Dom Duarte at Mosterio de Batalha

Salve,
 recently we travelled to Portugal, mostly in the old Estremedura province, enjoying its history, culture and cuisine.
While visiting I had to pay a homage to Dom Duarte, the king of Portugal and the author of the earliest surviving Christian (Medieval) treatise on horsemanship.
I mentioned his famous horsemanship book here and once again I am providing the link to his book in Portugese: Livro Da Ensinança De Bem Cavalgar Toda Sela (The Art of Riding on Every Saddle).

Dom Duarte died at the former Templar and Royal castle and also a monastery of Tomar but was buried at the Monastery of Batalha, built near the site of the famous, but largely unknown outside the Iberian peninsula, battle of Aljubarrota.

Above, the monument to Nuno Álvares Pereira in front of the Monastery

Hence I went to Batalha to pay homage to this man, buried along with his wife Eleanor de Aragon in the Capelas Imperfeitas (unfinished chapels).

Allow me to share with you some of photos taken during our visit to Dom Duarte's tomb. Please note that during the invasion of Portugal the Napoleonic troops committed burglary there, robbing the monastery and desecrating the royal tombs, along with other atrocities to squeeze money contributions out of the Portuguese.

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ps
some photos were taken by my wife, whom I thank for encouraging us to take this trip.

  

Sarmatian with a lasso - a sketch

Ushta os,
in this post on my blog I quoted a passage from Flavius Josephus' writings about the Alans raiding across the Caucassus Mountains the kingdoms of Armenia and Media Atropatene during I century AD.

Here I sketched, with a ball pen, a warrior astride a galloping horse with a lasso already in a swinging montion and at his side a long sword slung  from a second belt-loops with a scabbard slide (Asian invention brought to Europe by the nomads), about to cast his rope...I worked the drawing a bit with GIMP (GIMp Painter)
By the way, nowadays I use as my operating system the Linux Mint 11, and thanks to the maestro David Revoy's instructions the digital painting (with GIMP-PS & GIMP-Painter and MyPaint) has just become even more of a joyful pursuit.

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   Some more good news for all the enthusiasts of the history of horsemanship - on archive.org I found a nice copy of 1854 publication of the 1430s manuscript (in Paris, France) by philosopher-king of medieval Portugal Dom Duarte (Edward of Portugal). The thick volume (in original XV century Portuguese) contains the most famous horsemanship treatise - Livro da ensinança de bem cavalgar toda sela . [starts of page 497 of the original publication]

 Almost 10 years ago the definitive English translation, by the Preto family team of father and son,  of the entire ''Bem Cavalgar' was published [I am happy to have a hardcover of that edition]. Prior to that happy moment scholar Sidney Anglo had quoted profusely from the manuscript in his ground-breaking work ''The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe.''


Do enjoy your study of Bem Cavalgar - :)