Raphael di Merisi

Projects: Two Takes on the Lunge, The Anonimo and Marozzo or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Spada Dui Mani, A Handy Guide to Understanding Tempo

Two Takes on the Lunge

In rapier, lunging is THE foundational movement. Sometimes we do a little less, such as throwing a half cut or performing a firm-footed lunge, and other times we do a bit more by following it up with a remise or a passing step. The basic unit of measurement, the meter of rapier fencing, remains the same though. So with that, how much disagreement can there really be? That, dear reader, is what we shall explore today.

For full paper and images see: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W0nNbLJl9q3IEkY11Cy9ctOpxDmWAn8u/view?usp=sharing


The Anonimo and Marozzo or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Spada Dui Mani

Today I would like to focus on two specific texts from the Bolognese fencing tradition. More specifically, I’d like to do a case study peering into the Anonimo Bolognese and Achille Marozzo’s Opera Nova. My hope is that this will help elucidate some broader thematic differences between how the two authors want us to fight.

Let us turn now to the sections on gioco in stretto (constrained play), false edge to false edge with the spada dui mani (sword in two hands). While we aren’t given a specific guard this starts in, we can imagine it as an extended porta di ferro stretta with each fencer’s true edge (assuming they’re both right handed) pointing out to their own left sides. While this is the only section on the spada dui mani the Anonimo gives us (as it is a handwritten manuscript with many parts clearly missing), Marozzo gives us both gioco stretta as well as gioco largo both false edge to false edge as well as true edge to true edge. Without exploding the scope of this article too much, we can think of gioco stretto as that part of fencing where our point stay’s within our opponent’s silhouette whereas gioco largo generally involves larger actions that involve our point constantly passing through our opponent’s silhouette.

For full paper and images see: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JXEhNkJmAvud7mkwJgmhlt0WydwtxwSW/view?usp=sharing


A Handy Guide to Understanding Tempo

Out of the three main building blocks of Italian swordsmanship (structure, measure, and tempo), tempo is by and far the most elusive of the bunch. Both structure (how well your bones are lined up) and measure (how far apart things are) are things I, as an instructor, can just point to in space. We can freeze time, either on a video or by having students stay in place, and examine these two aspects of the fight with relative ease. This does not mean that these are concepts without depth, just that they are often easier to grasp at the beginning stages. Tempo, however, is something we experience more than something we can just point to. As a teaching aid, I put together the following as a handy guide for students to better grasp how tempo was understood by the fencing masters of old. This is in no way meant as an exhaustive dive into how 16th and 17th century Italians conceived of time (my friend Ken Mondschein just put out a book on that very subject), nor is it meant as a definitive statement of what each kind of tempo is singularly defined to be. Instead, think of this as a handy guide to be used as you see fit.

For full paper and images see: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pC86sws7tnIk0yP88wexQNpLQp_CVsDz/view?usp=sharing