A Miscellany of Projects - Gaming, SCA Combat, Arts & Sciences, and Travel

  Last time , I discussed Windsor's translation of Vadi's verses.  This time, it's about Windsor's commentary on Vadi's verses.  This is going to be primarily a "Windsor" versus a "Vadi," though it's going to include thoughts on why Vadi's system evolved the way it did from Fiore's. First, let's talk about what Windsor has always done well.  He's very  good at taking plays from a manual and turning them first into plausible explanations, then into drills to train those plausible explanations.  I've had arguments about whether Windsor is a professional swordsman, or a professional sword teacher ; I think the fact that he's able to reconstruct a reasonable interpretation and  turn it into a trainable activity means he's probably both.  The best  parts of Windsor's gloss on Vadi are all how he interprets a play, and how he turns that play into a drill.  He does this a number of times, and I've run Windsor'...

 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...

 After reading   From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: The Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi , I decided I'd read   Guy Windsor 's second translation of   Philippo Vadi ,   The Art of Sword Fighting In Earnest: Philippo Vadi's "De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi."   This is a revision of Windsor's earlier   Veni, Vadi, Vici , which has the additional effect of making   VVV  harder to find for comparison.  The book is available in both paperback, for about $30, and hardback, for about $60; I have the paperback.  For convenience's sake, I'll be referring to Windsor's portions, such as the front-end material and the analysis, as Windsor, and the actual text as Vadi. The Wiktenauer link I gave above to Vadi includes Windsor's translation with the pages.  This is the single biggest flaw in the book - the illustrations are not paired with the text as in the Hatcher or Chidester editions of Fiore.  That is due to the lim...

At this point I can safely say I have studied, am studying, or am at least passing-familiar with no fewer than four historical or modern sword schools (in rough order, SCA sword and board, Fiore, shinkage, and montante courtesy of Figueyredo), and am currently working my way through Windsor's translation of Vadi.  This has introduced me to a serious problem - technical vocabulary.  In any profession, technical vocabulary or jargon accrues, but because there are few true modern practitioners of sword work, the technical vocabulary winds up being exceptionally obscure, and cause for argument. We know that this has been a problem for a while, too.  For instance, Fiore trained under a series of Germans and north Italians, which means he would have been familiar with the German technical vocabulary, probably learning the same technical vocabulary developed in Liechtenauer's   Zettel .  The problem, then, is that Fiore wasn't   working  in Germany.  Som...

Last time, I wrote about the   six blows of the sword , based on   di Grassi 's wrist-elbow-shoulder classification.  Other writers classify them based on origin (Fiore, Figuereydo), targeting (Yagyû) or technique (pick a German).  However, di Grassi's classification has a couple of advantages to me - it allows development of exercises to strengthen particular techniques without relying on repeating the technique itself, and the truth is that if you can hit someone in one spot with a technique, you can hit them in another with it.  Its weakness is that it is much easier to train a fighter, for instance, to throw a   mandritto fendente  than to know when in a fight to use the wrist and when to use the shoulder, and that training a fighter to target the head, or to know when to go around the sword rather than try to beat through, is easier to see directly than the blows of wrist, elbow, and shoulder. For all that, though, di Grassi's conception is probab...

In his  Discourse on the Art of Using Arms Safely  (or, in its first English publication,  His True Art of Defense ),  Giacomo di Grassi  describes the blows of the arm as follows: The Arm likewise is not in every part of equal force and swiftness, but differs in every bowing thereof, that is to say in the wrist, in the elbow and in the shoulder: for the blows of the wrist as they are more swift, so they are less strong: And the other two, as they are more strong, so they are more slow, because they perform a great compass. Therefore by my counsel, he that would deliver an edge-blow shall fetch no compass with his shoulder, because whilst he bears his sword far off, he gives time to the wary enemy to enter first: but he shall only use the compass of the elbow and the wrist: which as they be most swift, so are they strong in ought, if they be orderly handled. Thus, di Grassi identifies three blows, those of wrist, elbow, and shoulder - and thus the anatomical dra...

Since my Fiore class series wrapped up, I've been helping a friend write up her own follow-on montante class series using mine as a foundation.  That led me to a discussion point: Before one can understand, and therefore teach, a system, one has to understand the underlying assumptions of that system.  For instance, neither boxers nor wrestlers are inherently better combatants; a boxer is a better boxer, and a wrestler a better wrestler, than either on the other's field because the underlying assumptions - in this case the formal rules - are very different. Sometimes, identifying the underlying assumptions is easy.  Modern combat sports have written conventions; identifying them is pretty simple as a result.  Historical authors tend to get a little harder to figure out, and the more comprehensive the system, the harder it becomes.  Fiore writes in his first Italian foreword that he trained gentlemen for combat, specifically for deeds of arms from unarmed all the...