SAVATE: French foot fencing Historical & Technical Journal Fully Illustrated Historical European Martial Arts

By Andy Kunz and Kenneth Pua

The essential Savate historical journal recommended for all Historical European Martial arts enthusiast, savateurs, savateusse, martial arts aficionado, martial arts instructors, students, athletes and rare martial arts book collectors. This little journal covers the complete historical timeline of the evolution of Savate. Savate can be described as elegant as ballet, scientifically designed, yet deceptively basic. Expressive yet efficient. It is a highly-effective and aesthetically-pleasing form of kick-boxing.

Savate combined every known Western fighting forms - boxing, pankration, fencing, street brawling, gymnastics and cane fighting. A sophisticated art practiced by nobles and the bourgeois in the 19th century France. This Journal contains rare photographs of the development of Savate. This journal also contains rare photographs from the 19th and early 20th century, modern photographs of Savate techniques, grading system, and how to appreciate the modern rules of Assaut, combat and combat PRO. Savate is definitively a sports of contrast, but a sport deservedly on the rise. With the efforts of Fédération internationale de savate with 63 member countries, Savate is on the way to the road back to the Olympics.

"Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution "- Theophile Gautier.

Savate is unique but basic. Elegant but effective. There is no doubt about it. Savate is definitely a sport of contrast, but a sport deservedly on the rise, just the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387664382

Book preview

SAVATE: French foot fencing Historical & Technical Journal

Fully Illustrated

Historical European Martial Arts

ANDY KUNZ & KENNETH PUA

All Antiquity Photos and Postcards from the Past are from the collection of the Authors. All classical illustration are from the original plate’s collection. All photograph of statues and old paintings was taken by the Author(s). All additional illustrations was drawn by Kenneth Pua.

Copyright © 1998, 2017 Andy Kunz & Kenneth Pua

ISBN 978-1-387-66438-2

All rights are reserved and any reproduction of/and copying from the book whether through mechanical or digital means for commercial is strictly prohibited. However part(s) of this book may be reproduced and/or copied without written permission for articles, review and/or further studies with special mention of the source.

Introduction

S

avate has origins that are neither very noble nor very old. If Savate is the word of modern origin, the year it represents is as old as the hills. Not to mention the struggles Savate had.

Ancient Greek history taught us that the ancient fighting ground was open to all, the women went there at times to send their children to be trained as fighters, as we send our child to school today.

That the Greeks introduced Pankration into the Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC. Pankration (/pænˈkreɪtiɒn, -ˈkreɪʃən/; Greek: παγκράτιον) was an empty-hand submission sport with scarcely any rules. The athletes used boxing and wrestling techniques, but also others, such as kicking and holds, locks and chokes on the ground. For the Spartan eye gouging and biting is considered legal techniques. The athletes were a special class of people whose only tasks was to develop their physical strength. The term comes from the Greek παγκράτιον  [paŋkrátion], literally meaning all of power. It was known in ancient times for its ferocity and allowance of such tactics as knees to the head, biting and eye gouging. Strikes delivered with the legs were an integral part of pankration and one of

its most characteristic features. Kicking well was a great advantage to the pankratiast. Epiktētos is making a derogatory reference to a compliment one may give another: μεγάλα λακτίζεις (you kick great). Moreover, in an accolade to the fighting prowess of the pankratiast Glykon from Pergamo, the athlete is described as wide foot. The characterization comes actually before the reference to his unbeatable hands, implying at least as crucial a role for strikes with the feet as with the hands in pankration. That proficiency in kicking could carry the pankratiast to victory is indicated in a sarcastic passage of Galen, where he awards the winning prize in pankration to a donkey because of its excellence in kicking. The straight kick with the bottom of the foot to the stomach (γαστρίζειν/λάκτισμα εἰς γαστέραν – gastrizein or laktisma eis gasteran, kicking in the stomach) was apparently a common technique, given the number of depictions of such kicks on vases. This type of kick is mentioned by Lucian.

One ancient account tells of a situation in which the judges were trying to determine the winner of a match. The difficulty lay in that fact that both men had died in the arena from their injuries, making it hard to determine a victor. Eventually, the judges decided the winner was the one who didn't have his eyes gouged out.

The Greeks admitted 2 kinds of boxing, the one they fought bare fists and heads and the second they fought with their hands covered in a special gauntlets lined with lead, called Gloucester. The details on this second struggle, was well documented by the ancient

Roman poet Virgil in an interesting way within the context of the 5th song of Aeneid. The funeral games that Aeneas organizes for the anniversary of his father's death. Aeneas organizes celebratory games for the men—a boat race, a foot race, a pankration match, and an archery contest. The pankration match, for instance, is a preview of the final encounter of Aeneas and Turnus, and the dove, the target during the archery contest, is connected to the deaths of Polites and King Priam 2nd Song of Aeneid. The 6th Song of Aeneid - Aeneas, with the guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl, descends into the underworld. They pass by crowds of the dead by the banks of the river Acheron and are ferried across by Charon.

Pankration was also part of the arsenal of Greek soldiers – including the famous Spartan hoplites and Alexander the Great's Macedonian phalanx. It is said that the Spartans at their immortal stand at Thermopylae fought with their bare hands, legs and teeth once their swords and spears broke. Herodotus mentions that in the battle of Mycale between the Greeks and the Persians in 479 BC, those of the Greeks who fought best were the Athenians, and the Athenian who fought best was a distinguished pankratiast, Hermolycus, son of Euthynus.

In an odd turn of events, a pankration fighter named Arrhichion (Ἀρριχίων) of Phigalia won the pankration competition at the Olympic Games despite being dead. His opponent had locked him in a chokehold and Arrhichion, desperate to loosen it, broke his opponent's toe (some records say his ankle). The opponent nearly passed out from pain and submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion's hand, it was discovered that he had died from the chokehold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and returned to Phigaleia as a hero.

An illustration of a Pankration practice in a Panathenaic amphorae.  Panathenaic amphorae is a large ceramic vessels, which contained the olive oil given as prizes