The Schola Saint George is a non-profit school of "chivalric" martial arts dedicated to promoting study of historical fighting systems through research, training, and competition.
We study surviving fighting treatises. These books of fighting techniques--dating from as early as 1300--are a virtual treasure trove of medieval and Renaissance techniques written by masters who systematized their knowledge and recorded it. Our members study these books, working to recreate the historical fighting systems. These systems are then practiced as modern martial arts. We have created a proven core curriculum based on the works of Fiore dei Liberi, a superbly efficient Italian meistro active at the end of the fourteenth and into the early fifteenth centuries.
Students wthin the school, working in a class or as independent scholars work through the curriculum progress through the training modules in a regular, systematic way, focusing on the development of simple and efficient combat principles. As they progress, the students innovates more and builds their own style based on the historical framework. Eventually, our most advanced students work from the original texts to contribute interpretations of their own back into the Schola community. It is our training objective to advance as many students as possible to the instructor level and to connect them directly to the original material.
At the same time, we believe firmly in testing our interpretations through combat. The Schola practices full-contact sparring in both unarmoured and armoured forms in both practice and competition. Because the school's approach is agnostic of a particular rules structure, we encourage our students to apply what they have learned outside the school in mixed martial arts environments, in reenactment, or in medieval tournaments.
Because the reviitalization of the historical martial arts is so new, there are few instructors. The Schola has thus adopted a distributed model, featuring branches (which have instructors), study groups (which do not yet have instructors), and independent scholars.
The school is "chivalric" in the sense that we emphasize the chivalric ideals as recorded in the annals of history, taking as our exemplars a mixture of iconic personalities: Edward III, Geoffrey de Charny, William the Marshal, the Black Prince, as well as others. The historical record is rich in sources, and we have been heavily influenced by the works of John Froissart, Ramon Lull, Geoffrey de Charny, and the Ordene de Chevalerie. Alongside these historical figures, we also draw influence from the medieval romances. The works of Wolfram von Eshenbach, Thomas Mallory, Chretien de Troyes and a host of others are just a few of the places where the chivalric ideals are recorded and examined. Many of our members are influenced as much by these archetypes as by the imperfect figures from history.
If you are interested, we invite you to explore some of the materials on the site and to join us in studying the martial arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.