Review of Guy Windsor's "The Art of Sword Fighting In Earnest: Philippo Vadi's 'De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi," Part 2 - The Verses

 Last time, I discussed the front material of Guy Windsor's revised translation and commentary of Philippo Vadi, The Art of Sword Fighting In Earnest: Philippo Vadi's "De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi."  This time, I will discuss Vadi's work itself, and what it implies about historical sword fighting, especially in the mid-15th Century and in Italy.  Since this post is about Vadi's own words, there should be no confusion of reference here between what Vadi says, and what Windsor says about Vadi.

Vadi's opening remarks are the usual round of self-deprecating self-praise you find in most medieval manuals.  He gives little of his career, which is unfortunate, but his opening remarks also begin a pattern of emphasizing the importance of cleverness and intelligence in fighting, rather than brute strength:

As the famous saying goes: cleverness overcomes strength. And what is greater still and almost incredible: the wise rules the stars. An art that conquers all, and dominates anyone who would fight you or stand against you, is born from the aforesaid cleverness and other piercing thinking.

And not only can just one man prevail against another, but also a way and possibility exists for one man to overcome many. Not only do we show the way and the theory of combating the adversary as well as to defend yourself against him, but we also teach methods on how to take the weapon from his hand.

This is a typical passage in Vadi's prologue, and is far from the most ornate passage exhorting fighters to be scholars, or at least clever men, in addition to quick with a sword.  Unusually, also, Vadi does not claim to be the final word in swordsmanship, despite the fact that medieval fighting manuals are to some extent sales brochures.  His last words, in fact, are to add or subtract based on your own experience, as your experience is a better guide than a manual.

Once the actual verses begin, Vadi is very clear, once more, on intelligence versus strength, and makes it very clear that he is at the minimum a figure of the early Renaissance:

From Geometry fencing is born,
And under her it has no end;
And both of them are infinite.

Vadi is very much of the geometric school of fencing, which would find its apotheosis in Carranza and his followers; where Fiore emphasized a decision-tree based approach, in which one reacts to circumstances as they arise and take advantage of opportunities, Vadi is more cerebral and more precise in his wording.  This becomes clearer in his passages on the proper dimensions of the sword; Fiore is very vague on this and merely comments that in a thrust, all else being equal, the longer reach wins.  I suspect this is because sword design in Fiore's time was relatively conservative and relatively stable, but 75 years later, when Vadi is writing, there is a trend toward longer, heavier blades, and standards were in flux.  Thus, where Fiore assumes a sword is a sword is a sword, Vadi feels the need to specify a sword's dimensions relative to the body - as long as the ground to the armpit, and with a handle a handspan wide, with an easily gripped pommel and all but the tipmost four inches of the blade sharp.

Vadi also distinguishes true and false edge blows, and seems to advocate the alternation of forehand and backhand, as opposed to Fiore, who clearly uses false edge blows but never specifies them, and instead directs blows as the moment requires.  One of the places where the two of them clearly agree is thrusts - both Vadi and Fiore advocate thrusts in the correct place and time.  Fiore's plays specify that thrusts can replace blows in most of them; Vadi, meanwhile, does not go this far, but does describe the game of paper-rock-scissors that swordfighting frequently becomes in the following terms:

The rota with the fendente and the volante
Argue with the thrusts and show them
That they are not so dangerous.

And when they come to us,
All the blows can make them lose their way
Losing in this joust the chance to strike.

The blow of the sword does not lose its turn,
The thrust is worth little against he who turns quickly
The blows clear the way for the one who is going.

Thrusting is good for testing, and for quick strikes, but it requires proper use; striking, meanwhile, is likely to find a target even if the opponent moves, and can blow through a parry in a way that thrusts cannot.  The combination of blows and thrusts is, just as with Fiore, the key to Vadi's system.  Vadi follows Fiore in emphasizing that the moment of decision is at the crossing, and that control of the crossing - not bind, not winden, not disengage, but the correct interpretation of the crossing - is the critical skill of longsword combat.

He diverges from Fiore in the emphasis on half-swording; half-sword and stretto play is a minority of Fiore's total text, but makes up about half of Vadi.  I suspect this is due to changes in swords themselves, with the average sword of Vadi's time a few inches longer than the average of Fiore's, and half-swording being more practical with an additional three or four inches of blade.  Most of his commentary on half-sword is common sense - treat it like a long dagger, use geometry in your favor and use good solid mechanics - but the fact that it receives as much textual emphasis tells us that Vadi, at least, viewed being in close at the half-sword as a good place to be.  Combined with the comments on how a smaller fighter can defeat a larger through cleverness, we may have a hint of Vadi's own physical stature.

There is one place where Vadi truly exceeds Fiore: he was much better at putting it in writing.  Vadi is the first writer to comment in depth on footwork, power generation, and measure and tempo.  The first is an essential skill, and Vadi discusses closure steps, steps offline, advances versus through-steps, and the importance of staying on balance and, by implication, putting your opponent off balance.  Fiore describes steps, but rarely when to use them, though he shows them, while Vadi puts them to words.  Power generation is a particularly interesting beast for SCA combat - Vadi is the first source we have that says to power from the hips, rather than from steps, in one of his plays:

I have made a roverso fendente on the left foot,
Without changing the foot, turning the hips,
I will strike a dritto without further movement.

This is, in fact, a very mechanically sound practice - step with the left ("on the left foot"), strike from the left (a roverso fendente), and, on parry, reverse direction by flipping the hands ("strike a dritto") and driving the right hip forward ("turning the hips").  It is impossible that Fiore did not know of this, but again, Vadi puts it in words.  So too, he discusses measure and tempo, even though it is at least partly to admit that putting something in verse form might give the idea of tempo, but cannot teach someone to change their rhythm: 

I cannot show you in writing
The theory and way of the half tempo
Because the shortness of the tempo and its strike
Reside in the wrist.

The half tempo is just one turn
Of the wrist: quick and immediately striking,
It can rarely fail
When it is done in good measure.

Even so, we see the forerunner of di Grassi's blows of the wrist, a few decades later.  It is literally a coup de main - a strike of the hand, which works not because of the power behind it, but because it is too fast to stop.

Now, what does Vadi do worse than Fiore?

The segno.  Oh goodness the segno.

Fiore's segno is a thing of beauty and deceptively complex simplicity; if you understand the segno, you understand Fiore.  There are four virtues, and the seven blows of the sword.  Vadi's segno is two pages, one for virtues and things you should do with your body parts, and the other for the seven blows of the sword.  It is busy, hard to read, and confusing.  This is actually the biggest advantage that Fiore has over Vadi in general.  Vadi has more detail, information, and carefully developed thought about swords than Fiore, but Fiore is capable of infinite minor variation to solve an infinitely complex problem.

Because of this, I view Vadi as a supplement, but not a replacement, for Fiore.  I think Fiore's system developed further between 1420 and 1480, and that this development meant that someone was bound to be a better technical writer than Fiore was, but I don't think that any of them fundamentally eclipsed the Friulian, merely elaborated on what he wrote.  That someone, bound to be a better technical writer than Fiore, was Philippo di Vadi.

Next time, I review Windsor's commentary on the plays themselves.  This is where most of the "how swords work" commentary will be.