hatt ·ii· tozen pfil der besten.
+ Item Jacob Fogilli hat ·i· arbrest núw mit ein krieg (i wind), ·i· totzen pfil mex ·i· wind.
o+ Item Williemoz Chaste hat ein krieg wind mex una arbelestaz, une foure et xv ·flotze per l’avoie […], i karkey.
Item Piero Perrotet hat ein krieg wind und ein arbrest.
Item Glaudo d’Autignie hat ein arbrest mit der hulft und ein krieg, ·ein· hulft totzen pfil ein kocher lidrin.
Item Williemo Stadler a· xii flotze bone.”
The crossbows – as well as firearms and armour − were preserved in the courthouse (salle de justice), situated in the city centre near St Nicholas cathedral. In 1465, this building stocked 332 crossbows, 36 maille armours, 145 helmets, 61 pairs of arm protections and 46 pairs of gauntlets. Bigger items – such as cannons – were stored in the city arsenal or on the fortifications.
Other documents preserved in Fribourg’s state archives give more insights in the citizens’ military involvement. For example, it is possible to identify the socio-economical level of some of the persons cited in the crossbow inventory, thanks to a tax book written in 1445, which gives the wealth of individual citizens. In preparation for the war against Savoy, about 3150 households were taxed (represented generally by a male member), each on 1% of their wealth. Thus, it is simple to calculate one’s total wealth. On an economical level, Fribourg’s society can be divided into three classes: a relatively large lower class (25 pounds or under of wealth, 704 households), a large middle class (25,1 to 1000 pounds of wealth, 2256 households) and a small upper class (1000,1 to 40000 pounds of wealth, 190 households). The gap between the extremes in wealth was massive, as the wealthiest citizen in Fribourg owned 1600 times more than the poorest. However, this gap was not considered during the crossbow distribution. Indeed, like citizens from the lesser classes, upper class citizens could receive military material to defend the city. For example, the donzel Jacob d’Englisberg (member of the upper class, with a wealth of 14700 pounds in 1445[2]) received bolts and a war cranequin[3]. On the other hand, Jean Gottrou (considered by the tax book as a poor household, with 25 pounds or less of wealth in 1445[4]), received a crossbow, a quiver, a dozen bolts and a belt[5].
Although Fribourg’s walls were never under siege during the war – as the town’s authorities accepted piece quickly after Bern’s alliance with Savoy –, the population was ready to defend the fortifications. Some were even nominated by the municipal authorities to man precise parts of the fortifications or the canons. Here, an example indicates that men belonging to the upper class had to defend the wall, although according to their status: Johan Pavilliar – owning 8300 pounds of wealth – was captain on one of Fribourg’s gates – the Porte des Étangs[6]. These examples show that defending the town was a concern for the whole urban community, independently of one’s wealth.
[1] Roberto Biolzi, « Avec le fer et la flamme ». La guerre entre la Savoie et Fribourg (1447/1448), Lausanne 2009, pp. 13-29.
[3] AEF, Affaires Militaires, I-7, fol. 5r.: “Item Jorgoz d’Englisperg ·i· arbelester por son garson riset et tot sen qui appertien mex Gorgo, ·vi· pfil, i wind.”
On December 10, 1579, the city of Augsburg
executed Paulus Hector Mair for the embezzlement of between 32,000 and 40,000
guilders during his forty-two-year career as a civic servant and treasurer. [i]
On December 14, Augsburg officials and citizens gathered to begin an exhaustive
inventory of Mair’s possessions. The inventory took weeks to compile and
culminated in large public sales held in January and May 1580, during which the
vast collections of books, martial artefacts, arms, armor, and artwork that
Mair had amassed would be liquidated, along with even his smallest and most
personal articles.
Though Mair died in disgrace, his legacy looms
large within histories of martial culture and practice, and he is well-known to
both scholars and martial arts practitioners. Benedikt Mauer’s article on the
contents of Mair’s book and art collection has offered an overview of Mair’s
impressive library and its context. Jeffrey Forgeng and Kazuhiko Kusudo have illuminated
aspects of Mair’s biography and involvement in martial culture and sporting
activities.[ii]
Most recently, Daniel Jaquet presented a cross-cultural comparison between
Mair’s De Arte Athletica and the Chinese martial treatise of Qi Jiguang,
examining the reception of each body of work by modern martial arts
communities.[iii]
However, most scholarship on Mair and his
collection has focused on the Fechtbücher, or fight books, that he amassed,
compiled, authored, and commissioned. Few studies have engaged meaningfully
with the other categories of art and material culture that Mair’s posthumous
inventories list or considered how these objects—and the Augsburgers who
gathered to count or purchase them—reveal new facets of Mair’s involvement in
the martial culture of his city.
Fig. 1: Christoph Weiditz the Younger, hand-colored by circle of Jörg Breu the Younger, Paulus Hector Mair, from the Geschlechterbuch der Stadt Augsburg, circa 1540s, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. icon 312b, fol. 64v.
Paulus Hector Mair and his City
Though his precise dates of birth and
parentage remain unclear, Paulus Hector Mair was born into an upwardly mobile
family around 1517.[iv] He began his career in the city administration
of Augsburg in 1537, and he oversaw the finances of the civic works from 1541.
During the 1540s and 1550s, Mair increasingly devoted his energies to
collecting weapons, images, books, and armor, and to compiling, writing, and
publishing works related to martial knowledge. The works that he commissioned
also dealt with the histories of martial sport—as in the histories of the
tournament contained in De Arte Athletica—and in claiming knightly
identity for the citizens of Augsburg—as in the Geschlecterbuch der Stadt
Augsburg (fig. 1).[v]
Mair was an avid social climber, forging connections to members of the most
powerful patrician families of the city, such as the Johann Jakob Fugger, to
whom he dedicated the Geschlecterbuch.[vi]
In death, also, Mair reveals aspects of
Augsburg’s social networks and the material culture that surrounded them. The documents preserved in the city’s archive
record counts of objects and estimates of their value given by numerous
citizens and others who gathered to take stock of Mair’s possessions in
preparation for their liquidation. Among those mentioned as “counting” objects
is one Antoni Pfeffenhauser. This is likely Anton Peffenhauser (1525–1603), one
of the last in a line of great Augsburg armorers, who created luxury armors for
the Holy Roman Empire’s elite.[vii]
In addition to this famous smith, the counters who gathered to take stock of
Mair’s property included Wilhelm von Montfort, a member of a venerable Swabian
noble family. Indeed, as Mauer has pointed out, Mair cultivated relationships
to both the patriciate of Augsburg and the high nobility of southern Germany.
Following his confession and death sentence in 1579, Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria
(1548-1626) implored the city council to consider a less severe punishment for
Mair.[viii]
Martial Equipment: Old and New
Mair’s inventories take stock of the
possessions that he kept in his official apartments which stood adjacent to the
old Augsburg Rathaus.[ix]
Though most of Mair’s martial objects were found in two small rooms on the
ground floor, their distribution throughout his living quarters indicates their
importance to him.
As befit a citizen of Augsburg and a man of
his station, Mair owned armor. Indeed, all male citizens of Augsburg were
expected to have equipment on hand to arm themselves if need arose for the
city’s defense.[x]
However, Mair’s armors went beyond civic necessity. The inventory records one
new harness “together with its case and all that belongs to it,” valued at
fifteen guilders, suggesting a small garniture. This armor, along with two
“old” maces, was stored in Mair’s study, rather in the room on the ground floor
where most of his martial possessions were found. In this space, there were at
least two other armors, thirteen arming garments, two mail shirts stored
together with an old helmet, six old siege helmets, two “old, bad armors,” as
well as various bits of armor that were, despite being “old,” described as
“neat and clean” though dissimilar. [xi]
It remains unclear whether Mair acquired all of these objects for his own use,
or whether some, particularly those described as old, may have constituted a
collection of martial artefacts. The latter is a tantalizing possibility, given
the sensitivity to medieval martial traditions and material culture
demonstrated in Mair’s fight book commissions.[xii]
In addition to armors, Mair owned numerous
arms. As Kusudo has shown, Mair was involved in Augsburg’s lively
target-shooting societies, and one of his last works seems to have been his
chronicle on marksmanship, now in Wolfenbüttel.[xiii]
Mair was an enthusiastic participant in his city’s shooting societies for both
firearms and crossbows. Accordingly, his inventory and sales records list no
less than seven crossbows, many together with cranequins and bolts. Mair also
owned at least one matching pair of pistols, and at least four long guns. His
collection of bladed weapons was impressive, comprising 29 swords, many whose
pommels were ornamented with silver. Among these were longswords, at least one
two-handed sword, numerous rapiers, and many swords described as old. In
addition to these weapons, Mair owned at least three matching pairs of fencing
swords, appropriate for an author and collector of fight books. The inventory
contains tantalizing more echoes of Mair’s sumptuously illustrated martial
treatises. Foremost among these in my mind are “Six Yellow Messers.” Though this
description leaves the materiality of these blades unclear, the allusion to a
yellow-color evokes the wooden or leather-covered practice messers or dusacks
that are illustrated in Mair’s De Arte Athletica, where such sparring weapons
are universally represented with yellow pigment (fig. 2).
Beyond the obviously useful martial
equipment, Mair owned various curiosities whose value seems to have resided in
their age or, perhaps, their now-unknown stories. For instance, the inventory
records an “old Italian ball”—perhaps a cannonball—as well as the two maces
kept in a place of honor in Mair’s study alongside his best armor.[xiv]
Fig. 2: Jörg Breu the Younger and workshop, Fencing with Dussacks, from Paulus Hector Mair, De Arte Athletica, vol. I, circa 1545-55, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. icon. 393.1, fol. 100r.
Everyone loves a Bargain: The Buyers of Mair’s Collection
The sales of Mair’s possessions in January
and May 1580 distributed his collection of fight books, artworks, and martial
artefacts, along with the most mundane accoutrements of his professional home,
throughout the social strata of Augsburg. The records reveal the allure of
martial objects for even the city’s elite. David Roth, a member of a
prestigious family whose members had sat on the city council for decades,
purchased numerous bladed weapons, including a damaged pair of fencing swords,
daggers, and a Reitschwert with a silver pommel.[xv]
The plainer of Mair’s two Reitschwerter and one of his maces were
purchased by Wolff Vischer, chamberlain to Marcus Fugger, then head of the international
Fugger bank.[xvi]
Caspar Ettinger, who worked alongside Mair and the Fuggers in the civic
administration and who had also been involved in the inventory’s compilation,
seems to have been among those enthusiastic buyers who were undaunted by the
age of many of Mair’s objects. He acquired, for instance, a siege helmet, two
mail shirts, a brigandine or jack, a crossbow and three “bad, old armors,” as well
as artworks such as paintings. [xvii]
Perhaps most poignant among they buyers, though, are two his own five sons, Esaias
and Jakob Leonard, whose names appear alongside objects such as guns and pairs
of fencing swords. Though the council granted Jakob Leonard two of his father’s
guns free of charge, Esaias—who’d also had the grim task of contributing to the
inventory—paid three guilders to reclaim a pair of his father’s fencing swords.
An Inconclusive Conclusion
This contribution represents only a brief
overview of Mair’s expansive and diverse collection and its context. Though familiar
within the community of martial scholars and HEMA practitioners, the documents
surrounding Paulus Hector Mair’s collection and patronage, as well as his fall
and the liquidation of his assets, offer fertile and hitherto untilled soil. In
particular, further examination of Mair’s tangible world, beyond the manuscripts
that he collected and produced, will continue to shed new light on the ways
that martial objects and knowledge were collected, described, and circulated
through early modern towns.
[i] Benedikt Mauer, ‘Sammeln Und Lesen – Drucken Und
Schreiben. Die Vier Welten Des Augsburger Ratsdieners Paul Hector Mair’, in Medien
Und Weltbilder Im Wandel Der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Theresia Hörmann and
Wolfgang E.j. Weber, Documenta Augustana, 5 (Augsburg: Wißner, 2000), pp.
107-32. Due to revisions of the numbering system in the Stadtarchiv Augsburg
since Mauer’s publication, some of the document numbers now differ from those
cited in his chapter. For monetary comparison, a master carpenter in Augsburg
earned roughly 45 to 50 guilders per year.
[ii] Jeffrey L. Forgeng, ‘Owning the Art: The German Fechtbuch Tradition’,
in The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe
1520-1630, ed. by Tobias Capwell (London: The Wallace Collection, 2012),
pp. 164–76; Jeffrey L. Forgeng, ‘The Martial Arts Treatise of Paulus Hector
Mair’, in Die Kunst Des Fechtens, ed. by Elizabeth Vavra and Matthias
Johannes Bauer (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017), pp. 267–83;
Kazuhiko Kusudo, ‘P.H. Mair (1517-1579): A Sports Chronicler in Germany’, in Sport
and Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. by John McClelland and Brian
Merrilees (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009), pp.
339–54.
[iii] Daniel Jaquet, “Collecting Martial Art Knowledge on Paper in Early
Modern Germany and China: The Examples of Paulus Hector Mair and Qi Jiguang and
Their Reading in the 21st Century,” Martial Arts Studies, (9), pp.86–92. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18573/mas.101
[iv] Mark Häberlein et al., Augsburger Eliten des 16. Jahrhunderts:
Prosopographie wirtschaftlicher und politischer Führungsgruppen 1500-1620 (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 1996), 503-04; Mauer, 109.
[v] See, for instance, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codices
10825-10826, fol. 4v; Munich, Bayeriches Staatsbibliothek, Cod. icon 312 b.
[vii] Augsburg, Stadtarchiv, Urgichten K262, 1579-80, Inventarium 1579, p. 3, „Zalte
Antoni Pfeffenhaueser […] das Helden buch.“; Wendelin Boeheim, Meister
der Waffenschmiedekunst vom XIV bis ins XVIII Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrage zur
Geschichte der Kunst und Des Kunsthandwerks (Berlin: W. Moeser, 1897). 158-61. Surprisingly,
Peffenhauser appears only infrequently as a „counter“ and primarily counts
books, rather than armors. Tantalizingly, an “Antoni Plattner,” returns as a buyer
on January 22, Urgichten K262, Hector Mayers Nachlass Verstiegerung 1580, p.
33.
[ix] As Mauer has observed, this inventory records only the objects in
Mair’s quarters adjacent to the Rathaus, and omits any possessions located in
the family home he share with his wife, Felizitas Kötzler, am Kappeneck. Mauer, 110.
[xi] Urgichten, K262, Inventarium 1579, p. 20.
19 December, „Den Kemerlin auf dem Boden,“ „Zahlen Anthoni Nußhard umb 4- halb
harnische und ain doppelhandschen der Zugehör.“ The meaning
of doppelhandschen remains unclear, the term may describe exchange gauntlets or
reinforces.
[xii] See, for instance, the representation of fourteenth-century
clothing in images of sword-and-buckler fencing reproduced from earlier sources
in Augsburg Univeritäts/Oettingen-Wallersteinschebibliothek, Augsburg. Cod.
Cod. I.6.2.4. Mair, Paulus Hector and Jörg Breu the Younger, Collected
Fechtbuch, fols. 14r-v.
[xiv] Urgichten K 262, Inventarium 1579, p. 25, „Zalte Wilhelm von Mondfort, 1
[…] alten welschen aisen küglin“
[xv] Urgichten K262, Hector Mayers Nachlass Verstiegerung 1580, p. 25, „David
Roth […] 1 Reitschwert mit silber beschlagen […], 2 alte zerbrochne
Fechtschwerter und 2 dolchen“
[xvi] Urgichten K262, Hector Mayers Nachlass Verstiegerung 1580, p. 25, „Wolf Vischer,
herren Marcus Fugger’s kemer . . .ain Reitschwert.“
[xvii] Urgichten K262, Hector Mayers Nachlass Verstiegerung 1580, p. 21, 11 January, 1580, „Nota: Dem Herren Jo. Leo. Mayr dürch meine herren vere(h)t werden 2 feu(e)rbüchsen,“ at not cost; Urgichten K262, Hector Mayers Nachlass Verstiegerung 1580, p. 111, „Zalte Elaias Mayr […] 1 par fechtschw. R 3.-“; For other mentions of Ettinger in connection with the Augsburg mint, see Hildebrandt Reinhard, Quellen und Regesten zu den Augsburger Handelshäusern Paler und Rehlinger 1539-1642 : Wirtschaft und Politik im 16./17. Jahrhundert, Deutsche Handelsakten des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, XIX (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996), 1: 1539-1623, 195-96.
