Stiletto be employed along with the dagger as a fighting weapon; a 1536 dueling treatise authored by Achille Marozzo, "Opera Nova", contains sections on dagger and stiletto fighting. By the time of the Renaissance, the term stiletto had come to describe a range of slender thrusting knives closely resembling the French poignard, many with conventional dagger-profile blades and sharpened edges, but always retaining the slim profile and needle-like point. To lighten the weapon, many stilettos were equipped with blades carrying fullers over a portion of their length. The stiletto remained a popular weapon of criminals or political assassins from the 16th
Aemilianus van Heel Aemilianus van Heel Johannes Wilhelm van Heel (8 June 1907 – 8 October 1938), later known as Father Aemilianus van Heel, was a Franciscan friar from the Netherlands, who served as a missionary in China and died in the second Sino-Japanese War. Van Heel was born in Leiden, the Netherlands, on 8 June 1907. His parents were Johannes Cornelis van Heel (a cobbler) and Maria Clasina Blesting. He entered the Franciscan order and was ordained a priest on 26 March 1933. Later that year he left for China as a missionary, where he took the name Hu Yong-Sheng. The young