About Us

 Fechtschule Sankt Peter

FSP has roots as a formal school going back to 1998, when it was part of the Stoccata School of Defence. Andrew Brew, a founding member of FSP, was one of the two founders of Stoccata, and has been studying historical swordplay since the early '80s. FSP has been operating as a separate school since 2004, concentrating on two traditions of fencing – the German knightly school (13th-16th centuries, but especially the 15th) following the teachings of Master Johannes Liechtenauer, and the Polish sabre tradition (16th-18th centuries), as documented by Michał Starzewski around 1830. (See our Curriculum for more details.)

Die Gefangennahme

The name of the school is based on those of the late renaissance German guilds. Patron saints (and evangelists in particular) seem to have been much favoured. There is, as far as we know, no historical guild or school claiming St. Peter as its patron, although he is the only apostle recorded as having used a sword – in defence of Jesus at his arrest in Gethsemane, Peter drew his sword against one of the arresting officers, cutting off his right ear (with a Schielhau, perhaps? ) He got better.

Instructors

Christopher "Quarf" Morgan (Senior Instructor) has been a sabre enthusiast since the 1990s, when he took up re-enactment of early medieval Rus warriors, and also became involved with the fencing activities of the Sydney Polish community. Having studied a range of other martial arts in his youth, he became a serious student of historical fencing in 2002, and has been regularly teaching sabre (and sometimes longsword) since 2008.

Chris "Quarf" Morgan

Andrew Brew (Founding Member) has been using historical weapons since 1979 in the context of historical re-enactment, and has been studying and teaching from historical manuals since 1986.

He has regularly presented Historical European Swordplay to students at conferences and seminars in Australia and abroad since 1989, most recently at the International Sabre Symposium in Hamburg. In 1998 he co-founded (with former student Stephen Hand) the Stoccata School of Defence, where he taught Italian rapier and German longsword.

He now concentrates on the longsword and related weapons, and on the sabre, which we have studied in earnest since 2006.

Andrew Brew