Historical European martial arts

Historical European martial arts (HEMA) are martial arts of European origin, particularly using arts formerly practised, but having since died out or evolved into very different forms.

While there is limited surviving documentation of the martial arts of classical antiquity (such as Greek wrestling or gladiatorial combat), most of the surviving dedicated technical treatises or martial arts manuals date to the late medieval period and the early modern period. For this reason, the focus of HEMA is de facto on the period of the half-millennium of ca. 1300 to 1800, with a German, Italian, and Spanish school flowering in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (14th to 16th centuries), followed by French, English, and Scottish schools of fencing in the modern period (17th and 18th centuries).

Bataireacht, or Irish stick fighting, typically with the use of the shillelagh, can be traced back hundreds, even thousands of years, to the sword techniques of the Celts, gaining prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries, as a result of the British occupation of Ireland, thus falling into the category of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA).

Martial arts of the 19th century such as classical fencing, and even early hybrid styles such as Bartitsu, may also be included in the term HEMA in a wider sense, as may traditional or folkloristic styles attested in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including forms of folk wrestling and traditional stick-fighting methods.

The term Western martial arts (WMA) is sometimes used in the United States and in a wider sense including modern and traditional disciplines. During the Late Middle Ages, the longsword had a position of honour among these disciplines, and sometimes historical European swordsmanship (HES) is used to refer to swordsmanship techniques specifically.

Modern reconstructions of some of these arts arose from the 1890s and have been practiced systematically since the 1990s.