Bartitsu has recently been popularized by its appearance in the Robert Downy-Guy Ritchie reinterpretations of Sherlock Holmes. We are excited to be sharing our home at Forteza with one of Bartitsu’s chief revivalists, renowned martial artist, movement expert and fight choreographer, Tony Wolf.

Find out more by clicking the not-so-subtle logo below!

CSG will soon move to Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture & Martial Arts in Chicago’s Ravenswood area. Our new home will be a unique

Beginning in late January 2012, Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture & Martial Arts‘ offerings to Chicagoland residents will include:

A fitness studio combining functional fitness training with modern nutritional counseling;

19^th century “physical culture” – workouts using calisthenics, Indian clubs, medicine balls, therapeutic gymnastics, body-weight exercises and games designed to create natural strength and grace with athletic performance;

The Midwest’s only full-time school for the study of traditional Western martial arts and historical swordplay - the art of the longsword, rapier, arming sword, as well as Bartitsu – the martial art made famous by  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved character, Sherlock Holmes;

Classes with Chicagoland’s only licensed instructor in Martial Blade Concepts (MBC) self-defense – a nationally renowned system of hand, stick and knife defense designed for modern people with limited training time;

A “Gymuseum” of antique exercise equipment and 19th century prints portraying combat sport athletes in training;

An international center for education on the rich, sophisticated martial traditions of Western Civilization;

An innovative, eclectic series of workshops, lectures and unique social events.

New to historical swordfighting? Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture & Martial Arts will offer our ever-popular introductory classes in the medieval longsword and the Renaissance rapier! The CSG will also continue to provide Introductory Classes at the Chicago Park District-Pulaski Park location as part of the CPD Arts Partners Program.

Contact us for more information and to be put on our list for regular updates on fitness training, swordplay classes and other western martial arts offerings!

Along with the live action and clashing of steel, the Italian American Fall Festival is also a mecca for feasting on Italian cuisine! Enjoy live entertainment, wine-making, hot air balloon rides, music and dancing as well. For more information, go to http://www.casaitaliachicago.net/.

On Monday nights, from September 12 to November 28, the Chicago Swordplay Guild will run introductory classes at the College of DuPage (CoD) in the two-handed longsword, as used by knights in medieval Europe. Classes run from 7pm-8:30pm. Each week students will begin class by stretching and enjoying some rigorous warm-ups, after which they get right in to learning the footwork, cuts, thrusts and parries used with the medieval longsword.

The 12-week session, which is open to students age 16 and up, will be held in Fawell Building E on Fawell Road on the CoD campus in Glen Ellyn and is part of the college’s adult continuing education program. The course costs $159, and students pay the instructor a $10 fee on the first day of class for rental of a training “sword” and equipment. Beginners are welcome. No previous experience is necessary.To register online, go to www.cod.edu or call (630) 942-2208. The CoD Continuing Education Class name and code are Sword-Medieval Longswords #LEISR-0062-001. Registration closes September 4^th.

Davis and Keith battling longsword

Crowds at the Chicago’s annual Scottish Highland Games were educated and entertained once again by the intrepid CSG Demo Team. The Games is always a terrific event here in Chicago and this year they moved to a new venue in Itasca.

The set-up team of Christina, Nathan and Terry got there at 7:00am and lugged the display tent to the clan area. Given that directions to our spot included a map of the grounds with huge yellow circle around an area the size of Rhode Island, we were lucky to only have to spend 20 minutes hunting for a space with the word “SWORD” spray-painted vaguely on the grass.

We were also fortunate enough to find a perfect spot for our demos – an open field near the food concessions where the spectators could easily watch from 4 sides and most people could sit under a tree in the shade. That mattered as the sky was clear and temperatures stayed in the 80’s all day. As always, the visitors to this event were in high spirits and ready to see a great display of swordsmanship.

John (rapier) fights against Trey (arming sword)

We were also fortunate enough to find a perfect spot for our demos – an open field near the food concessions where the spectators could easily watch from 4 sides and most people could sit under a tree in the shade. That mattered as the sky was clear and temperatures stayed in the 80’s all day. As always, the visitors to this event were in high spirits and ready to see a great display of swordsmanship.

The first of three demos featured medieval weapons wielded by Keith, Davis and Chester. Greg prepped the crowd with a brief talk about medieval combat as the guys demonstrated longsword drills. When Greg asked the crowd how much they thought a longsword weighed, audience members yelled out anywhere from 1 lb. to 45 lbs.

Longsword bout with Davis and Jacques

The fencing segment started with Keith vs. Davis using longsword, followed by a spear fight that had the audience cheering. Greg closed the demo with Chester taking on Davis in an exciting longsword vs. spear demonstration.

Chester and Davis longsword vs. spear

It was easy for the crowd to see how losing wide distance put the spearman in peril for his life. Of course, they also saw that for the swordsman, the trick was making that happen.

The second demo was at 2:30p and the sun beat down on us mercilessly.  Spectators happily munched on haggis, meat pies and fish and chips as Greg introduced the first fencing demo of this program: arming sword featuring Chester and Trey. Arming sword is always a hit because of its speed and the

Arming sword with Chester and Trey

layman’s familiarity of the sword in one hand in the movies. Chester and Trey also went at it like demons, and the happy food-munching sounds were drowned out by the clang of steel and the “thwap” of bodies being struck by blades.

Next, John and Trey ran through the guards of the rapier as Greg gave the spectators a brief overview of the weapon. This was followed by a hearty duel that showed just how deadly this weapon is.

In the spirit of mixed weapons and the final duel of “Rob Roy”, the next fight was arming sword vs. rapier. Greg explained that while the rapier was considered a weapon on the duel, it was not uncommon for soldiers to wear a rapier into battle as a kind of sidesword.John and Trey again took the field, with Trey wielding the sword and John giving the rapier its honors.

Trey blocks Jacques' dagger attack (Hey- is that the ShamWow guy?)

To end the demo’s veritable smorgasbord of weapons, Chester and Trey ended the program with a dagger fight where Trey demonstrated various throws and takedowns that always resulted in Chester’s untimely demise.

John and Trey fence with rapier and dagger

Demo #3 was late in the day and Greg started off with medieval weapons. The first fencing bout featured Davis and Jacques in a rousing longsword bout. Next, John and Trey again displayed rapier fencing and then showed the crowd what it was like when you add the dagger to a rapier duel. It obviously takes enormous concentration to do rapier and dagger effectively. You are using 2 weapons, one in each hand. And so is the other guy!

The closing bout was between Davis and Trey in spear vs. rapier. Now you have the long reach of the spear against a long, thin sword designed mainly for thrusting. The rapier doesn’t have the longsword’s heft or two sharp edges to land big blows.

Trey (rapier) prepares to skewer Davis (spear)

Nonetheless, an experienced rapierista only has to close measure safely or deflect the spear with his hand to land a good thrust.

Games visitors enjoyed stopping by our display booth to ask questions, try on a pair of gauntlets or handle a sword. Volunteers Christina, Nathan, Tammy, Bill C. and Heather did a great job taking care of the show-and-tell. New member Alex was a (pleasantly) unexpected visitor and lent his brawn to help us all schlep our gear back to the cars.

And, for the second year in a row, the Chicago Swordplay Guild’s booth won the Highland Games award for “Best Tent Display by a Cultural Organization”.  We had colorful medieval banners draping the corners of the tent and it doesn’t hurt to have a couple tables showcasing armor and sharp, pointy objects.

Bill & Alex do show & tell

Big thanks to our Demo Team and our enthusiastic volunteer crew (with a nod to Rachel and Dawn as the supportive sword widows)! It was a terrific venue for showcasing the CSG and we look forward to being weapons-wielding exhibitors at the Scottish Highland Games again next year!

CSG is proud to once again offer 4 days of both in-depth and focused classes with fresh material, taught to a professional standard by an instructor base spanning three continents, comprised of martial artists and researchers who have help set the Gold Standard for the entire western arts community. Check out our 2011 roster.

WMAW 2011 is for anyone interested in Western fighting styles — from the Medieval to Early Modern American. Whether you are a long-time historical fencer looking to enhance your training through an in-depth class with some of today’s top instructors, a newcomer just getting your feet wet, an Asian martial artist curious about the methods of your western counterparts, or a fight choreographer who’d like to add a layer of historical accuracy to your staged violence,  this event has something for you.

Rocky Mountain Swordplay Guild

There’s a discussion on Facebook right now that was prompted by an excellent blog post from Alex Putnam-Spreier of the Northwest Academy of Arms, and I thought I should put in my two cents. I don’t consider Facebook the best format for a lengthy discussion about these things, so I’m posting it here. I’m using Tom Leoni’s translation of the Getty throughout for any quoted passages.

The discussion is around the age-old question of why Fiore and the other Italian masters don’t include ground fighting in their books. It’s a good question. Nobody really knows for sure what the answer is. Most of the technique-specific info on Italian close-quarter combat (and by that I mean grappling and dagger defense) of the middle ages and Renaissance comes from Fiore, Vadi, and Marozzo. As far as I can tell, the only places in these three masters’ books where “ground fighting” (which I’m calling any situation where one or both combatants are already off their feet and on the ground) is explicitly or implicitly addressed, are as follows:

1: The Master of Throws from Fiore’s dagger section. He’s pinning a downed opponent to the ground with his feet.

2: The part in the two-hand sword section of the Getty concerning the leg cut, where he says, “If you had fallen on the ground, striking the opponent’s leg would be fine, but not in any other circumstance, when you are fighting with a sword against a sword.” Not “close-quarters,” but it does refer to a technique on the ground.

3: Marozzo’s nineteenth presa, which is the sacrifice stomach throw (equivalent of tomoe nage). It’s a throw, but you have to put yourself on the ground in order to do it.

4: This last one is debatable, but there is also the play of the first scholar of the fourth remedy master of the dagger from the PD. Carried to its logical extreme, this play winds up with both combatants on the ground with the player’s elbow either dislocated or broken. It’s not necessarily ground fighting per se, but it could involve the scholar putting himself on the ground intentionally for purposes of harming the player, so I’m including it for completion’s sake.

And that’s pretty much it with regards to ground fighting. If I’m missing something, I have no doubt someone reading this will inform me of it. (As an aside, since I don’t have a good translation of all of Marozzo and it would take quite a while for me to read it in Italian, does anyone know of anything from the other sections that addresses this subject? I’d be curious to find out.) The point is that ground fighting does not play a significant role in the historical Italian arts as presented in these three books.

So why is that? One well-worn argument is that we’re dealing with an armed culture, and grappling on the ground with daggers in hand is seldom the wisest course of action. This is true. In German manuscripts that deal with daggers on the ground, it’s generally a situation where one combatant has pinned the other, and only then does he draw a dagger and stab the opponent.

Also, there’s the old standby of “fighting on the ground is the last thing you want to do on a medieval battlefield, because you’ll be spitted/trampled to death by your opponent’s comrades/everybody else.” This is also true. But what about unarmed ground fighting outside of a “battlefield” context? What about simple self-defense (say, a dagger assault that’s turned really ugly and wound up on the ground)? Why does that not show up?

One could use the “armed culture” argument to say that, because you must always assume the opponent is carrying a weapon on their person, you should devote the vast majority of your training to learning how to deal with an armed attack. Maybe that’s why the abrazare section is so brief in Fiore. He gives you a nice, simple, well-contained set of techniques for an unarmed grappling situation, and then moves straight on into dealing with weapons. One assumption is that, if you know your abrazare, and you can defend yourself from a man armed with a dagger using only your empty hands, you should be able to handle pretty much anything an unarmed opponent can throw at you. This idea has been raised before.

In which case, the lack of ground fighting may simply be a reflection of the lack of purely unarmed fighting to begin with. In essence, the master may be saying, “It’s more important to learn to defend yourself from weapons, so learn these grappling moves and don’t worry about fighting on the ground too much. As long as you stay on your feet, you’ll be safe.”

I seriously doubt that that’s the answer to the initial question. That may be part of it, but if it is, it ain’t the whole story. Mr. Putnam-Spreier brought up a good point when he referenced Fiore’s comment about throwing the opponent without putting yourself in danger. In the opinion of Mr. Putnam-Spreier (and others), this means being able to throw the opponent while remaining standing, first and foremost. I’m guessing that any self-defense teacher worth their salt will tell you that it’s better to end the fight quickly and stay on your feet so you can get the hell out of Dodge as soon as the opponent goes down.

Fiore seems to have been no different. In his explanation of the crown/garter iconography and the organization of the treatise, he says that “Few plays, however, can go beyond the Third Master, after which lies danger.” The most common interpretation of this sentence that I’ve encountered is that the fight should not go beyond two counters, because after that the sequence of events becomes too difficult to predict. Ideally, the fight should last only as long as it takes to perform one action. This is a very pragmatic way of approaching a fight. It’s echoed by modern authors such as Steve Pearlman, who says that one should train to end the fight as quickly as possible, because there is no good reason not to.

In weapon sparring, we’ve all seen how ground fighting really tends to occur either after both people have failed at zogho largo, or one person has decided to close to zogho stretto, and neither combatant has been able to throw their opponent cleanly (i.e., without falling). In other words, ground fighting only occurs in weapon sparring after both people have fucked up. Interestingly, this echoes George Silver’s opinion:

“…when 2 men shall meet that both have the perfection of their weapons, against the best no hurt can be done, otherwise if by any device one should be able to hurt the other, then there were no perfection in the use of weapons, this perfection of fight being observed, prevents both close fight, & all manner of closes, grips & wrestling & all manner of such devices whatsoever.”

In other words, if you do everything right, there should be no reason to even come to grips, much less wrestle on the ground (not that Silver doesn’t use grips and throws; he certainly does. But the point still stands).

This leads us to another possibility: perhaps ground fighting was not addressed, not because it was merely considered unimportant, but because students were actively discouraged from even engaging in it. It was considered either too dangerous, or indicative of poor overall weapon skill.

However. Everyone knows that, if you get in enough fights, eventually you’re gonna wind up on the ground. Fiore knew this damn  well; he says that cutting below the knee is fine if you wind up on the ground. Of course, he may have made that remark only because he was talking specifically of the leg cut, and wanted to make himself clear about not cutting below the opponent’s knees. Again, perhaps he would have discouraged his students from even considering going to the ground, and therefore not have addressed what to do when you get there. Perhaps the emphasis was placed on staying on your feet at all costs, and the leg cut remark was only to clarify his earlier statement about not cutting below the knee.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps the Italians had an entire system of ground fighting that they simply didn’t explain in detail. Maybe it looked something like the uUnterhalten techniques of the Kunst des Fechtens. Mr. Siggs and others have addressed the topic of “Fiore ground fighting,” by which they mean the application of Fiore’s principles to a fight on the ground. This is a perfectly valid extrapolation, and I’ll get back to it in a second.

First I want to bring up Pietro Monte. (God, do we need a good translation of his books. I read something on the web about some folks attempting a non-academic translation of either the Collectanea or De Dignoscendis Hominibus or both, which is fine with me, because I want to read the fuckin’ things and it would take a while to re-learn all my Latin well enough and I’m not gettin’ any younger. I also heard a rumor that Dr. Forgeng was working on it, but I have no idea if that’s true.)

Monte was a Spanish condottiere who was working in Italy and is associated with the court of Urbino in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. In addition to writing on athletics and martial arts, he’s supposed to have written a conceptual refutation of Aristotle that predates Galileo by a hundred years. Which has nothing to do with ground fighting, but is pretty damn cool. Anyway…

Monte wrote his opinions on different types of sport wrestling that were practiced in various countries during his time. While in this case he was writing about combat sports and Fiore was writing about actual combat, the two disciplines overlap in many cultures and we can reasonably assume that someone studying “combative abrazare” would probably have been familiar with aspects of the “sport” variety. At one point Monte says that he prefers a style of wrestling where the goal is to throw the opponent to the ground and grabbing the legs is not permitted. He acknowledges the effectiveness of grabbing the legs in an actual fight, but prefers only upper-body holds for sport.

Moreover, he has a very low opinion of the Germans and their style of ground-wrestling. He seems to be of the opinion that wrestling on the ground, especially stripped to one’s underwear, is 1) not a particularly practical self-defense art with little utility for war, 2)  is a somewhat barbaric activity. [Makes one wonder what he would think of the popularity today of no-gi BJJ competitions.] In this, he is not alone among historical writers. Many of the English self-defense authors (Donald Walker, for example) had little use for ground wrestling, describing it as ungentlemanly, or simply unmanly. It’s really no wonder they thought this way about ground wrestling: consider that some of the best ground wrestlers of the nineteenth century were Lancashire coal miners and American carnival strongmen. It was a low-class activity, whereas pugilism, or “fist-fencing”, was the fighting art of gentlemen.

Monte’s opinion seems to indicate that similar attitudes have been held (at least by some people) for centuries. Now, whether his opinion holds true for the condottieri in general, or for the military or social elite of the Renaissance Mediterranean world, or whatever, is not knowable without a lot more documentation. But it is definitely the opinion of at least one prominent soldier of early-Renaissance Italy.

Taken at face value, what might Monte’s opinions mean when looking at Fiore? Well, Fiore shows no ground fighting in his abrazare section. Moreover, most of the throws involve only upper-body holds, with the legs used only as a fulcrum. This might make sense for a person who had been practicing (perhaps since childhood) a type of sport wrestling similar to what Monte describes. Of course, Fiore may have done no such thing.

(A few interesting points: in Fiore, there is no such thing as a double-leg takedown. Also, at no point does he use both hands to grab an opponent’s leg. Either he’s using one hand to control the opponent’s arms or upper body, or he has a weapon in one hand while grabbing the leg and is using it to control the opponent’s weapon.)

One question is: does a lack of ground wrestling for sport translate into a lack of ground fighting for actual combat within the same culture? It seems like it might have in southern England (catch wrestling being a Lancashire specialty, and therefore more popular in the north). And whether that’s a causal relationship, and in which direction, is an open question. But there certainly are cultures outside of Europe where ground fighting does not play a large role in either wrestling or martial arts. The Chinese have a cultural distaste for ground fighting (heck, the Chinese have a cultural distaste for physical contact, period; hence the preponderance of long weapons and long-range striking techniques in a lot of Chinese martial arts). Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming has said as much in his books on chin na and white crane gungfu. I found an old gungfu book that Pete Kautz once wrote a review of. It was written in the ’30s, and according to Pete the ground control techniques all seemed to be borrowed from jujitsu after contact with the Japanese. Also, in the chin na book I just mentioned, Dr. Yang states that it is “unpredictable and dangerous to tangle with an opponent on the ground.” Therefore, the ground fighting sections of that book borrow techniques from jujitsu and aikido, and are performed in the photographs by Japanese martial artists. (However, the authors are careful to point out that the principles of chin na still apply to the ground holds. More on this later.)

There are people here who will not appreciate the comparison with Chinese martial arts. The point is that there are cultures with long-standing martial arts traditions that use no ground fighting. Competitive shuai-jiao (Chinese wrestling) is standing-only, and its combative equivalents are standing-only. This is one of the most often-criticized flaws in CMA.

It is possible that this is also an inherent flaw in historical Italian martial arts. Maybe they just didn’t engage in ground fighting, and therefore weren’t very good at it. There is certainly not much direct evidence of it in the manuscripts. However, that does not mean that the principles expressed by, say, Fiore, do not still apply in a ground fight. This is because Fiore’s armizare is a good art, not a crap art. If it were a crap art, you would expect its foundational principles to break down when applied outside of their intended context. Greg has outlined three principles that seem to apply throughout Fiore’s art:

1: Break from above, strike from below.
2: Break from below, strike from above.
3: Seize the center.

These can all apply to ground fighting. Similarly, principles from an art that deals extensively with ground fighting, like catch wrestling, can still apply to (for example) a medieval judicial duel. One fundamental principal of catch wrestling is to always keep the opponent’s body in an unnatural position, and to always keep him uncomfortable. This is good advice, regardless of whether the fight is standing or on the ground.

Will Fiore’s principles, applied to a ground fight, look exactly the same as they would in a “standard,” stand-up fight? Of course not. Will catch wrestling principles, applied to a duel, look the same as they would in a wrestling match? Hell no. But the principles all hold true. It’s entirely possible that Fiore, if taken to the ground by a wrestler and not having a weapon to hand, would still hand them their ass in a matter of seconds. He comes across as such a devious bastard in his books that I would consider that a pretty reasonable outcome.

No one art does absolutely everything well. Most arts do at least a few things well. If they’re good arts, their principles can be adapted to situations they were not explicitly designed for.  None of this means that the Italians either did or did not know how to fight on the ground. Indeed, this is really just a set of speculations, more than a working thesis. But when there is a clear preference for or against certain kinds of combat in a given art, a little speculation as to why can yield insights, if not answers.

While Filippo Vadi’s De arte gladiatoria dimicandi differs in the main very little from the work of Fiore dei Liberi in terms of technique, the assertion that Vadi’s work does not differ in method of communication is simply incorrect. The true originality of the De arte gladiatoria dimicandi stands in the sixteen introductory chapters that come before the illustrated leaves. These elegantly written verse chapters constitute the center of Vadi’s work and detail the main principles of swordmanship. They also mark a notable difference in the pedagogical method of the manuscript itself from all three of the dei Liberi texts.

Dei Liberi’s Fior di Battaglia are experiential manuscripts. In the Getty and Pierpoint Morgan manuscripts, the author clearly describes the various guards, attacks and mechanics of the individual techniques. Each illustration follows in a logical sequence, so that a technique is followed by its counter, and then the counter to that counter follows. Dei Liberi also goes to great length to show the repetition of key mechanical concepts, so that an armbar learned in the wrestling section is often pointed out in the dagger plays, and again in the use of the sword.

But while these technical connections are made clear and reinforced throughout the manuscript, the tactical considerations of the system remain largely unstated. Fiore’s first sequence of two-handed sword techniques is shown with the opponents having crossed swords as if both have just made forehand blows. While the enemy stands with his right foot forward, the scholar has his left foot forward. Fiore is silent as to why the swordsmen have come to such a position, and merely procedes to explain how to fight from this position.

This method, whereby the core mechanical elements of the system is taught with seemingly very little context of how to use those elements, is reminiscent of medieval methods for training art students. While students were directly taught how to prepare their paints and hold their brushes, they then spent years learning to perfectly mimic their master’s work before creating any original compositions of their own. The idea behind this sort of learning is that in the process of repetition, the students would learn to “see” the underlying principles of the masters’ works hidden behind the same simple techniques the students had been taught. In much the same way, after the fundamental body mechanics and techniques of dei Liberi’s system have been learned, it is only through the repeated, systematic practice of the individual sequences that a true understanding of the tactical application of those techniques becomes clear.

Conversely, Vadi was a product of the early Renaissance, and wrote the De Arte Gladiatoria as an explanatory manuscript. For example, while Fiore remains “tactfully silent” about the left leg position in the crossed swords techniques, Vadi clearly addresses this issue in Chapter 11:

You also get a good deal
by parrying well all of the strokes.
When you parry the reverse blow
keep forward the right foot and parry as said,
when parrying the forehand blow
then you will have the left foot forward.

He then spends the remainder of the chapter showing the ways the swordsman can immediately make a follow-on attack from this position. Likewise, whereas Fiore’s techniques often convert a cut or parry into a thrust, Vadi specifically advises:

Be well aware and understand my writing;
if your partner strikes with the sword,
be sure to cross the blade with yours.
Your guard should never go out of the way,
your sword should cover while pointing to your foe’s face;
your blows the head shall hammer.
Cross play and you will not be conquered.
If your foe crosses wide, thrust;
because you don’t want to be divided from him.

While the similarly organized Flos Duellatorum may have stood as a fully discernable work to an initiate of the system, its reliance on rhyming couplets for text confounds a non-initiate as much as it clarifies. The more detailed Fior di Battaglia in the Getty and Morgan collections give far more detailed and generally clear instructions on the application of its corpus of techniques, and show the mechanical connections between similar techniques in the varying sections. Yet they spend little time discussing the tactical considerations of the art. Only by diligently working through the system, and actively looking for the underlying connections will a student learn to see those principles themselves. This is Vadi’s great strength; in his 16 introductory chapters the swordmaster from Pisa seeks to clearly explain both the how and the why of his art. In so doing his De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi not only succeeds in its original goal as an instructional treatise, it also provides us with a useful tool into further understanding the works that preceded it.

When I teach at workshops and seminars, I am often told something along the lines of this:

I’m surprised that the man who co-authored the reproduction on De arte gladiatoria dimicandi doesn’t work more with the hallmarks of Vadi.

It’s a fair question, and suggests that in 2001, when I was working on my edition of Vadi, I did not yet have enough understanding of the larger dei Liberi tradition to separate Vadi’s brilliance from the marketing hype aimed at securing him a position at the court of Urbino. While Filippo Vadi defines his art as “newly made”, and specifically draws attention to several supposedly unique features, a study of his work against Fiore dei Liberi’s shows that this is a bit of clever marketing on Vadi’s part. As such, Vadi’s value is not in the tweaks he provides to the mainline of the art, but rather in his often detailed explanations of the art’s fundamentals and theory.

A recent email from one of my students asked about Filippo Vadi’s innovations and his role in the dei Liberi tradition, and how they influence what we teach at the CSG. These were such excellent questions that I thought I would share them, polish up my replies and post them here.

Greg:

As long as I’ve known it, the CSG offers two main initial courses of study: the Renaissance rapier masters of the early 17^th century and the medieval dei Liberi tradition.  In each class session we all practice abraçare, dagger, and longsword as learned from Fiore dei Liberi’s treatises.  To attain the rank of Scholar one must have a certain knowledge about Fiore.  Translated quotes from Fiore are often cited in class.  Even rapier students are required to learn the abraçare and dagger sections of Fiore, in order to play their prize. In short order, the CSG “teaches Fiore.”

Actually, no. No one “taught Fiore” besides Fiore, and when he died, his precise art died with him. This is not unique. There are literally millions of people studying aikido. Most of the major lines of aikido all go to the direct students of Morihei Ueshiba, the art’s founder. Yet, there are significant technical differences (and at times tactical ones), between the schools – all largely based on when the sub-school’s founder studied with Ueshiba. [N.B. – More on this idea and how it relates to reconstructing Armizare at this blog post.]

This comparison gives us a good idea of why Vadi is clearly within the dei Liberi tradition, yet distinct from the root, and it tells us what learning to fight from one of Fiore dei Liberi’s students might have looked like. It also helps explain why we have multiple texts by the Bolognese masters, all within about a 40-year period, and although the art is the same, no two of them use the same, precise combination of guards or emphasize exactly the same things.

I’m aware that our working understanding of Fiore, and medieval swordplay in general for that matter, is not completely and wholly taken from Fiore’s treatises alone.  Our understanding is a composite of other concepts borrowed, or better explained, by other masters such as Silver, Manciolino, Vadi, di Grassi, etcetera, contextual period research, all glued together with some basic biomechanical principles that are found in all martial arts.  Our knowledge of Fiore’s art is greater because of the contributions of these other masters and vice versa as they “fill in some of the gaps” that are not laid out in each and every text.

Correct, but note that we reference those texts only in so far as they add clarity, or provide a viable answer to what cannot be answered by what is in the five dei Liberi Tradition texts (Getty, Morgan, Pisani-Dossi, “Florius”, and Vadi).

But what befuddles me, is that the CSG teaches Fiore – but with what seems to me, the glaring anomaly of Vadi’s Posta di Falcon.  Most certainly we use concepts as laid forth by Vadi (such as mezzo tempo and working from within the bind) that help us better understand Fiore, but we seem to go about it like we’re learning solely the art of Fiore in class.  It has been hastily explained before to me that Falcone is included in what we do because Vadi is ostensibly a continuation (or further evolution) of Fiore’s work. Wouldn’t a more applicable label be then, Fiore’s art as seen through a student of Vadi? But yet this doesn’t seem to be true either.

This is and isn’t true.  Once upon a time, posta di falcon, which is itself simply a variation of the mainline posta di donna, was used far more extensively in the novice curriculum then we use it now. But if you look at core Guild curriculum, it does not appear in most of the guardia drills, nor is it used in the various set-plays any more. It is something that students are exposed to in the introductory classes and then see little more of. So why is it still there at all?

Although posta di falcon is in practice a variation of posta di donna, it behaves with very different timing and line than the latter. (Nor can it place the thrust the same way.) It is also analogous to the “high vom Tag” used by German fencers or the guardia alta of the Bolognese school, which are the two major counterpart traditions to Armizare. So, for the novice student, it is shown to explain the evolution of a “high guard”, and in part so that they can play with the mechanical differences and be familiar with them when encountering students of other traditions.

If we’ve been learning “Fiore’s guards + Falcone,” then why do we not include Vadi’s other guards that are unique to him, like Posta Sagitarius or his Posta di Chinghario?  Vadi also omits certain guards that Fiore shows (Posta di Donna la Soprana, Coda Longa, Dente de Chinghario lo Mezzana).  More confusing yet is when I look at Vadi’s guards, some share the names of Fiore’s guards but are framed and pictured in a way reminiscent of an entirely different guard (example: Vadi’s Posta Longa looks like Fiore’s Posta Breve).

Boy, is there a lot to answer in what seems a simple observation! Since it seems that Vadi radically reworked the guards, and since the art is based on movement from guard to guard, this must mean that he radically altered the art itself, right? Maybe not.

Let’s begin by looking at Vadi’s list of sword poste. He presents twelve key positions for the longsword, whose names and descriptive rhymes are often similar, if not identical, to those of Fiore dei Liberi’s Flos Duellatorum, the Pisani-Dossi Ms, which Vadi’s work most resembles.

Part of Vadi’s goal may have been to show his art as unique, which is certainly how he promoted his work to the court of Urbino. Another possibility is that all of these guards likely originated from older sources. The Bolognese masters also used coda longa (or properly, coda longa e distessa), dente di chinghiale and porta di ferro (but these two terms mean an entire class of guards). Eisenpforte (“iron gate”) and Kron (“crown” – corona) are old German guard names, for the same positions Fiore shows as porta di ferro mezzana (“middle iron gate”) and posta frontale o corona (“frontal guard, called crown”). We have to remember that what we have is a snapshot in time of how the guards look c.1409 in Ferrara, c.1482 in Urbino, and c.1500 – 1570 in Bologna. We have no linking information per se, nor anything on their origin.

But as regards Vadi and dei Liberi, in many cases the reader is seeing Fiore’s guards, they just don’t know it. Remember Fiore’s injunction that “all guards make volta stabile and mezza volta“? This is often translated to mean that dei Liberi’s poste have both forward and rear-weighted variations (as he clearly shows with posta di donna and dente di cenghiaro), and left and right side variations.

Now, let’s look at Vadi’s dente di cenghiaro on Folio 17v. Before we assume that this is a “new” or a “revised” guard, we should ask ourselves how what is shown relates to dei Liberi’s advice. Or does it? What about his version of posta di donna?

As to the other poste, while Vadi drops several, he adds none (besides posta di falcon) that can’t be found in one of the four Fiore manuscripts. While his posta di donna looks odd, consider it in light of one clear change Vadi does introduce into the art – an emphasis on attacking with the acressimento, rather than the pass. In this light, the guard’s new form makes perfect sense – it allows the swordsman to strike out with a fast cut made with an advance of the lead foot, followed by immediately retracting sword and foot back into guard. But is this really a significant change to the art itself, or a demonstration of how to use an old, well-known guard while emphasizing the advancing step?

The name posta sagitaria is borrowed from one of Fiore’s guards for the sword in armour (of which Vadi maintains six, but renames them), but it is in reality posta di finestra, adapted to the narrower stance Vadi favors. The one that might catch our notice is on Folio 17r, which looks like a poorly drawn posta di donna, but is called posta di vera finestra. This is where we need to remember that dei Liberi’s own poste vary slightly from manuscript to manuscript, and that each manuscript names twelve, not because that is how many there are, but because the number twelve is numerically significant.

Vadi’s artwork and captions derive from the same line as the Pisani-Dossi and Florius manuscripts, and there is something very interesting there. Here we see posta di donna as we know it, we have posta di finestra, and then we have the guard Vadi calls posta di vera finestra, which the Pisani-Dossi manuscript calls posta di donna di vera finestra. This is an interesting position, a very old guard that appears extensively in early and High Medieval artwork when the fencer is wielding a buckler or a shield. Dei Liberi shows it again as a variation of posta di donna used with the sword in one hand. This guard looks much like posta di finestra, but has the elbow dropped so that the point is lifted and offline, creating a position that is midway between the “canonical” posta di finestra (point forward) and posta di donna (point refused). In practice, it plays like both of them.

(If this all seems confusing, at least we are in good company, as this seems to have confused the artist who created Florius too – he garbles this while drawing the spear plates, and draws the spear on the wrong side of the head of the combatant’s head.)

This is all academically interesting, but poses an interesting challenge for us as martial artists. We can either add every oddity as a discrete position, teaching about 22 guards in all, or we can follow Fiore’s core advice that there are 12 core poste, teach the 12 that are generally consistent throughout his work, and look at the others as variations of those 12. The Guild uses the latter solution, with the idea that as students progress, they will be exposed to all of the variations, including Vadi’s, and learn how they are used.

What about Vadi’s “new footwork”, that narrow stance of his that is shown framing other guards and found in his other plays?

As I said above, Vadi shows an emphasis on the acressimento, and he certainly wants us to know that this is a major innovation and “better stepping than the way of our ancestors”. The question is: Can we believe him?

In my opinion, Vadi’s narrower stance, combined with favoring a right foot forward stance on some of his cutting guards shows an early example of the alterations in swordsmanship that we see occurring throughout the 16^th century.  Armoured harness was falling out of use and unarmoured dueling was becoming more common, ending in the reduction to the four, point-forward, sword-side leading guards utilized by the rapier. This thesis seems supported by how stripped-down the armoured combat portions of Vadi’s De arte gladiatoria is, compared to dei Liberi’s Flos Duellatorum.

But for all of this talk about his new footwork, Vadi doesn’t demonstrate much use of it in his actual techniques, which clearly derive directly from dei Liberi. Even without understanding a word of Italian, a short comparison of some the rhyming captions for the sword poste, or guards, makes the relation between the texts obvious:

Of Vadi’s 25 techniques for fighting with the sword while unarmoured, eight are direct reflections of the illustrations and captions found in dei Liberi. Proceeding to the armoured techniques, Vadi reduces and renames the basic stances, but they remain mechanically the same as the earlier masters. Each of the four poleaxe and five armoured sword techniques that Vadi shows are again directly paralleled in both illustration and text with the Flos Duellatorum. Likewise, although he again has a slight alteration in guards, Vadi’s spear plays derive directly from the work of his predecessor. He then concludes with 47 dagger techniques, including two techniques to be used by a swordsman attacked by a knifeman while his sword is sheathed. As with the sword techniques that began the illustrated plates, many of these techniques correspond directly to the Flos Duellatorum, while the final eight, uncaptioned plays at the very end of his book are presumably of Vadi’s own devising.

So, besides his poste variations, there is nothing in Vadi’s technical repertoire that is unique or distinctive, or really, wasn’t apparently copied from another manuscript in the mainstream tradition.

Thus Vadi’s treatise does not represent a “new art,” but rather a glimpse into one line of evolution of an established tradition. His focus on the sword as the centerpiece of the art, his alterations of the basic guards to keep the sword more forward of the body, and his promotion of a narrower stance and smaller, faster cuts all prefigure many of the the tactical considerations of 16th century masters at arms, but are ultimately small changes to the system first laid out by Fiore dei Liberi nearly eight decades earlier.

So why bother with Vadi at all?  We’ll look at what makes the old boy shine in part II.