The Sword of the People. Roberto Laura
already planned or published a book themselves at this time, I will explain their schools only to the extent that I do not anticipate and spoil the content of these works4. In addition to the hypothetical history of these arts, I will explain their principles as well as some technical peculiarities.
The book is structured as follows:
Chapters 1 and 2 highlight the possible historical development of the art, including the potential influences of the criminal clans of the 19th century. Chapter 3 gives an insight into the rituals and vernacular of the clans discussed, as well as some schools of the Knife. Chapter 4 distinguishes the fencing schools of the Knife with a dueling convention from the fencing schools of pure self-defense. Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 present regional schools and systems of the folk Italian knife fight. Chapter 9 presents a selection of traditional dueling knives from Central and Southern Italy. A model from the north of the peninsula and one from France are also presented, because they provide context to the content of this book. The end of the book includes Acknowledgements, a list of the Images used and a Bibliograpy.
I was conscious of the Italian rules of upper and lower case: Italian words are therefore written in lowercase, unless they are at the beginning of a sentence or are names of people or places. This makes it easier for the reader to read, as it allows him to better distinguish between technical terms and people. I have based the structure of the book on a scientific approach, where each chapter receives a digit first. The thematic sub-items are marked as such by consecutive digits after a decimal point as necessary.
In this sense, I wish the reader a pleasant and interesting journey into the different eras and corners of Italy, the historically significant Apennine Peninsula in southern Europe.
Roberto Laura
1 Scuole da sala; Fencing schools with additional dueling convention.
2 Sistemi da difesa or scuole da strada respectively scuole sporche.
3 See Chapter 5.
4 See Chapters 5 to 8.
Chapter 1
A Look at the History of Fencing in Italy
Possible Influences on the Weapon Schools of Southern Italy
“And, above all matters, one thing you should mark well and know, is that only one Art is the Sword, and though it may have been invented and devised some hundreds of years ago, that it is the basic core of all the arts of fencing.”
Anonymous around 1390 (Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg)
Foreword
First things first: If you have not yet been interested in the history of historical fencing, take some time to study the fencing tradition of Italy, the mother of all subsequent regional interpretations in the Mediterranean Peninsula, and also of modern Olympic fencing. It’s worth it; for the development of fencing in Italy is, firstly, part of the cultural identity of Europe (the development of the German fencing school and that of Italian fencing were closely connected), and secondly, the schools and systems of the folk knife are based on the principles that were discovered and perfected throughout the history of Italian fencing.
Historical fencing, which is very well documented in contrast to the folk arts, can therefore be considered as the cultural and spiritual source of our folk traditions. Whether the influences were derived directly or whether they had an indirect influence on the folk knife schools as a cultural component of a fighting style cannot be clearly understood. What counts is that these influences can be found in the folk traditions with stick and knife almost one to one. So in order to better understand what pillars our traditions may be based on, it is worth looking at these few leads.
1.1 Introduction
Scherma, the Italian word for fencing, is actually a term of German or at least Germanic descent. In the early Middle Ages, one said schirmen instead of fencing. The Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese adopted this idea, which referred in this context to the shielding, the guarding, or the protecting of one’s own body, and formed the term schermire. A Meister des Schirmens (Master of the Shield[ing]) was therefore a man who knew how to protect himself with a weapon. Thus, the term schirmen or schermire was less concerned with an ability to attack. All Italian folk traditions of the knife also consider self-protection as the maxim of their approach. This and other tactical considerations, as well as a visual relationship, may combine these two lines of weaponry, the historical fencing arts with those of the Italian folk knife and stick fight.
In the southern Italian art of fencing with the knife there are schools of the two circles. One can therefore run around the opponent or hold their position. Mostly the thrust is used as a lethal action, while the slash takes on other tactical roles. Also, one speaks of school, not of system1. Furthermore, these traditions – in the truest sense of the word – are very figurative. They mainly live on elegant sequences of movements and guards or pose/piante2, all of which have one or more tactical ideas behind them. The didactics of these schools are based on the practice of precisely specified pathways, or routines, whose individual elements are also literally called figures or lessons3, depending on the region. These figures or lessons are initially divided into individual intermediate steps in order to then gradually put the steps back together.
One finds that similar didactic, tactical, and technical characteristics to related Italian systems, or to the various weapon types that were in use regionally, are already partially found in antiquity, certainly in the Middle Ages, but especially in the Renaissance and the Baroque. This chapter focuses its attention on demonstrating these common patterns and thereby stimulating the reader to get a better picture of the extent to which the folk schools of southern Italy are a cultural continuation of these older, ancestral traditions. The objective of this first chapter is therefore to try to explain how, or in what way, this elegant game of figures, which corresponds to a movement ideal and a mentality of bygone days4, may have perhaps been influenced by the historical fencers. Other influences, mainly cultural, I discuss in Chapter 2. I want to start with a little excursion into antiquity. Into an era that might have laid the first steps towards developing a southern Italian fencing identity.
But first, it should be noted that this chapter provides only a very crude representation of developments in historical fencing, as well as artistic and spiritual-philosophical developments, from antiquity to the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance and to the beginnings of the Baroque period, so that with mental clarity, they were able to reduce all information available down to only the necessary information required. Although the ultimate compelling evidence of a consistently trained tradition is not available, the presence of strikingly similar patterns within the region indicates that a conceptual and technical predecessor of folk traditions with knife and stick might have existed. If you want to look more deeply into the history of the Renaissance, I recommend the book The Renaissance in Italy: Social History of a Culture between Tradition and Invention by Peter Burke. All those who would like to deal primarily with the fencing history and technique of Italy, especially those of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Baroque period, I refer to specialized works, such as those personally known to me and by renowned authors in the field5.
1.2 Gladiators
It is said that the gladiatorial fights sprang from the dead. In the XXIII song of the Iliad, Homer already describes fighting games in honor of Patroklos, slain by Hektor:
“Achilles with his companions approached Patroclus, wailing and mourning, and called to throw Hector on his face at the funeral camp. That night, Patroclus appeared to him and asked for burial. In the morning the Achaeans brought wood for the pyre. Patroclus was carried out, with his hair curls in heaps, and burned with the other dead victims. Boreas and Zephyros fed the fire. The next morning, Patroclus’ bones were placed in an urn and buried, until such time as Achilles’ bones can be added, in a Provisional Hill of Honor on the site of