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In the wake of an execution . . .On December 10, 1579, the city of Augsburgexecuted Paulus Hector Mair for the embezzlement of between 32,000 and 40,000guilders during his forty-two-year career as a civic servant and treasurer. [i]On December 14, Augsburg officials and citizens gathered to begin an exhaustiveinventory of Mair’s possessions. The inventory took weeks to compile andculminated in large public sales held in January and May 1580, during which thevast collections of books, martial artefacts, arms, armor, and artwork thatMair had amassed would be liquidated, along with even his smallest and mostpersonal articles. Though Mair died in disgrace, his legacy loomslarge within histories of martial culture and practice, and he is well-known toboth scholars and martial arts practitioners. Benedikt Mauer’s article on thecontents of Mair’s book and art collection has offered an overview of Mair’simpressive library and its context. Jeffrey Forgeng and Kazuhiko Kusudo have illuminatedaspects of Mair’s biography and involvement in martial culture and sportingactivities.[ii]Most recently, Daniel Jaquet presented a cross-cultural comparison betweenMair’s De Arte Athletica and the Chinese martial treatise of Qi Jiguang,examining the reception of each body of work by modern martial artscommunities.[iii]However, most scholarship on Mair and hiscollection has focused on the Fechtbücher, or fight books, that he amassed,compiled, authored, and commissioned. Few studies have engaged meaningfullywith the other categories of art and material culture that Mair’s posthumousinventories list or considered how these objects—and the Augsburgers whogathered to count or purchase them—reveal new facets of Mair’s involvement inthe 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 CityThough his precise dates of birth andparentage remain unclear, Paulus Hector Mair was born into an upwardly mobilefamily around 1517. [iv] &#160;He began his career in the city administrationof Augsburg in 1537, and he oversaw the finances of the civic works from 1541.During the 1540s and 1550s, Mair increasingly devoted his energies tocollecting weapons, images, books, and armor, and to compiling, writing, andpublishing works related to martial knowledge. The works that he commissionedalso dealt with the histories of martial sport—as in the histories of thetournament contained in De Arte Athletica—and in claiming knightlyidentity for the citizens of Augsburg—as in the Geschlecterbuch der StadtAugsburg (fig. 1).[v]Mair was an avid social climber, forging connections to members of the mostpowerful patrician families of the city, such as the Johann Jakob Fugger, towhom he dedicated the Geschlecterbuch.[vi]In death, also, Mair reveals aspects ofAugsburg’s social networks and the material culture that surrounded them. &#160;The documents preserved in the city’s archiverecord counts of objects and estimates of their value given by numerouscitizens and others who gathered to take stock of Mair’s possessions inpreparation for their liquidation. Among those mentioned as “counting” objectsis one Antoni Pfeffenhauser. This is likely Anton Peffenhauser (1525–1603), oneof the last in a line of great Augsburg armorers, who created luxury armors forthe Holy Roman Empire’s elite.[vii]In addition to this famous smith, the counters who gathered to take stock ofMair’s property included Wilhelm von Montfort, a member of a venerable Swabiannoble family. Indeed, as Mauer has pointed out, Mair cultivated relationshipsto 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 forMair.[viii]Martial Equipment: Old and NewMair’s inventories take stock of thepossessions that he kept in his official apartments which stood adjacent to theold Augsburg Rathaus.[ix]Though most of Mair’s martial objects were found in two small rooms on theground floor, their distribution throughout his living quarters indicates theirimportance to him. As befit a citizen of Augsburg and a man ofhis station, Mair owned armor. Indeed, all male citizens of Augsburg wereexpected to have equipment on hand to arm themselves if need arose for thecity’s defense.[x]However, Mair’s armors went beyond civic necessity. The inventory records onenew harness “together with its case and all that belongs to it,” valued atfifteen 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 floorwhere most of his martial possessions were found. In this space, there were atleast two other armors, thirteen arming garments, two mail shirts storedtogether with an old helmet, six old siege helmets, two “old, bad armors,” aswell 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 acollection of martial artefacts. The latter is a tantalizing possibility, giventhe sensitivity to medieval martial traditions and material culturedemonstrated in Mair’s fight book commissions.[xii]In addition to armors, Mair owned numerousarms. As Kusudo has shown, Mair was involved in Augsburg’s livelytarget-shooting societies, and one of his last works seems to have been hischronicle on marksmanship, now in Wolfenbüttel.[xiii]Mair was an enthusiastic participant in his city’s shooting societies for bothfirearms and crossbows. Accordingly, his inventory and sales records list noless than seven crossbows, many together with cranequins and bolts. Mair alsoowned at least one matching pair of pistols, and at least four long guns. Hiscollection of bladed weapons was impressive, comprising 29 swords, many whosepommels were ornamented with silver. Among these were longswords, at least onetwo-handed sword, numerous rapiers, and many swords described as old. Inaddition to these weapons, Mair owned at least three matching pairs of fencingswords, appropriate for an author and collector of fight books. The inventorycontains tantalizing more echoes of Mair’s sumptuously illustrated martialtreatises. Foremost among these in my mind are “Six Yellow Messers.” Though thisdescription leaves the materiality of these blades unclear, the allusion to ayellow-color evokes the wooden or leather-covered practice messers or dusacksthat are illustrated in Mair’s De Arte Athletica, where such sparring weaponsare universally represented with yellow pigment (fig. 2).Beyond the obviously useful martialequipment, Mair owned various curiosities whose value seems to have resided intheir age or, perhaps, their now-unknown stories. For instance, the inventoryrecords an “old Italian ball”—perhaps a cannonball—as well as the two maceskept 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 CollectionThe sales of Mair’s possessions in Januaryand May 1580 distributed his collection of fight books, artworks, and martialartefacts, along with the most mundane accoutrements of his professional home,throughout the social strata of Augsburg. The records reveal the allure ofmartial objects for even the city’s elite. David Roth, a member of aprestigious 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 werepurchased by Wolff Vischer, chamberlain to Marcus Fugger, then head of the internationalFugger bank.[xvi]Caspar Ettinger, who worked alongside Mair and the Fuggers in the civicadministration and who had also been involved in the inventory’s compilation,seems to have been among those enthusiastic buyers who were undaunted by theage of many of Mair’s objects. He acquired, for instance, a siege helmet, twomail shirts, a brigandine or jack, a crossbow and three “bad, old armors,” as wellas artworks such as paintings. [xvii]Perhaps most poignant among they buyers, though, are two his own five sons, Esaiasand Jakob Leonard, whose names appear alongside objects such as guns and pairsof fencing swords. Though the council granted Jakob Leonard two of his father’sguns free of charge, Esaias—who’d also had the grim task of contributing to theinventory—paid three guilders to reclaim a pair of his father’s fencing swords.An Inconclusive ConclusionThis contribution represents only a briefoverview of Mair’s expansive and diverse collection and its context. Though familiarwithin the community of martial scholars and HEMA practitioners, the documentssurrounding Paulus Hector Mair’s collection and patronage, as well as his falland the liquidation of his assets, offer fertile and hitherto untilled soil. Inparticular, further examination of Mair’s tangible world, beyond the manuscriptsthat he collected and produced, will continue to shed new light on the waysthat martial objects and knowledge were collected, described, and circulatedthrough early modern towns. [cite][i] Benedikt Mauer, ‘Sammeln Und Lesen - Drucken UndSchreiben. Die Vier Welten Des Augsburger Ratsdieners Paul Hector Mair’, in MedienUnd Weltbilder Im Wandel Der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Theresia Hörmann andWolfgang E.j. Weber, Documenta Augustana, 5 (Augsburg: Wißner, 2000), pp.107-32. Due to revisions of the numbering system in the Stadtarchiv Augsburgsince Mauer’s publication, some of the document numbers now differ from thosecited in his chapter. For monetary comparison, a master carpenter in Augsburgearned 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 Europe1520-1630, ed. by Tobias Capwell (London: The Wallace Collection, 2012),pp. 164–76; Jeffrey L. Forgeng, ‘The Martial Arts Treatise of Paulus HectorMair’, in Die Kunst Des Fechtens, ed. by Elizabeth Vavra and MatthiasJohannes Bauer (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017), pp. 267–83;Kazuhiko Kusudo, ‘P.H. Mair (1517-1579): A Sports Chronicler in Germany’, in Sportand Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. by John McClelland and BrianMerrilees (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009), pp.339–54.[iii] Daniel Jaquet, “Collecting Martial Art Knowledge on Paper in EarlyModern Germany and China: The Examples of Paulus Hector Mair and Qi Jiguang andTheir 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, Codices10825-10826, fol. 4v; Munich, Bayeriches Staatsbibliothek, Cod. icon 312 b. [vi] Cod. icon 312 b, fol. 1v. [vii] Augsburg, Stadtarchiv, Urgichten K262, 1579-80, Inventarium 1579, p. 3, „ZalteAntoni Pfeffenhaueser […] das Helden buch.“; Wendelin Boeheim, Meisterder Waffenschmiedekunst vom XIV bis ins XVIII Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrage zurGeschichte der Kunst und Des Kunsthandwerks (Berlin: W. Moeser, 1897). 158-61. Surprisingly,Peffenhauser appears only infrequently as a „counter“ and primarily countsbooks, rather than armors. Tantalizingly, an “Antoni Plattner,” returns as a buyeron January 22, Urgichten K262, Hector Mayers Nachlass Verstiegerung 1580, p.33.[viii] Mauer, 111.[ix] As Mauer has observed, this inventory records only the objects inMair’s quarters adjacent to the Rathaus, and omits any possessions located inthe family home he share with his wife, Felizitas Kötzler, am Kappeneck. Mauer, 110.[x] Mauer, 123.[xi] Urgichten, K262, Inventarium 1579, p. 20.19 December, „Den Kemerlin auf dem Boden,“ „Zahlen Anthoni Nußhard umb 4- halbharnische und ain doppelhandschen der Zugehör.“ The meaningof doppelhandschen remains unclear, the term may describe exchange gauntlets orreinforces. [xii] See, for instance, the representation of fourteenth-centuryclothing in images of sword-and-buckler fencing reproduced from earlier sourcesin Augsburg Univeritäts/Oettingen-Wallersteinschebibliothek, Augsburg. Cod.Cod. I.6.2.4. Mair, Paulus Hector and Jörg Breu the Younger, CollectedFechtbuch, fols. 14r-v.[xiii] Kusudo, 349-50. Kusudo discusses Mair’s Marksmanship Chronicle, Wolfenbüttel, HerzogAugust Bibliothek, Cod-Guelph. 1.2.1 2o.[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, „DavidRoth […] 1 Reitschwert mit silber beschlagen […], 2 alte zerbrochneFechtschwerter 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.