Walk into any room of HEMA practitioners and the question will surface within the hour. Fiore or Liechtenauer? Two late-medieval fencing masters, two surviving martial traditions, two ways of answering the same question of what to do when someone across from you is holding a longsword.

At HEMA Penzance, we answer with Fiore. That is our tradition, our twelve guards, our seven blows, our armizare. But the honest answer to the question "which is better?" is neither. Both are superb. Both produce great fencers. Both preserve real martial wisdom from a time when fighting with a sword was a life-or-death skill rather than a hobby. The choice between them is less about quality and more about which tradition's voice speaks to you.

Here is the honest comparison.

Who Were They?

Fiore dei Liberi (c. 1350 - c. 1420)

A Friulian knight, diplomat, and fencing master born in Cividale del Friuli in the Patriarchal State of Aquileia (modern-day northern Italy). Fiore was a man of substance: an Imperial Free Knight, an inspector of Udine's artillery, a recruiter of mercenary companies, and a trainer of famous condottieri for judicial duels. He fought five duels in his own lifetime, against unworthy masters who begrudged him his art, and won every one without injury.

Some time in the early 1400s, he wrote Fior di Battaglia, "The Flower of Battle," preserved today in multiple illuminated manuscripts (most famously the Getty MS Ludwig XV 13 and the Pisani Dossi MS). The book is his life's work, written in his own voice, with his own proud commentary, alongside beautiful coloured illustrations of every play.

"I, Fiore, knowing how to read and write and draw and having books about this art which I have studied for a good 40 years and more, even now I am not a perfected master in this art."

Johannes Liechtenauer (late 14th century)

A German fencing master whose exact dates are unknown and whose own words do not directly survive. What we have instead is a cryptic mnemonic poem attributed to him, the Zettel (the "notes"), and a series of 15th-century glosses, commentaries by later masters such as Sigmund Ringeck, Pseudo-Peter von Danzig, Hans Döbringer, and Paulus Kal. These glosses expand the Zettel's compressed verses into a complete fencing doctrine.

Liechtenauer's own voice is therefore absent in the way Fiore's is present. What we have is a tradition, preserved by disciples who learned from him or from students of his students. The tradition is every bit as rigorous as Fiore's, but the shape of it is different: a school rather than a single master's book.

What Do They Cover?

Fiore's System Is Wider

Fior di Battaglia is a complete martial arts curriculum. It covers:

  • Grappling (abrazare)
  • Dagger (daga), with nine masters
  • Sword in one hand
  • Sword in two hands (longsword) with wide play and narrow play
  • Sword in armour
  • Pollaxe (azza)
  • Spear (lanza)
  • Mounted combat, including lance, sword, and dagger from horseback

Everything builds on grappling. Fiore returns to abrazare principles in the dagger section, the sword section, the pollaxe section, and the armoured section. Roughly two thirds of his plays contain some grappling element. If you train Fiore, you are not training eight separate weapons. You are training one integrated art, applied through eight different instruments.

Liechtenauer's System Is Deeper on One Weapon

The Liechtenauer tradition focuses overwhelmingly on the longsword. The Zettel and its glosses explore the two-handed sword in remarkable technical depth: binding, winding, the three wonders (drei Wunder), the five master cuts (meisterhäue), and a sophisticated theory of timing organised around Vor (the initiative) and Nach (the response).

The tradition does include other weapons (dagger, messer, grappling, mounted combat, armoured combat, sword and buckler) in the work of its later masters. But longsword is the beating heart, and the detail given to it is extraordinary. A Liechtenauer practitioner can spend years on longsword alone and still find new subtlety in it.

What Do They Feel Like?

Fiore Waits, Then Breaks

Fiore's tactical preference, at least in his longsword section, is often to receive the attack and then break it. His twelve guards include several patient, inviting positions: Tutta Porta di Ferro, the Full Iron Gate, stands low and dares the opponent to cut. Posta di Donna, the Lady's Guard, chambers the sword high and waits to deliver one of the most powerful downward cuts in any European tradition. The philosophy is one of confident defence, of letting the opponent commit and then breaking their commitment with superior structure and leverage.

The grappling-at-the-root logic gives Fiore a distinctive flavour in the bind. When swords meet, the Fiore fencer is thinking about closing the measure, seizing the opponent's blade or arm, and finishing with a throw or a zogho stretto (narrow play) technique. The sword is one instrument of a body that knows how to fight at every range.

Liechtenauer Seizes the Initiative

The Liechtenauer tradition prefers to be in Vor, the initiative, from the beginning. A Liechtenauer fencer does not wait; they attack, and their defence is built into the attack itself. The Zornhau, the Wrath Strike, is a descending cut that simultaneously threatens, parries, and positions for a following thrust. The doctrine treats the sword as a tool for dictating the engagement, not responding to it.

Liechtenauer's binding work is famously sophisticated. Where Fiore tends to resolve the bind through grappling or stepping off the line, Liechtenauer resolves it through winden (winding at the sword), flowing around the bind to strike at a new opening without losing contact with the opponent's blade. This is technical, beautiful, and fast.

Did They Know Each Other?

Almost certainly not personally, but their traditions did meet. Fiore himself wrote that he trained with masters from both "Italic and Germanic lands," and some scholars have noted that Fiore's Posta di Donna is essentially the same body position as the Liechtenauer Zornhut, the Wrath Guard. Both masters were working within a shared medieval European understanding of longsword mechanics, and they arrived at many of the same conclusions through different vocabularies.

Trainees crossed borders in both directions throughout the late 14th and 15th centuries. Liechtenauer may have travelled in Italy; Italian masters certainly worked in German lands. The German and Italian schools are branches of the same tree, not foreign continents.

Which Should You Study?

Honestly, both traditions will teach you to fight well. The real question is which voice you want to spend the next several years of your life listening to.

Choose Fiore If...

  • You want a complete system that covers multiple weapons with shared underlying principles.
  • You find yourself drawn to grappling, to the feel of a bind that closes into a throw, to the full range from wrestling to sword.
  • You respond to Fiore's proud medieval-Italian voice. The confident declarations, the animals speaking, the guards with their poetic names.
  • You like having Fiore's own words on the page, in his own manuscript, illustrated by his own artists.
  • You want to train armizare, the whole art of arms.

Choose Liechtenauer If...

  • You want to go deep on the longsword specifically, exploring one weapon to the limit of its subtlety.
  • You find yourself drawn to the aggressive, initiative-taking style of fencing, the fencer who dictates the engagement.
  • You love technical binding work, winden, the chess-like flow of blades already in contact.
  • You enjoy the intellectual puzzle of a cryptic source poem illuminated by centuries of commentary.
  • You want the German tradition's tight focus and its enormous body of surviving textbook material.

Both choices produce fencers who can hold their own in sparring against anyone. Both are honourable paths. The difference shows in the flavour of the practitioner's movement, not in their effectiveness.

Why We Chose Fiore

At HEMA Penzance, we study Fiore for a specific reason: the integration. The grappling at the root, the dagger building on the grappling, the sword building on the dagger, the pollaxe building on the sword. Every weapon in Fiore's system teaches the others. When you pick up a longsword after a year of training his grappling, the sword feels different in your hands, because you understand the close-range possibilities that the sword can resolve into.

There is also the personal voice. Fiore's book reads like a proud man speaking directly to you across six hundred years. His animals. His guards. His five duels. His insistence that he is still not a perfected master after forty years of study. That warmth, that character, that stubborn Friulian humility, is what keeps us coming back to his pages on a Tuesday evening.

But we know Liechtenauer practitioners who feel the same way about the Zettel. Their wrath strikes are beautiful to watch. Their winding is poetry. They love their tradition the way we love ours, and they would tell you, warmly, to study Liechtenauer.

The right answer is not the same as the true answer, and the true answer depends on you.

Come and Learn

If you want to try Fiore for a Tuesday evening in Cornwall and see whether armizare speaks to you, we would love to meet you. HEMA Penzance trains every Tuesday, 7pm to 9pm, at Penzance Leisure Centre. Your first lesson is free, all equipment is provided, and no experience is necessary. Come along and see for yourself.

If you are drawn to the German tradition, the HEMA Alliance club finder will help you find a Liechtenauer school near you, and you have our blessing in the warmest sense. HEMA is not a competition between traditions. It is a renaissance of them.

Fiore's words in this article are from the Getty manuscript translations at Fight Like Fiore.