Some Thoughts on Paul Porter's "The Bellatrix System," Part I

Cover of the First Edition, "The Bellatrix System"

I have been trying for more than a year to force myself through Paul Porter's "The Bellatrix System: Techniques and Tactics for SCA Armored Combat."  Paul Porter is, in the SCA, known as Duke Paul of Bellatrix.  He is rightly a legend in the SCA; he's won the highest honors we offer more than once, his sons have done the same, and while I can't speak to all of them, I know one of his grandsons, and he's on the same course.  Porter's power-generation techniques, drawn from outside martial-arts experience, literally revolutionized the way we hit each other; I've watched videos from before Paul of Bellatrix and after Paul of Bellatrix, and he brought body mechanics that were simply missing into the SCA.  Not only that, but Paul of Bellatrix has a well-deserved reputation for being not only a teacher, not only a good teacher, but an excellent teacher.  I don't merely say "well-deserved" because he's worked literally fifty years (he picked up a stick in 1970, way back in AS II) at it, but because before I ever picked up this book, I had watched videos of his classes and the guy is a very good teacher, both knowledgeable and passionate, and has reached the state in his martial art where the only opponent he has to beat is his art not being passed on.

He decided at some point to write a Fechtbuch.  For those of my readers who do not know what it is, that's a German word (thus the capitalization) that literally translates to "fight book."  More roughly, it translates to "fighting manual," and is the ancestor of every school-library karate book my school library had in the '80s.  In European parlance, a Fechtbuch is a combination effort to write down the fighting style's methods, and to advertise.  Thus, a Fechtbuch is often, depending on its original target audience, a very nice piece of art.  The best example of this is Fiore dei Liberi's Il Fiore dei Battaglia that was sent to the Sforza family - gold leaf on the pages, calligraphy, whole nine yards of advertising.  As the prototype for the European fighting manual, Fiore also included very brief descriptions of each illustration in the form of rhymed couplets, which were supposed to make them more memorable.  Certainly it's how I remember "the terrible Iron Gate," which is just a low guard stance.  There are parallels in Asian martial arts - from memory, Sasaki Koujiro's most famous move was the "swallowtail cut," named because it describes the movement of a swallow in flight, and Musashi's famous Go Rin no Sho, or Book of Five Rings, has a lot in common with this.  Porter's Fechtbuch is meant to distill his fifty years of experience into a manual that can be where Paul Porter can't, and to pass on what he knows.

So let's start with the good, based on my reading thus far - and it's taken me a year to force my way a third of the way through.  He knows his stuff.  Hands down.  He can describe, in detail, what he's trying to teach, and he has included both pictures in the book, and a video link because he recognizes up front that the pictures and words aren't going to do it justice.  He is also an excellent technical writer: he writes instructions in a clear, step-by-step format and illustrates them appropriately for when words break down.  The pictures were clearly well-executed before they ever hit the manuscript, and they're shot from angles, and using equipment, that does not obscure what he is trying to show.  Everything about it is done from a teaching format, and not a "how-to-win-fights" format, which he admits very early on isn't really a practical matter for a Fechtbuch.  What he is there to teach is how to fight in a way that will allow your body to keep fighting for decades, and how to make your opponents call the shot.  The mechanics by which he teaches this are very sound mechanics, if you understand what's going on.

That brings us to the first of the problems with this book.  To use military vernacular, Porter is trying to break it down Barney-style.  He is trying to teach in the absolute simplest terms possible to the widest possible audience, and does so with an admirable focus.  Let me give you a quote from the chapter on flat snaps - yes, it has taken me a year to get to the chapter on the most basic sword shot we teach.

In order to achieve the best results, the guard position must have the following characteristics:

• The upper body should be very upright, with the shoulders back and the pelvis balanced.  The upright stance is critical when using the core as the main source of power.
• Assuming the fighter is right-handed, the body should be rotated toward the sword side so that a line passing through the shoulders would go from about the 10:30 position to 4:30.  The shield shoulder and foot should be forward.
• The feet should be in a semi-open stance spread to about shoulder width, parallel with one another, and angled to point about 30 degrees toward the sword side.  The back foot should be two to six inches from the sword side of the front foot.
• The fighter's weight should be centered and on the inside edges of the balls of the feet.
• The shield arm should have the elbow below and slightly in front of the shoulder, and as close to the body as possible.  The forearm should point up and forward, and about 30 degrees to the shield side.  The palm of the hand should face about toward the fighter's sword elbow.
• The sword elbow should be on the same level as the shoulders and pulled back far enough that the shoulder is locked.  If the shoulder is not locked, the power from the core will not be transmitted properly to the arm.  The swing of the sword elbow adds power and a snapping quality to the blow.  If it is not back as far as possible, both attributes will be degraded.
• The sword hand should be near the ear on the sword side, with the palm facing forward or down.
• The sword hand can be positioned several inches up with very little loss of speed or power, as long as it does not move away from the head.
• If the sword hand is moved to the side, away from the head, it will be marginally more difficult to initiate the movement of the sword from a resting position.
• If the sword hand is held forward of the head, there is a considerable chance that the hand and wrist will be injured with repeated use of the technique. 

 Mechanically, every single thing he says there is 100% valid, although the plethora of styles from Oldcastle to Ansteorran High to whatever center-grip style you learn is clear proof that there is room for debate on stance, footwork, et cetera.  There is absolutely nothing wrong, mechanically, with what he is teaching here.  The problem is that I have five years of experience to be able to evaluate that, and a shared physical and literary vocabulary.

I've mentioned Dave Lowry in other circumstances; one of Lowry's other books is about how to use a bokken.  A bokken is for all intents and purposes an SCA stick.  Lowry, who also has fifty years of experience, makes a point in that book (which, full disclosure, I've only read snippets of, to verify the following) that he can show the basics via photos in a book, but a book cannot teach the actual technique.  Paul Porter's sin, if it can be called such, is that he tries to teach the actual technique via a book.  I've seen SCA knights recommend new fighters read Paul of Bellatrix; that's like recommending a new fighter learn karate not in a dojo, but from a library book.  It requires a whole physical and linguistic vocabulary that the new fighter simply lacks.

Now, in Porter's defense, he says the same thing early in his book, and the book includes a link to videos on his website, discussing every single thing he does and allowing a fighter to watch him demonstrate the technique.  The problem is that there is a very substantial difference between "read Paul of Bellatrix" and "I recommend you check out Paul of Bellatrix, here's his book and here's his website."  Those same knights may very well offer technique training in backyard practices, but I cannot say for certain, and I certainly cannot buy that their technique training is being offered via the same platforms where they're saying "read Paul of Bellatrix!"

Thus, the problem with this book that bothers me most is not actually Porter's fault.  It is that he has created a situation where the book is seen as a valid substitute for actual physical training.  He does not mean to do this and argues very effectively against this.  It is that it is simpler for someone to say "here, read Paul of Bellatrix" than it is to solve the actual problem, even though no amount of reading will teach a flat snap, though it may improve it.  The book is not Paul of Bellatrix in a box, but it's been presented to the community as such.

The second problem with this book, so far as I am concerned, is the photographs.  The photos were clearly taken, labeled, and edited in color, but the book is published in grayscale.  Again, the solution to that problem is "check out the website," but if the right medium is the website, why is it being presented in a book, and vice versa? The obvious answer is to reach a wider audience, and this is a very minor gripe, but the fact that the arrows are frequently in a slightly darker gray, or slightly lighter gray, than the object they're highlighting is a significant teaching distraction.

Summary of these thoughts - The Bellatrix System is a great book for a mid-competence squire, like me, and an even better book for a knight who has to teach this material.  It is a terrible thing to recommend that new fighters spend their training hours on reading, rather than learning under instruction.  Also, I wish that the book had been illustrated in color, but that'd drive printing costs through the roof, and is only an annoyance, not a deal-breaker.

On my to-read shelf is a copy of Guy Windsor's manual about how to turn a Fechtbuch into a practice program, and in the throes of 2020, I signed up for Windsor's sword school class for that program as well, so once I've finished Porter, I would be very interested in what a dual reading of Windsor and Porter reveals about how to turn the Bellatrix book into an actual program of study.

Scale of 1-5 rating:

Squire's rating - 4

Knight's rating - 5

Newbie's rating - 1 or less.  "Read The Bellatrix System" is a lazy move by knights who aren't where they can teach.  The right answer is learn the Bellatrix System, and learning a physical skill doesn't come from a book.