Historical Martial Arts - Fiore and the Germans - My Thoughts

 A conversation this weekend about longsword got me thinking about the specific relationship between Fiore and the Liechtenauer tradition.  My current sword read is the Stephen Cheney collation of the Ringeck-Danzig-Lew glosses, for which there will be a review soon as I write up my review of the "Japanese Pirate Sword" manuals... which should happen about when I finish reading RDL, but it means I'm digging more into German traditions.

My premise is this: The difference between Fiore and Liechtenauer is one of pedagogy, not specific technique.

THE BEARDS MATCH! WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!

Consider that Fiore is open about his having learned from Germans in his Italian-language prefaces in both Getty and Morgan versions:

I learned these skills from many German and Italian masters and their senior students, in many provinces and many cities, and at great personal cost and expense.

and

And the aforesaid Fiore did learn the aforesaid things from many German masters. Also from many Italians in many provinces and in many cities, with great fatigue and with great expense, and by the grace of God from so many masters and scholars. 

Both of these are drawn from Wiktenauer for convenience of reference.  This would likely have taken place between about 1390 and 1410, as Fiore went from youth to man during that period.  We even know at least some of his lineage - John the Swabian and Nicholai de Toblem - but very little about those men.  Meanwhile, the best working information is that Liechtenauer was probably active as a teacher at this same time, as his Zettel - the Recital - is dated by its inclusion in Talhoffer to no later than 1448.

While this offers the tantalizing possibility of Liechtenauer and Fiore having met, that isn't the intent.  Instead, this is a discussion of pedagogic approaches.  I will start with the Zettel, because it is easier to discuss, because it's shorter.

The Zettel is basically a mnemonic device - it lists off the guards, the blows, and the secret techniques, roughly in that order, without going into a great level of detail.  Even the names of the blows, guards, and techniques are hidden in the text in a way that would make a Japanese author proud - "to the head, to the body, do not shun the Tag-hits" only makes sense if you know that vom Tag is a high guard that allows easy targeting of the upper body, and "Wrath-Stroke, Crooked, Thwart, Squinter, and Scraper" is either a list of blows, or a recitation of dwarves from the Elder Edda.

The Zettel gives a limited set of if-then decision trees for each blow, but it is meant for a student who already knows the terminology, and it is very German; even in German, many of the moves described are very anime-power-move and the description of what the blow is supposed to do, how it is supposed to be delivered, and what the blow is supposed to produce all rely on prior training rather than assuming proficiency.

In comparison, Fiore has seven blows - right and left from above, right and left from below, right and left horizontal, and thrust; Fiore's poste can be described by where the point is forward-back and high-low; and Fiore's plays essentially boil down to three circumstances, win, lose, or bypass the cross.  Even "go to stretto" can be described in decision-tree terms.  Teaching decision trees is a very different process from teaching blows and wards; decision trees require more context.  Even Fiore's blows and poste tend to be simplified compared to the often very specialized forms of Liechtenauer's blows (looking at you, "Squinter").

What this tells me is that Fiore had to cover the same material, but his teaching approach was a broader platform and that the very specific applications of, for instance, overhand blows or winding are implied in the practice rather than taught as separate subjects.  When combined with Fiore's format of Master, Scholar, Remedy, Counter-Remedy, and with the long later Bolognese tradition of the asalto, or assault, I believe that Fiore's pedagogical approach was to teach a series of basic blows and wards, and then to teach a string of movements from a ward, as personified in Master and Scholar, then advancing where found into Remedy and Counter-Remedy.  As students pick them up, they get taught the variant Scholars for each master.  They aren't taught as a decision tree exactly but are taught from simple to complex and in increasing length of chained events.

This, and knowledge of what Fiore did for a living - tune-up coach for deeds of arms and professional mercenary - tells me that he probably didn't know his students the way that presumably Liechtenauer did; he had them for a season or two, perhaps longer during those brief peaceful interludes in Italy where he was relatively stable, and instead had to start from an assumption of students only partially literate in the language of the sword, then imprint his particular methods onto them.  Thus the simplified blows, the thought focused less on true or false edge than rising versus falling or left or right, and the wards that can be taught based on point orientation, and the basic philosophy of win-lose-bypass the bind.  In comparison, because the techniques which Liechtenauer teaches are shown only in very broad terms, and because the techniques are also often very specialized (compared to Fiore), I suspect Liechtenauer knew his students - he was employed in one household or city, for an extended period, and students didn't hire a coach, they joined a fencing school, where the lessons were taught basically as part of a continuous program of instruction rather than Fiore's targeting a deed of arms.

This would also explain why there is no "Fiore tradition" in northern Italy the way there is a "Liechtenauer tradition" in Germany - imprinting on his students might be broad, but because of the circumstances of his employment it probably was not deep, where Liechtenauer had career stability in a way that Fiore simply didn't, at least not until late enough in life that he was writing books rather than running a long-term school of swordsmanship.  There is evidence of his school surviving, such as Vadi and the German Die Blume des Kampfes, but either because Fiore's works seemed more self-evident or because the school lacked the market penetration, we did not wind up with the market penetration (so to speak) of Liechtenauer, who shows up in Talhoffer, and gets entire books devoted to what he was trying to say - see Ringeck-Danzig-Lew.

All of this is to say that the apparent differences between 14-15C German and Italian longsword appear to be of pedagogy, not of material.  By the time we get to Meyer and Marozzo there are much more substantial differences of tools and technique that evolve, but around the year 1400, I suspect that Fiore and Liechtenauer, if they met, would be more likely to say "that's not how I teach it" than to dismiss out of hand.