Abstract: Fior di Battaglia (The Flower of Battle) is a martial arts document written around the beginning of the 15th century by the Italian martial artist Fiore. This book is a comprehensive and systematic account of the chivalry fighting in the late Middle Ages, covering unarmed combat, sword, axe, spear, dagger and other weapon-fighting techniques, including dismounted combat and mounted. This book reveals a lot of details about knights' battles, which is an inescapable historical literature for the study of knights' martial arts in the Middle Ages of Europe. In recent years, The Flower of Battle has drawn many researchers' attention, and has been translated into English. There are even many U.S. and European fencing enthusiasts trying to recover lost knight grapple skills according to the text for many years. Unfortunately, there is not much research on western knight martial arts in China at present, and few Chinese scholars mention this literature. Based on the manuscript of the Flower of Battle collected in J. Paul Getty Museum and the English translation by Colin Hatcher, it is not difficult to find that the Knightly Martial Arts of the late Middle Ages is a comprehensive and hierarchical system. In order to adapt to different combat environments, knights need to master various combat skills. If compared with Chinese traditional martial arts, we can also find many similarities between them.

Key words: Europe, knight, martial arts, traditional martial arts, European historical martial arts