Association for Renaissance Martial Arts
non-profit organization for historical European martial arts
Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA) is a US-based non-profit organization dedicated to the study and practice of historical European martial arts of the 15th to 17th centuries.
ARMA was formed in 2001 under director John Clements as a continuation of the Historical Armed Combat Association (HACA, since 1992). As of 2006, the ARMA reported around 500 paying members. They also list a number of "Academic Consultants".
History
The ARMA began in 1992 as the Historical Armed Combat Association (HACA), a group led principally by Hank Reinhardt, an avid sword enthusiast. Reinhardt's objective was to provide an umbrella organization for individuals interested in Western swords and historical weaponry. After Clements took over the organization in 1993, HACA went under a series of reforms. HACA began to focus primarily on the study and interpretation of the historical source literature of Renaissance Martial Arts.
In 2001, HACA expanded to include updated educational organization for the study and practice of Medieval and Renaissance fencing. A supposedly more efficient study curriculum for practice had also been developed at this time using the source literature.
“Association for Renaissance Martial Arts” enters the record as non-profit organization for historical European martial arts. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Association, Renaissance and Martial can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4809509. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2001, 1992, 2006 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Association for Renaissance Martial Arts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.