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. 

Continuing on, let’s look at one specific play out of the Anonimo.

(p.178/#1) (Counter to (play #466))

“The counter of this stretta play will be, that being false edge to false edge with the right foot

forward, you will stay alert, that as he passes to feint the mandritto your head, you in that tempo will pass with your left foot towards his right side turning at him a rising roverso to his right temple, and as he will remove his left hand to take your sword to make his presa, you will withdraw the left foot back throwing at him a mezzo mandritto to the hands, but in case the enemy should grab your sword, or some other part of the body to strike you with his pommel to your face, you will immediately drive the left arms turning him towards his right side, and lifting the sword outside the hand.”

So as they feint you pass your left foot towards their right and perform a roverso ridoppio (a rising cut going from left to right) towards their right temple, passing through guardia di croce.  When they go to grab your sword with their left hand, you pass back with your left foot and throw a half cut to their hands.  If, however, they manage to successfully get a hold of your sword, immediately use your left arm to push theirs off to the side, freeing your sword held in your right hand to do whatever you want.

The Anonimo, across the board, is fairly straight to the point.  Their plays only last a few actions and lack the extended solo assalti (think Bolognese katas) we see most of the other Bolognese masters use in order to teach their techniques.  While they don’t shy away from strikes to the head or body, they are just as happy to end a fight by just cutting to the hands.  They don’t necessarily use the guarded retreat we see so commonly employed at the end of most other Bolognese plays.  Finally, while they are no stranger to coming to grips, they normally do so to open up an opportunity for the sword to strike instead of going all the way to pure grappling.

In contrast here’s a play out of Marozzo with a very similar beginning, but then diverges drastically as time goes on.

“Now when you’re false edge to false edge with your enemy, both of you right foot forward, step forward quickly with your left leg and cross your arms together as you do so.  Then quickly put your left hand on the inside of your enemy’s sword and grab it, and once you’ve seized it, step to the enemy’s left with your right foot and hit him in the face with your pommel as you step.  But watch out in case he sends his left hand toward the handle of your sword.  If he does, let him grab it, but once he has, put your left hand on his right arm, and grab his left arm with your right hand; once you’ve grabbed both of his arms, let yourself fall backwards to the ground, holding onto him tightly, and as you fall, stick both your feet in his torso or belly, and throw him backward.  Once you’ve thrown him, quickly jump to your feet and grab both of the swords.  This is an excellent action that can be done in many kinds of situations.”

-Marozzo, page 233

Marozzo, while occasionally to the point, is generally the largest show off of the Bolognese masters.  That doesn’t mean his techniques are any less potent, they just often require you to burn more calories.  We see here a similar set up starting false edge to false edge and then cutting up to guardia di croce, with your arms crossed.  Marozzo follows this up with a pommel strike, an action familiar enough to the Anonimo that they refer to it quite descriptively as “feeding him your apple.”  From here our opponent sends out their left arm, to grab our sword.  Whereas the Anonimo was ready to preempt this by sending their arm first, Marozzo openly invites his opponent to come and close in with him.  It’s at this crucial moment that the two authors really diverge.  The Anonimo closes in merely to open up a new line for the sword, Marozzo does so to remove swords from the equation entirely.  He goes so far to instruct us to abandon our own sword and to instead use both of our hands to grab our opponent’s arms and perform what we may nowadays refer to as a suicide roll, an action we see across a wide variety of martial systems which Marozzo employs again in his dagger section.

While I don’t doubt the efficacy of Marozzo’s technique, it definitely requires more things to go right as well as a higher level of athleticism and dexterity than what the Anonimo shows us.  It also looks super cool.

While both the Anonimo and Marozzo cover the widest swath of techniques of any of the Bolognese masters (and are the only ones to touch on the spada dui mani), they do so in subtly different ways.  The system at its core is almost exactly the same, but even within that space we see here quite a large amount of room for variation.  Fencers in early sixteenth century Bologna weren’t any more carbon copies of each other than fencers today.  While the guards, techniques, and overall approach remained fairly consistent across the Bolognese tradition, there was still plenty of room for different personalities to shine through.

Works cited:

The Anonimo Bolognese, translated by Stephen Fratus

Opera Nova, written by Achille Marozzo, translated by Jherek Swanger

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, however, remains the same.  So with that, how much disagreement can there really be?  That, dear reader, is what we shall explore today.

Let us begin by largely limiting the scope of today’s discussion in order to better illustrate a few fundamental differences in how the lunge might be performed.  To start, we are primarily going to be looking at two texts.  The first is Nicoletto Giganti’s 1606 rapier fencing treatise, published in Venice.  In contrast will stand Ridolfo Capoferro’s 1610 treatise, published in Siena.  We see the lunge (“accresciemento” in Italian) being described is texts as far back as Fiore dei Liberi’s circa 1400 text, Fior di Battaglia (the flower of battle, the title being a play on his own name).[1]  Giganti and Capoferro are the first two to really do such from such a profiled, back weighted guard stylized in order to favor a thrust-centric system.  Salvator Fabris shows us a similar technique in his 1606 manual, but starts from a forward-leaning posture.

To further narrow it down, I am just going to be looking at how the two authors lunge with just the single sword into quarta (fourth) and seconda (second).  The first is due to the fact that lunging with a sword and secondary (dagger, cloak, rotella, etc.) is explicitly informed by how you lunge with just the single sword.  While some earlier authors start off their texts instructing us in how to use the sword and buckler together, both Giganti and Capoferro stress the importance of learning how to use the sword alone before adding anything else in.[2][3]  Next, I picked the two guards of quarta seconda as these are the primary ones used for attacking, whereas prima and terza are depicted as significantly less frequently employed options.  Also, I acknowledge that the naming schema used for these guards, as first written down by Camillo Agrippa in his 1553 treatise, isn’t used by Giganti in his writings.  That said, it’s evident that Giganti and Capoferro are pulling from a shared vocabulary of northern Italian late 16^th/early 17^th century rapier pedagogy.  Also, it’s just plain going to be easier to discuss things if I use the same terms for both.

Now, back to the heart of the matter, how are we supposed to lunge?  The basics of it, at least going forwards, are agreed upon by both authors.  They want us to begin by extending our sword arm, then leaning our upper body forwards such that our face is behind our hilt, and then finally ending with a step of the front foot.  The order of operations is incredibly important as it allows us to minimize the risk of bring our body any closer to our opponent’s sword while still allowing us to deliver our thrust.  If we are close enough to strike just by extending the arm, then we don’t have to move ourselves any further into our opponent’s reach.  The same goes for if we can strike them with just an extension of the arm and the upper body.  Finally, if we are at a measure where a full lunge would be advised, this approach allows us to change course in the case that our opponent doesn’t choose to oblige and let us just blow right through their guard.  Once our foot leaves the ground, it has to come down.  Our hand and upper body, though, move across much more of a gradient and thus are easier to pilot in case of failure.

Practitioners of unarmed martial arts might find the order of operations here strange as it explicitly will not hit with the same level of force as firing everything at once.  This is indeed true and were we trying to punch through someone, or strike them with the mass of an object such as a stick or a mace, that advice would be prudent.  However, rapiers were very pointy and they were generally used against people who weren’t wearing any armor.  This means that the amount of force needed to go through our opponent’s wool doublet and out the other side was incredibly low.  So what matters more than the force at which we hit, is the speed we can deliver it and closing as many lines as possible.[4]

Alright, so if we get the same basic instructions, how do the two authors differ?  Well, that’s where the fun begins.  First, let us begin with the feet.  Capoferro gives us a nice breakdown of the geometry of his lunge having us start in an oblique stance with the back foot turned out and then turning it to form a right angle as part of his lunge.

It’s a little hard to see, but if you look closely you’ll see that C, where he tells us to put the sole of our foot while in guard, is behind L where it turns to.  We also see him consistently depict standing guard before lunging with the back foot turned out.

In all of his successful lunges throughout the book we see his characters continuing to end with their back foot turned out to ninety degrees.

Giganti doesn’t write out any instructions on turning the foot in regards to the lunge, so we’re forced to rely solely on the pictures he provides.  In these we see both setting up in guard as well as lunging into positions where are feet either make an oblique angle or are at ninety degrees.  Thus we can surmise that he wasn’t especially picky on the matter.

As a note, the only times we see either of them turn the back foot in to make an acute angle and survive is with the right foot during a passing step.

Next, let us look at the lunge in quarta (with the hand supinated and the true edge turned to the inside line).  Here are two authors are in complete agreement for everything except one minor detail, the off-hand.

While he doesn’t write it out for us, it is clear by looking at the pictures that Giganti’s preference is to keep the elbow of the off-hand bent.  As we will see in just a little bit, Giganti tends to make more use of his off-hand than Capoferro does, so it makes sense that while profiling in order to lengthen his strike, he wouldn’t want his off-hand too far from the crux of the fight.

Capoferro, on the other hand, explicitly tells us to throw our off-hand all the way back.  He writes, “While striking, the left arm should be extended as to form a straight line with the right arm,”[5]  This positioning does three things for us.  First, it essentially eliminates any threat to our off hand.  The metacarpals are small, delicate bones that don’t take lightly to getting hit by a sharp piece of steel.  There’s a reason earlier texts, such as the early 16^th century Anonimo Bolognese, describe so many hits to the hand when fighting without overly complex hilts.  Hits to exposed hands work terrifyingly well even with very little force.  Second, pulling the arm back helps to profile the upper body, which limits the target area and extends how far we can reach.  Third, and this is something we will come back to in a little bit, throwing the arm back helps it to serve as a counterweight that aids us in recovering from the lunge.

How about the outside line?  How are we supposed to lunge in seconda?  Capoferro has us do essentially the same thing on both sides.  Extend the off-hand all the way back, profile the body, and aim for maximum reach.  You might lean slightly more to one side or the other, but otherwise things stay about the same.[6]  Giganti gives us a different suggestion.

When lunging on the outside line he shortens his reach a bit.  What he gets in return, though, is more lateral stability.  So if his opponent tries to push through his guard, he’ll be a little better set up than Capferro will be to resist.  This is consistent with how he performs a passing step as I noted here [link to article].  As well, this makes it easier for him to bring in the off-hand.

Finally, let’s look at how each master instructs us to recover from the lunge.  This part comes down more to a differing level of detail than difference in explicit instruction.  Now, the way I most commonly see this taught by instructors nowadays is saying that you should essentially reverse the order of the lunge; foot, body, arm.  Looking at the original texts, no one explicitly says to do this.  Capoferro just tells us to recover the foot before the arm but makes no explicit mention of the upper body.[7]  Giganti, on the other hand, gives us crystal clear instructions by telling us to recover by, “moving the head back first, then the body and lastly the foot.”[8]  The later authors, specifically Gorio and di Mazio essentially just tell us to get out of there as quickly as possible.  The only time we really get explicit instructions on starting the recovery from the foot are from the late 17^th and 18^th century authors, such as Terracusa, who are all using the “enervated” lunge that doesn’t involve leaning the torso forwards.  The exception to this is Marcelli, who in 1686 explicitly agrees with Giganti by telling us to pull back with the head-first, despite not having leaned into his lunge.[9]

What does this tell us about how to faithfully recreate this art?  Well, there are two to look at it.  The first is to say that when one author gives us explicit instructions and the other doesn’t, we should just default to the more specific one and thus should all be recovering head-first even if we are just trying to replicate Capoferro.  The other side to this is you could argue that Capoferro is sufficiently vague to the point that either a foot or a head-first recovery could be considered a valid interpretation and just because Giganti did it one way, doesn’t mean that Capoferro inherently followed suit.

We often take the fundamentals for granted and ignore them to focus on flashier techniques.  As the name suggests, though, they are the very foundation upon which all of our other techniques lay.  Hopefully this little exploration will help to further your understanding of the core mechanic of our art.

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[1] Some people say that strictly speaking, it isn’t exactly accurate to lunge when doing longsword.  Those people are incorrect.  Fiore uses the same word “accresciemento” as is used in the later rapier manuals.  Specifically he uses it in the Getty manuscript when discussing what footwork options are available to us from posta dente al cinghara as a way of telling us to take a step forwards with the foot that is already in front.

[2] Giganti, page 5.

[3] Capoferro, page 21.

[4] Remember, we aren’t dealing with ballistic force here as our muscles are being engaged the entire time and we ideally aren’t letting go of our sword.

[5] Capoferro, page 14.

[6] Capoferro, page 13.

[7] Capoferro, page 23.

[8] Giganti, page 4.

[9] Marcelli, page 192.

Works Cited

Venetian Rapier, by Nicoletto Giganti, translated by Tom Leoni.

The Art and Practice of Fencing, by Ridolfo Capoferro, translated by Tom Leoni.

Rules of Fencing, by Francesco Antonio Marcelli, translated by Christopher A. Holzman.

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.

Ridolfo Capoferro, in his 1610 manual, begins his section on tempo by dividing all tempi into four categories. These are:

1. Primo tempo – When you are in either misura stretta or misura larga (narrow or wide measure) and strike your opponent with a single action of the sword.
2. Dui tempi – When you require two actions of the sword in order to strike.
3. Mezzo tempo – Either when you strike your opponent’s uncovered sword arm with a thrust or half cut OR when you strike your opponent in misura stretta as they move to strike (but before they have begun the actual strike) or to perform any other kind of move. Redoubling strikes are done in mezzo tempo.
4. Contratempo – When you strike while the opponent is striking. This is generally done by taking a shorter path than they do.

A couple pieces of info to add in. First, “primo tempo” can be translated as both “a single tempo” as well as “first tempo”. Many teachers nowadays separate these into “stesso tempo” for actions that occur in a single beat and “primo tempo” for striking in the very first tempo of the fight as one person steps to enter measure. Second, the cuts in mezzo tempo are typically half cuts (tip of the sword ends in presence) as indicated by the terms mezzo mandritto and mezzo roverso. Third, the line between mezzo tempo and contratempo can get really blurry and the two are sometimes used interchangeably depending on who you ask. This is why I added in the clarification in parentheses that mezzo tempo generally refers to attacking during the preparation of an attack (such as chambering a cut or disengaging before going on to thrust) as opposed to during the execution of the attack.

Capoferro then goes on to follow, as we will see in a moment, in his predecessor’s footsteps and provide us with specific examples of offensive tempi during which you can safely attack. They are as follows:

1. When they are motionless in guard and then lifts or moves their front foot to approach you.
2. After you parry his attack.
3. When my opponent changes guard for no apparent reason, right after they settle into a new position.
4. When the opponent lifts their hand.
5. When the opponent’s strike has passed out of your presence.

Two things to note here. First, he does not do us the courtesy of cross-referencing these specific examples with the general categories of tempo he mentioned two paragraphs previously. This is something I will remedy in just a moment. Second, this list is essentially identical to the list of examples Giovanni dall’Agocchie gives us in his 1572 text.

1. After parrying.
2. After a blow passes the body.
3. While they raise their sword to strike.
4. Injudiciously changing guards.
5. When they lift their foot to advance.

This goes to show that Capoferro remains more rooted in the earlier Bolognese sidesword tradition than some of his contemporary rapier maestros. Later on in his book we even see him make use of the explicitly Bolognese techniques of guardia di faccia as well as the universal parry.

Four years before Capoferro’s manuscript hit the presses, Nicoletto Giganti provided us with another list of tempi that might pop up in any given fight. They are:

1. While they perform a cavazione.
2. While they change guard.
3. When they deliver an attack.
4. While they are taking a step into measure.
5. When you parry and riposte in a single tempo.
6. If they stand still, you advance into measure and immediately attack.
7. Every time their sword, dagger, foot, or body moves.

Of note, Giganti just gives us this list of specific examples without providing any larger categories under which each might fit into.

Alright now for the grand prize, slotting all of these examples into the four categories we were started off with. I realize that Giganti and Capoferro employ slightly different conceptions of what constitutes a single tempo, but this should pretty much make sense.

	Primo Tempo	Dui Tempi	Mezzo Tempo	Contratempo
While they perform a cavazione			X
While they change guard	X
When they deliver an attack				X
While they are taking a step into measure	X
When you parry and riposte in a single tempo	X			X
If they stand still, you advance into measure and immediately attack	X
Every time their sword, dagger, foot, or body moves	X	X	X	X
When they are motionless in guard and then lifts or move their front foot to approach you	X
After I parry his attack		X
When your opponent changes guard for no apparent reason, right after they settle into a new position			X
When the opponent lifts their hand			X
When the opponent’s strike has passed out of your presence		X

A couple things to consider that didn’t handily fit into the format of this chart. First, depending on how you interpret it, most mezzo or contra tempo actions could also be considered to be primo tempo at the same time. While I have found it useful in my teaching to reference these as all as different kinds of tempo, I could also see the validity in having actions be either primo tempo or dui tempi and then also either mezzo tempo or contratempo. For instance, I marked down “parry and riposte in a single tempo” under two different headings as it seems to be implying something different than attacking while they deliver an attack, but the specifics are left fairly open ended. My best guess is that Capoferro might count that as two tempi, as the sword might be doing two distinct actions, but Giganti seems to see is all as a single tempo as long as the flow of movement never comes to a stop.

Second, I marked down “if they stand still, you advance into measure and immediately attack” as primo tempo and not dui tempi as only one of your actions counts as a tempo. This might seem weird, especially as you just moved your feet twice, but outside of measure there is no tempo.

Third, I, without any further clarification from the author, can’t say which tempo “every time their sword, dagger, foot, or body moves” is. Nonetheless, it is helpful to remember that every action or inaction inside of measure counts as a tempo so I didn’t want to exclude it from the list.

Fourth, I noted “When your opponent changes guard for no apparent reason, right after they settle into a new position” as mezzo tempo as opposed to primo tempo to fit under Capoferro’s idea that it is attacking while your opponent performs “any other kind of move”. This might mean that your sword gets to shoot forward in a straight line, but an injudicious change of guard inside of measure could also lead to you performing a cavazione (disengage) before you strike.

Finally, I marked down “when the opponent’s strike has passed out of your presence” as dui tempi since their sword completes an action and then one tempo later your sword moves. That said, if you narrowed to window to just what actions your sword has taken, you could easily make the case for it being primo tempo. This would be especially true if your opponent just whiffs the blow as opposed to you using a tempo to void.

Hopefully you find this to be a useful tool. While these concepts were written out specifically for the use of the sidesword and the rapier, I have had a lot of success in applying these to all sorts of striking arts.

Sources:

“The Art and Practice of Fencing”, by Ridolfo Capoferro, 1610. Translated by Tom Leoni.

“Venetian Rapier” by Nicoletto Giganti, 1606. Translated by Tom Leoni.

“The 5 tempi to attack of Giovanni dall’Agocchie” presented by The University of Potsdam. https://youtu.be/QhnEJ025Duo

In our modern way of teaching Italian rapier, the default is generally to teach the passing step with the left foot remaining turned out.  This allows for the maximum amount of reach in a single step as it allows you to continue forwards while staying profiled and not having to do much to turn the hips or the shoulders. Where do we get this from? Is this in line with what we see in the manuals? Let’s find out.

To start off, let’s look at the greatest author (fight me) on the subject, Nicoletto Giganti. In his manuals, while we see the left foot starting off turned out, nowhere do we see this as the ending position for a passing step.  In every completed passing step (there’s one image with the left foot in the air that I’m not counting here), we see the foot turned forwards.  Why might he be doing it this way?  There are many answers to this question, but let’s consider just a few here today. 

The question you likely have rattling around in your brain is, “Well he only shows this to us one way. Is that what everyone else did?”  The short answer is, “no.”  To flesh that out a little bit more the answer is actual yes, with the occasional instance of no.

We currently have two books written by Giganti, although he does make reference to a possible third.  While his first is much more well-known (and is overall just a much better book), his second book does show us a variety of instances where passing steps are employed.  In none of these, though, do we see the left foot ending turned out.

“Well what about everyone else?”

I am glad you asked. In fact, I am even more pleased by the fact that you are making sure to broaden your own education by not limiting yourself to any one resource.  Let’s take a look over at Capoferro.  Overall he seems to pass less often than Giganti does.  When he does pass, he is doing so the same way as Giganti in almost every single plate.[1]  Occasionally we even see the foot turned with the toe pointing inwards as for instance we see in plate 12.

We do, however, find a couple instances that break the mold.  First, on plate 11 we see depicted a passata sotto, an action that involves ducking under your opponent’s sword as you pass forwards. 

Notably, this is not an action we see depicted anywhere in Giganti.  Giganti has two plates in his second book that each depict a sbasso,[2] a lunge that involves ducking under your opponent’s sword, but never shows us a passata sotto[3].[4]  Now, why might Capoferro be encouraging a turned out passing step here, but not when we’re more upright?  The big reason that come to mind are that you have already succeeded in getting out of the way of your opponent’s sword and that you don’t need to resist any sort of parry.  The passata sotto is an attack in absence where instead of gaining your opponent’s sword and then striking through, you have instead gotten your body entirely out of the way and are now just striking into an open target.  At this point all that matters is not falling over and making sure your point can reach.  So, by turning the foot out Capoferro provides us a more stable base while extending our measure, all while not having to worry all that much about structure.

These two are also the reasons that Fabris, generally the most detail oriented of the bunch, gives us in his explanation of how to pass low while striking in seconda on plate 8 of his book. 

He tells us that passing in such a way will actually make any more steps forward much quicker.  Fabris also defaults to having you continue going forwards once you have struck your opponent, whereas Giganti generally wants you to recover and then strike three to five more times as you opponent stands there in shock.

Continuing on, we see the foot turned out when passing in quarta even though the upper body isn’t bent over to the same degree, although still more so than we generally see in Giganti.

This method of passing forwards with the left foot turned out continues to be employed for the vast majority of his book.[5]  We do see a few plates that depict that clearly depict the left foot in front with the toe pointing forwards, but these are almost entirely left foot forward guards as opposed to ending positions for passing steps.  The only plate that clearly depicts a pass with the left foot ending up pointed straight Is all the way in the back in the section of how to respond to attacks with a dagger while you are unarmed. We see this same thing happen a little earlier in the book with disarms, as well as a throw, against the sword.[6]

Notably, we no longer see the quintessential Fabris posture depicted here with the pronounced hip hinge and instead see fighters standing straight up.

So, when should we turn our foot out on the pass?  It would seem that the answer is that when standing more upright, as in Giganti and almost all of Capoferro, we should refrain from turning the foot out.  However, if we are someone who tends to keep their torso lower to the ground, it seems that turning out is indeed the answer.

Peering over at the earlier Bolognese material, we see the foot being turned out on the pass if it’s a discordant cut.  This same logic doesn’t seem to translate to the thrust here, though.  While Giganti doesn’t show us many passing steps to the inside, when he does he still keeps the foot turned forwards.

Fabris shows us the turned out pass with the blade oriented in all four guards of the sword.  Fabris maintains his foot turned out orientation both when his upper body is folded forwards as well as when it is folded off to the side.  Giganti hardly ever leans off to the side with his upper body and is only seen doing so on the lunge and not the pass[8], as part of an inquartata[9], or as part of a void as against an opponent coming in with the feet planted.[10]

A slight exception to my overarching theory so far is that we do see a rather bent over upper body while keeping the left foot pointed forwards while half-swording.  It is important to note, though, that although the body is being bent forwards you are still above your opponent’s sword here and are pushing downwards instead of trying to disengage your body underneath.

Going back to Capoferro, we see the same thing happen again where instead of half-swording, he presses down on his opponent’s arm with his off hand and thrusts from underneath with this sword.  In this play again the body is kept far above your opponent’s sword and thus we keep the left foot pointed forwards.

The piece that ends up breaking the proposed theory is what shows up a few pages later.  Here we see Capoferro passing with the foot mostly, although not entirely, turned out without his body being bent over all of the way.

Draw your attention to how far his sword is sticking out the back of his opponent’s head.  Most of the time there’s a generous serving of steel poking out the other end, but in this instance there’s only a little bit, implying that this action is done at the edge of his widest measure.

Going deeper into Fabris also reveals to us a couple exceptions to the left foot being turned out on the pass.

Here we see that the primary concern is with getting the dagger across the body instead of on maximizing reach.  The sword here is already a decent distance through the opposing fighter even after going around the dagger and having the arm bent.

So, while there seems to be a large overlap between how far you bend over and how turned out your left foot is on the pass, they seem not to be purely concentric circles.  While we could dismiss these last few examples as just the exceptions that prove the rule, that answer just doesn’t do it for me.  There’s a reason each of these plays was put into texts we’re still reading four hundred years later, so clearly there’s value there.  After talking to a few friends and getting to try things out in the real world, I was able to figure out something else that seems to explain more of what’s going on.  While turning the foot out definitely helps keep balance for some of the more extreme front-bending postures, what it does regardless of back flexibility is that it allows for a wider measure and provides more resistance against anything moving in along the z-axis.  We see this foot orientation paired with keeping the hips turned such that the right hip stays in front, keeping the fighter more profiled and extending their reach along that single line.  On the other hand, turning the foot forwards and squaring the hips up provides more resistance for pressure on the x-axis.  This helps better fend off cuts and counter-finds, as well as helps provide more stability while passing off-line.

At the end of the day which way should we turn out foot on the pass?  In Fabris the emphasis seems to primarily be on getting your body out of the way of your opponent’s sword and then maximizing your reach in order to hit them.  We see the foot turned out even when the pass isn’t particularly deep, which is reflective his wider use of voids than some of the other masters as he would rather deal with as little blade on blade contact as possible. What he leaves open instead is how far forwards he needs to step.  By leaning farther forwards he makes it easier to get his upper body out of the way as well as extends the reach of his attacks.  Giganti, on the other hand, sets himself up to deal better with lateral resistance from his opponent’s blade.  Especially on the outside line his concern is with intercepting his opponent following up with a cut.[12]  As well, his default lunge in seconda is fairly squared up, which sacrifices a bit of measure but in turn provides more lateral stability for keeping his opponent’s tip outside of his silhouette.  He tends not to bend his body as far over when he lunges, as after a certain point hinging forwards makes it harder to provide resistance against a riposte.  Thus, by avoiding these positions he ends up not really needing to turn his foot out on the pass for added stability and can instead keep it pointed forwards more easily opening up cross line and off-line steps.  While none of these authors entirely eschew one strength for another, we can learn a lot from how much they prioritize one over the other.

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[1] Capoferro plates 8, 9, 12, 13, 20, 31, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41, & 42.

[2] A low line lunge.

[3] Lierally “pass under.”

[4] Giganti book II pages 84 & 86.

[5] Fabris plates 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 105, 129, 132, 136, 137, 141, 145, 148, 159, 162, 167. 169, 171, 173, 175, 176, 178

[6] Fabris plates 180, 181, 182

[7] Giganti Book II pages 50 and 54

[8] Giganti Book II page 80

[9] Giganti Book I plate 7

[10] Giganti Book I plate

[11] Capoferro plate 18

[12] Giganti Book I plate 10

Sometimes you have a question, but you don’t yet have the tools to answer it.  That’s where I found myself this week when after a discussion with Guy Windsor, I found myself trying to find out when the period Italian masters moved from the idea of gioco (play) to the idea of mesura (measure).  The answer to that particular question will come later, but I found something helpful along the way that I’d like to share with you.

We have come to the point as a community where we have available to us a pretty wide array of period treatises, uploaded to the internet as PDF’s with some available as published transcriptions in the original.  While I will always have an affinity for the printed book, sometimes it can be handy to have a search function available.  This is especially true when your question is linguistic in nature.  Now, sometimes the PDF gets handed to you as already searchable.  Sometimes you find that a scan of the original is up on Google Books and you can use their search function to find what you’re looking for.  And sometimes someone typed out a transcription and uploaded it to a site like Wiktenauer where you can look at it side by side with multiple translations.  Occasionally, though, you find yourself with a PDF that’s just a bunch of pictures of the inside of a book without any immediately available search function in the free version of Adobe you have running on your computer.

It is precisely this situation I found myself in this week.  I had a full translation of the text available and along with it was a partial transcription.  Thankfully, a friend of mine was able to direct me to where I could download the entire thing, but not in a form that came with a search bar.  While I theoretically could have sat there and tried to read through all eighty pages of period Italian looking for a word to show up three times, I did not feel the urge to try and recreate what it would have been like for a scholar in the sixteenth century trying to find answers by candlelight. After poking a few friends who are better researchers than myself, it turned out that there was indeed an answer to my immediate problem, OCR.  OCR stands for optical character recognition is a kind of tool set up to solve this exact task.  Whereas I could have theoretically converted it into Word or just a plain text file, this let me skip the step of having to reformat every single sentence, a task possibly worse than just going back and reading through it manually. 

Although there appear to be a wide variety of companies with OCR services, the one I ended up landing on was https://tools.pdf24.org/en/ocr-pdf.  I honestly don’t know if this is necessarily the best one out there, but it did hit every box on my checklist.  It was easy to use, didn’t require me to download a program and then rearrange which folders every specific component went into, got me to where I needed to go, and was free.

Hopefully this tale was useful to you, my fellow scholars.  Whether reading it introduced you to a new tool, or it served merely as a form of entertainment.  I wish you all well in your studies and look forward to reading about what you discover along the way.

Back in February I had the pleasure of attending Academie Duello’s level I instructor intensive and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Over the course of five days, we spent 50 hours not only learning the fundamentals of rapier and longsword from the school’s founder, Devon Boorman, but also how to teach it all to the next generation.  As a result, all of us are eligible to test for a “green cord”, the school’s first of five ranks.

Now, why should someone with a dozen years of experience, a decent amount of tournament wins, and a well-respected rank in their own group spend an entire week working nothing but fundamentals?  I mean, we only learned one flashy cut, shouldn’t people at the higher end be spending their time on the hardest moves?  I can definitely why this might make sense, but if you talk to any top-level practitioner, regardless of the art, they know that what’s most important is their building blocks.  In ballet there’s the saying that the first and last thing you learn is the plie.  Pulling off an inquartata in the middle of a fight might be fun, but I for one do so roughly once or twice a year.  As a result, I know that’s not where I need to be spending most of my time.

Here are my five main takeaways from a week filled with swords, swords, and even more swords.

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1. How to lunge

We all know how to lunge, right?  It’s one of the very first things we’re taught:  arm, body, foot.  Well as correct as you are my rhetorical friend, there’s a few more details that affect a whole lot.  Specifically Devon teaches his students to commit fully to the guard (typically quarta or seconda) on the gain/lean.  This stands in contrast to how I had previously been taught which was to not finish the volta stable of the sword until right before my foot finishes landing, slowly turning the sword bit by bit throughout the process.  Devon’s logic is to prioritize fully getting control of my opponent’s sword as opposed to worrying as much about preparing against a disengage.  This fits into a larger narrative of committing to the “true game” of mechanical advantage before worrying about the little lies we tell with our swords.  I personally don’t know yet which of these modes will end up working best for me, but I’m definitely going to spend the next few months trying out this new way and seeing what happens.  I know I’ve begun to rely a little heavily on invites and being to slippery for my opponents to get control of my blade, so it will be interesting to see what shifting in the other direction does.

2.  How to cut

Depending on who you ask, there are 8-9 cuts.  Our focus was on two of them.  Specifically both the mandritto and roverso fendenti.  The big takeaway here was cutting in a fashion that does not involve leading with the unprotected hands.  Coming from a rapier and sidesword background, this has never really been something I’ve had to worry about as I’ve always had a rather substantial hilt.  Take that away, though, and you suddenly have to figure out how to cut in a fashion that doesn’t leave open the closest of targets.  As a hand-sniper, especially in longsword, focusing on this will also make it easier for me to see when my opponent’s hands are open and when they’re not, especially when I strike in mezzo tempo.

3. Tempo

Speaking of Tempo, Devon gave us a really helpful breakdown of how to view all tempi.  Giganti, towards the beginning of his book talks about a wide variety of tempi such as the tempo of the hand, the tempo of changing guards, the tempo of not moving, etc. and then concludes by saying that everything is a tempo.  While this view is indeed quite helpful, it’s a little difficult to transplant onto an overarching framework for how to deal with anything that might come up.  Here instead is a more unified way of describing each kind of tempi.

Primo tempo – Act as your opponent steps into your measure.  This does not include when they actually attack.

Dui tempi – Striking as they recover after forcing them to recover.

Contra Tempo – As they attack.

Mezzo tempo – Strike them in the preparation of their action (e.g. while they prep a cut).

4. Measure

Similar to tempo, we were given a larger framework to describe measure that goes into greater detail than whether or not you need to move you foot in order to strike.  They are as follows.

Mesura largissima – Can strike with a passing step.

Mesura larga – Can strike with a lunge.

Mesura stretta – Can strike with a firm footed lunge.

Mesura strettisima – Can strike with a reverse lunge/as you back away.

5. How to drill

There’s a chart of this in Devon’s book “Introduction to the Italian Rapier”, which I’m not going to reproduce here, but I am going to encourage you to go out and buy.  I will, however, divulge what is for now my biggest takeaway from this part of the seminar.  Specifically the difference between blocked and variable drilling.  Blocked drilling is working on an action (AAAA) or a strict series of actions (ABCD, ABCD, ABCD) and helps give students a time and place to refine their mechanics.  This form of drilling is wonderful and we should really all be doing more of it, however, this tightly scripted work is often the only thing people think about when they hear the word “drill”.  What was eye opening to me here was another form of drilling, variable drilling, that focuses less on the specific mechanics and works more towards helping students recall what needs to happen during the chaos of a fight.  This can either be done solo switching between a set of actions (ABCD, BCDA, DBAC, etc.) or can be “cued” off of a partner choosing between different options each one requiring a different response.

This is just an overview and I hope to write up more of my thoughts later.  In the meantime, if you can find it in you to help support a small business that has helped to train thousands of fighters and stands as one of the pillars of our community, I implore you to head over to https://www.gofundme.com/f/uvhgh-help-keep-swordplay-alive and contribute anything that you can.

Today I relearned how to hold a sword, again.

You’d think that after twelve years of rapier fencing, dozens of tournament wins, and having had the pleasure of studying under several of the world’s greatest instructors, I would have something so basic as “how to hold a sword” down at this point.  And here we see why I’m not a betting man.

There’s a saying in the ballet world that the very first and last thing you learn how to do is a plie.  When top dancers go in for additional coaching what they’re concerned with isn’t how to do the biggest, brightest move.  It’s how to improve their fundamentals because they know that’ll let them do everything else just that much better.

We have our share of flashy moves in fencing.  Whether is a tutta girata where you get to see your opponent skewer themselves on your blade as you bring your back foot all the way around, or disarms that let you walk away with a bonus sword as you drag your opponent off the field to be ransomed at a later date.  Studying these aspects has its place and they’re definitely something the advanced practitioner should familiar themselves with.  However, oftentimes these are given the bulk of attention during drilling while we let our fundamentals fall to the wayside.  Now, the balance between these will differ based off your own personal goals.  However, even the most esoteric of fencers will agree that practicing the fundamentals is the core of engaging with the art.

With the bulk of the philosophizing out of the way, let us now dive into specifics.  In regard to Italian rapier specifically, I have run across three general ways of holding the sword.[1]  The first is something I see most prevalently in Capo Ferro fencers.

Here the pommel rests on the muscles of the forearm.  While this has the benefit of allowing for tighter disengages, I see that as being outweighed by how it negatively affects your structure.  By having the sword be out of line with the ulna, you give up being able to push everything forwards in one single line.

The solution in my mind to this had always been to pull the pommel underneath the ulna in order to make sure that everything is going in the same direction.

These past few weeks, though, I’ve upped the amount of solo drilling I’ve been doing and started to notice something.  Not only was it difficult to bring my thumb all the way into play with this grip, but my wrists would often hurt, and my shoulders would ache by the end of a class.  The sword I use for drilling in my tiny studio apartment is a 39” as opposed to the 42” I use in competition and I was getting confused as to why it felt so heavy.  Surely part of it is that drilling is more tiring than sparring, as the total number of reps inherently goes up and I can’t rely on my opponent to do all of the work for me.  Something about that explanation just didn’t sit right with me.  I’d watch video of other people fighting, though, and it seemed like they were able to move their swords way faster than I could.  Again, I counseled myself saying that efficiency is all that matters, not speed, and that surely it all just looks faster from the outside.  Besides, I must just be tired partway through class and the people I am watching surely must still be fresh.  That explanation still didn’t feel like enough though.

Today, towards the beginning of my second class, something clicked.  My last few classes I’d been feeling my sword slip into more of the Capo Ferro grip the more tired I got.  So I’d made a conscious decision to push hard the other way and it turns out that swinging the pendulum to the other side paid off.  All of a sudden I felt faster, my wrist wasn’t angry at me, and my shoulder didn’t feel like it had to hold up all of this weight.  Instead of just getting the pommel in line with my arm, I had gotten the handle of my sword to sit on the true edge of my hand.  This not only brought my thumb more easily into play, which strengthens the grip all that much more, but all my actions suddenly felt more supported and by the end of class the only thing holding me back was my lack of cardio.

If you haven’t thought about them lately, go take a look at your fundamentals.  Try re-tweaking your lunge, change how you disengage, play with how you power your cuts.  You’d be surprised what you find out.

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[1] Please note that I don’t have any particular preference for whether a student puts one or two fingers over the quillion.  Although, as you see, I demonstrate a preference for one of these, which one you decide to go with is more of something I view as a matter of taste.

Here is the video of and my own personal outline for the class I just taught through RUM (Royal University of the Midrealm). They pull largely from Tom Leoni’s chapter on dueling in “In the Service of Mars Part I” and Ann Tlusty’s book “The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany”. I highly recommend checking both of these books out. In the meantime, hopefully this will serve as a handy resource for anyone interested in the history of dueling. Also, if you want a more in depth dive into Italian dueling, check out my article on the subject here.

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Italian Aristocratic Duel

Honor based society

Honor code: scienza cavalleresca (the chivalrous science)

“honor is the prize of virtue and is paid to none but the good.” – Aristotle

honor was based on the virtues of valor and justice

Honor was not considered to be an entirely isolated attribute.  It was instead something that was defined and given by those around you.

honor was, “preferred to one’s father, one’s ruler, one’s country, and life itself. ” Thus your duty to preserve honor superseded your duty to obey your lord’s wishes

Reality differed, though.  Marozzo says “although many knights professed to prefer death with honor rather than life with shame, the number who had acted in accordance with this assertion was small”

Certain groups were inherently dishonorable (those of lowly professions, Jews, people with dishonorable ancestors)

Other groups were considered without honor (women, children, etc.)

Duels are seen as higher than battles since there’s less luck involved and there’s more risk

            Medieval battles tended to end after one side lost 10% of their forces

Duels are more interested in “justice” than “truth”

The Mentita

Marozzo’s five required justifications for a duel:

1. You suffered an injury
2. Hard to prove via credible witnesses
3. You have to be of equal or higher status than the person you’re accusing
4. The cause needs to be personal
5. This can’t have previously been tried in court (with or without a verdict)

Pigna adds:

• Defendant has to say “you lie” thereby issues the mentita

This puts the burden of proof on the accuser to dissuade frivolous suits and false accusations.

The injury can be either an action (i.e. a slap) or words (talking trash)

            The accuser has to claim not only that this event happened, but that it happened unjustly.  So if you kiss my sister on the street, other people could reliably say whether or not that happened.  If you kiss her unjustly, that is not only harder to prove, but also gives me license to pursue justice.  Alternatively, if you say something bad about my business/family, I don’t just have to prove that you said it, but that you said it unjustly.

Five kinds of mentita:

1. Mentita certa – You said X of me, I tell you now that you lied
2. Mentita condizionale – If you said X, you have lied
3. Mentita generale – (in regards to a person )Whosever said X of me lies OR (in regards to an injury) You have spoken ill of me, thereby lying
4. Mentita speciale ­– You, on X day said Y of me, and by saying so lied
5. Mentita sciocca (silly/abusive) – If you ever say X of me, you lie/ If you wish to say X, you lie/ If you have said X or haven’t said X of me, you lie/ you are lying through your teeth (via farting)

Instead of calling someone a liar, you can say “Things aren’t as you say” in order to diffuse the situation.

The one issuing the mentita gets to choose weapons.  The accuser chooses time and place.

            Weapons had to be matched and made easily available.  You also couldn’t force a right handed person to use a left handed sword to your advantage.

            Location couldn’t be seen as too advantageous.

            Terms included weapons, defensive secondaries, whether armor was worn, and whether it was on horseback. 

Seeing as a bigger risk was seen as more honorable, Dall’Agocchie notes how going without armor was the more

Accuser issues a cartello which is a binding document, prompting a riposta from the defendant (issuing the mentita)

Three kinds of cartelli

1. Cartello
2. Rogito – signed by a notary
3. Manifesto – pasted on walls instead of delivered

When legal, these all had to go through the proper judicial channels.

Having to sit down and write this out gave people time to cool off and reconsider.

The Duel

40 days to train and get your affairs in order

            Right to a speedy trial

            Once again gave time for people to consider if this is what they wanted to do.

Location was the campo franco

            If you picked a place that was too advantageous, or too hard to get to you would be disqualified and found the loser

If you couldn’t find a lord to host it, it would be alla machia (on public land) away from towns and villages

            This specific tradition begins in Naples

The fight happened inside a steccato

            Looked like a boxing ring

Generally began a few hours before sunset

Given every chance to confess and thus avoid going through with the fight up until stepping into the steccato

Accuser had to deliver an initial committed blow (attore)

            Throwing the pommel

Winning poorly was worse than outright losing.   So hidden weapons, vigorous punching and kicking, not allowing an opponent to replace a broken blade, killing their horse (unless that condition was explicitly allowed), digging a trap beforehand, etc. were looked down upon.

Herald announced that audience must be silent upon penalty of death

Possible victories:

1. No show/late arrival (*glares at Musashi*)
2. Defendant confesses
3. Defendant successfully defends until sundown (again, this benefits the defendant)
4. Either person touches the ropes with their back
5. Either person is incapacitated
6. One person dies
7. They both die

If one party was clearly injured past the point of being able to fight but continued attempting to do so, the judge could declare the fight over.

These were not to first blood

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German Middle Class Dueling

Citizenship

            No Jews, women, etc.

Required to own arms

            Men often carried arms with them outside the house

                        A common punishment was removing this right outside, but not inside, the house

                        One man was forced to wear a bread knife with a broken tip for a year

            Local lords wanted both a populous that could defend itself, but also didn’t want to be overthrown

Guard duty

            Non-professional

            Very few lights

            No other police or firefighters

                        Interfering in fights was technically the duty of all citizens

Rising tension between state’s expanding their powers and having to defend your home

            As we shift to households, women’s rights begin to be curtailed

            Stabbing through a doorway was a particularly pointed gesture

                        A public verbal insult was much easier to diffuse/apologize for

            Declining power of the guilds

Military ethic

            Fashion

                        Sumptuary laws restricted ornamentation, but not wearing of the sword itself

                        Fashion was set by soldiers first and then worked its way up to the aristocracy

            Convince people to go over the trench

Honor

Reputation

            Women would threaten to leave if a man didn’t stand up for himself

            It was important to be seen as having died a good death when dueling

                        A good death would also lean towards more lenient sentencing for the killer

Duels were banned in the military, but were culturally strongly encouraged

Church officials threatened excommunication or refusal of burial in churchyards, but this didn’t help

States made duelling illegal but let it slide by as to prevent even larger acts of risk taking

            The state would step in if it was found to be an unfair fight

            By making it illegal, participating now came with increased social capital

            Officials at the University of Gottingen noted that permitting bloodless duels would have only encouraged bloody ones

            Restoring your honor required a certain level of risk/putting things on the line

The Duel

These duels could be impromptu (often as a result of long-lasting tensions) or pre-arranged

            They required a certain degree of fair warning

            Surprise attacks were universally considered to be dishonorable

                        Punishment was either death or a life sentence of fighting the Turks

Parties had to be equally armed

            This included not only the weapons, but also whether or not the combatants were on horseback

            Observers might step in if it’s an unfair fight, but were less likely to otherwise

                        Chivalric idea of the strong protecting the weak

            You generally had to stop if your opponent fell or lost their weapon

Officers had to explicitly ban soldiers from using magical salves

            Seconds in aristocratic duels would often check for magical charms

            All magic was illegal after the Reformation

Thrusting with a sword was generally looked down upon (Joachim Meyer)

            Thrusts were associated with unexpected attacks with hidden knives or stilletos

Sources at the time would often use “brawl” or “fight” instead of “duel” to describe the same behavior in lower social classes

            Schlag means to “strike” with either the sword or the fist, making differentiating harder for historians

State officials cared more about whether drawing a weapon was justified as opposed to who attacked first.  These officials were hardly separate from the same culture of dueling as everyone else.

Universities were a hotbed for duels

            Students from all over

            Students generally didn’t identify with the town where they were studying

            Universities often employed fencing masters, even when they tried to ban students from dueling or even carrying swords

While not written into law, the social around the lead up to duels were socially enforced and clear to everyone at the time

            Every step leading up provided a chance for de-escalation

As a note, this was my final thesis for my undergraduate degree. It was written almost six years ago and my study of swordplay, period combat, and writing as a whole has evolved since then. That said, I still find this to be a useful resource to look back on. As such, it seems the best thing I can do with this work now is to share it with the public here. I hope that in your reading of it you find something of value and continue to help spread the passion for the study of history and the martial arts.

Introduction

Duels are something that have always captured our imaginations, be it Andrew Burr against Alexander Hamilton or The Man in Black against Inigo Montoye.  Very few people though, know much about how duels were actually fought.  Many of us have an image of slapping someone else with a glove followed by twenty paces at dawn.  This image, like many in popular culture, has very little to do with historical fact.  What I aim to do is to delve into how people got into duels, how duels were fought, and finally how they were perceived.

My aim is to both show the level of formality and regulation behind duels as well as to dispel them as something pure that “real men” did back in the day.  The duel was a complex institution, intertwined with honor and Western society.  As this paper progresses it will gradually narrow down, going from the more general to the specific.  It will begin with the setting, sixteenth-century Italy, and will continue on to the very particular weapon of the rapier.

There are four questions this paper asks.  The first is, “What did people at the time mean by the word ‘honor’?”  Honor was the supposed basis for all dueling.  Thus, we must first explore what is meant by honor before we can address the duel.  The second question is, “What did a duel look like?”  This is meant to get down the specific rules detailing how dueling was done as well as how a duel might have come about.  The third question is, “What is a rapier?”  The word “rapier” in an anachronistic one and at the time they were generally just referred to as “swords.”  This is similar to how “gothic art” was at the time just referred to as “modernist art.”  Both gothic art and the rapier are considered now to be discrete and clearly distinct.  The final question is, “What did people at the time think of these duels?”  To our modern sensibilities it would seem insane to put your life on the line for something as silly sounding as “honor.”  Yet, clearly, people at the time found dueling to be of a rather high level of importance. 

In terms of sources, this is a particularly narrow field.  I was limited from the start in not being able to read Italian and thus only relying on translations and those who have read sources from the time in their original.  Most sources at the time dealing with duels spent a lot of time teaching you how to win one, but not a lot on the mechanics of the duel.  Although the mechanics of swordplay are of particular interest to me, they are not the primary focus for this paper.

Honor

In the Italian peninsula honor grew out of a code called the scienza cavalleresca (the chivalrous science).  For them, this was the basis of all civilization.  In a pre-capitalist society, your role in society was largely determined by birth.  There was a place for everything, and ideally, everything stayed in its place.  Without this code of honor, everything would come crumbling down.[1]  As with many things during the Italian Renaissance, it was the ancient Greeks and Romans that were looked back upon as the definitive sources on the matter of honor.

Out of all of the classical thinkers, it was Aristotle who was most often quoted.  In fact, Aristotle was held in such high regards that thinkers such as Antonio Bernardi, who was himself a cleric, pushed aside the bible in favor of Aristotle when discussing honor and the duel.[2]  In a time lacking in the embracing of religious plurality, a popular cleric preaching the words of a polytheist over his own holy book and not being punished is indeed something of great significance.

There are a variety of quotes from Aristotle that were bantered around during the sixteenth-century in order to understand/prescribe what honor entails.  One such statement was that, “honor is the prize of virtue and is paid to none but the good.”[3]  The idea behind this is that if you are virtuous, others will see this and will then consider you honorable.  To anyone though who has consistently put in hard work to help others while receiving absolutely no recognition, this statement might appear problematic.  Although in an ideal world, all “virtuous” people would be praised, it is not hard to see that someone could be considered honorable by the public eye despite their true nature.

Honor was not considered to be an entirely isolated attribute.  It was instead something that was defined and given by those around you. [4]  For these writers, both parties in the bestowing of honor were considered inherently virtuous.  Yet it was the one who bestowed honor that gave the honor value.  So if you received praise from a thief, it would not necessarily have mattered what you did to receive that praise.  The praise he gave you would still be tainted.

Despite most writers of the time falling in line with Aristotle, there were those who strayed.  Some objected to Aristotle’s idea that honor was defined only by the one who had bestowed it upon you.  Instead, it was something you had on your own, regardless of what people thought about you.[5]  If you stopped a brick from falling one someone’s head, you would be honorable.  For them, your being honorable would not be judged based on whether or not anyone saw what you did, but instead it would be based on your actions and intentions.

For those who bought into Aristotle’s virtue ethics, there were two virtues in particular that honor was based on: the virtues of valor and justice.  This was defended based on the idea that, “a man is most useful to others by means of his valor in war, and his justice in both war and peace.”[6]  A man bleeding out on the street does not care about how good of a father you are, or how much you went to church.  All that matters to him is whether or not you can help him.  Thus, Aristotle’s proponents argued, honor was at the very least only relevant when it affected someone else.  It is also important to note here the bifurcation between times of war and times of peace.  Here we see that people at the time saw these as very distinct states with completely different rule sets. 

It is important to remember the significance of honor in sixteenth-century Italy.  For honor was, “preferred to one’s father, one’s ruler, one’s country, and life itself. ”[7]   Italians at the time viewed honor as something natural and inherently existing.  Thus, since everything from your father to your prince, were considered to be “instruments” of nature in order to secure the natural order, this natural order might also be referred to as society’s honorable discourse.  So even if your prince forbade you from entering into a duel, you should nonetheless go into the duel since your duty to your prince was secondary to your duty to honor.  Although you could rightly sacrifice your life for your prince, you were not supposed to sacrifice your honor for him.  To be dishonorable was to go against everything that was important.  For although you may have owed allegiances, these existed only because honor was there to serve as a foundation.  Thus, if someone claimed you were not honorable, it is plain to see how important it might be to refute them.

This noble language though, did not always hold true in reality.  For example, the great fencing master Marozzo “noted that although many knights professed to prefer death with honor rather than life with shame, the number who had acted in accordance with this assertion was small.”[8]  So although defending your honor was indeed important, not everyone was necessarily ready to put their life on the line for it.  It is important to remember that rhetoric and practice hardly ever line up.

There were two groups that were assumed not to have honor.  The first of these were those considered to be infamous.  The second of these were those who were considered not to be capable of possessing honor.  Being infamous could come about through a few different ways.  The first, and most obvious, is through nefarious deeds that could lose you your honor.  Others though, were considered inherently dishonorable.  These included, “inn-keepers, actors, usurers, those who made gain from prostitution, and those whose birth was illegitimate.”[9]  Many of these were people who were thought to engage in inherently unnatural conduct.  Children born out of wedlock, though, had the opportunity to redeem themselves through being particularly virtuous, or if their parents got married later on.

Another group considered dishonorable was those whose ancestors had acted dishonorably.  In fact, if you abandoned your lord in battle, refused to fight in defense of the Church, or let an insult to your honor stand, you and your descendants all the way through your great-grandchildren would be considered dishonorable.[10]  This, as well, is an attitude that has been largely tempered in the past four hundred years.  Children with parents in prison may face being stigmatized, but were your great-grandfather not to respond to an insult, it is unlikely that anyone would think less of you.

A third group considered to be dishonorable was the Jews.  The reasoning for this was that not only had the Jews killed Christ (they did not), but that they were also, “obstinate and treacherous usurers who are always sinning by their cruel methods of making money”[11]  Despite being forced into money lending by not being able to own land and by nobles attempting to circumvent rules about not charging interest when loaning money to other Christians, the Jews were nonetheless seen as the source of many of society’s woes.  At a time when the issuing of blood libels stating that Jews required the blood of Christian babies in order to bake matzah (a bread associated with the holiday of Passover), it should not be at all surprising that they were also thought to be inherently dishonorable.

There were also those that were considered to be incapable of being honorable.  Whereas being dishonorable was seen as something negative, this was seen as something neutral.  This group included both women and children.  Both were thought to be incapable of reason.  Even if some occasionally showed some glimmer of intelligence, it was thought that that could never equate to that of a man’s.[12]  This did not though, remove women and children entirely from the field of honor.  Were you to insult a woman’s honor, it would in turn reflect upon her husband or father.  In many places, insulting someone’s woman was considered a higher transgression than insulting a man directly.

The Mentita

Before we continue, let us first examine what was sufficient cause for a duel.  First and foremost, duels were not meant to replace the court system.  If a claim could be proved in court then that is where it would be settled.  The point of the duel was to, “bring to light a hidden truth.”[13]  Thus, the duel served in auxiliary to the courts in order to address claims that courts could not.  There were indeed cases brought to court with little to no evidence to back them up.  Even though these might have qualified as quarrels eligible for duels, they would not be eligible for a duel if they had first been tried in court, “even if it did not end with a verdict”[14]  Here we see that the idea of double jeopardy present in the fifth amendment to the United States’ Constitution has a history that reaches beyond even the Enlightenment.

The duel, as an institution, was also set up to deal with issues that courts were not.  It is not the role of the court to legislate morality.  Duels, however, existed in order to deal with attacks on someone’s honor.  Whereas courts generally only get involved when there is an issue of property or physical damage at stake, duels dealt with something less tangible.  Were you to have taken to court someone who had called into question your daughter’s (who was, essentially, your property) virginity, the case would likely be dismissed since it is not the court’s job to make sure that no one is ever offensive.  You would have had to take action, though, since otherwise your honor would have been tarnished.  Here the duel provided a formal outlet.

In order to best explain the intricacies of the mentita, or “giving the lie,” I propose the following example.  Giuseppe has just been accused by Camillo of insulting Camillo’s actions on the battlefield.  At this point, Camillo has set himself up to be the plaintiff and for Giuseppe to be the defendant.  This, in its simplest form, entails Giuseppe exclaiming, “You lie!”  By doing this Giuseppe thereby issues the mentita, setting up a duel to take place.[15]  We have at this point the claim of an offense and a refutation of that claim.

Which of the two parties issues the mentita is of extreme significance.  The reason behind this is that the defendant is the one with the choice of arms.[16]  Let us say that Giuseppe knows that Camillo despises fighting with sword and cloak, but that he excels with sword and dagger.  Whenever Camillo tries fighting with a cloak he gets his own sword stuck in it.  However, when he takes out sword and dagger, he is able to skillfully hand off his opponent’s sword to his own dagger, thus freeing up his own sword.  Giuseppe, on the other hand, is just the opposite.  Thus, whichever of the two chooses the arms will have a fairly significant chance of winning the duel.  At least by the early sixteenth-century, it had even become common practice for the plaintiff to not know the weapons being fought with until he arrived to the duel.[17]  This might seem impossible since each party would have to provide their own arms, but in actuality, most of the technicalities would be dealt with by the duelists’ seconds so that someone with a clear head could take care of everything.

There is an important lesson about dueling culture that can be learned from all of this.  If you accuse someone of doing something so serious that it would be considered a legitimate reason for fighting a duel, you better be ready for what your opponent picks as weapons.  By giving the defendant the upper hand, Italian culture (and dueling culture to a broader extent) ensured that duels were taken seriously.  Were the choice of arms in the hands of the plaintiff, then a neighborhood bully could go around accusing people of heinous acts, knowing they would likely come out on top.  Instead, it was set up so that you would only challenge someone if the issue was sufficiently pressing or significant.  If those around you thought the challenge was damning enough, they might not do business with you if you did not stand up and defend yourself.  If you were considered duplicitous or treacherous, then people might wonder if they would ever get back any money they invested in your business.  They might also be afraid of being judged for doing business with a dishonorable man and thus being shunned themselves.  On the flipside, if your supposed grievance was not deemed sufficient or was seen as plainly absurd by the surrounding community, it would not be considered a legitimate complaint.  As such the duel would not go through.

While Giuseppe does have the advantage of getting to choose the arms, the scales are not tipped entirely against Camillo, for Camillo gets to decide the location (campo franco). Specifically, “the campo franco, or secure place, was a place where the two combatants would not be a) prevented from conducting their trial or b) be subjected to the interference from either party’s supporters.”[18]  It is important to remember here that while a significant part of popular culture at the time, dueling was oftentimes illegal depending on where and when you were (which will be explored more in depth later on).  In places where duels were legal though, the campo franco would generally be on public grounds (alla macchia).[19]  Dueling alla macchia would have been the case if Camillo had failed to successfully petition a local lord for use of his land.

It was important that the campo franco chosen did not appear to be incredibly favorable to Camillo.  Were Camillo able to choose land that would give him a significant advantage, this would only work to encourage bullies to go around challenging people to duels.  If you knew about hidden roots or sinkholes that your opponent did not, you could walk into a duel knowing you would probably win.  This, in turn, would put the validity of Camillo’s claim in question.  Were his claim true and his victory God-given, why then would he have to unbalance the odds?  Would not his victory be preordained?  As a man trying to prove his honor, picking a campo franco that favored him would undercut Camillo’s cause.

At the beginning of this chapter I offered a fairly simple, straightforward example of a mentita being issued.  I shall now delve into each aspect in more detail by looking at what other possibilities exist.  The first aspect is the initial injury.  In the example I gave, Camillo had received an initial injury comprised solely of words.  Alternatively the initial injury could have been a deed (e.g., a slap).  Regardless of what kind of injury was received, “the plaintiff will give the defendant an injury (always of words), which takes the form of the accusation, to which the latter will issue the mentita.  In an injury of deed, it is the one receiving the injury who has the burden of proof because the cause of the duel is not the material injury itself, but rather the accusation that the injury had been unjust.  This accusation, in case of an injury of deed, would come from the one who was injured in deed.  In other words, in this case the injured is the mentito, therefore the Actor.”[20]  Let us say that Giuseppe had struck Camillo across the face and Camillo had reacted by saying that the strike was unjustified.  In that case Giuseppe would remain the defendant and therefore the one issuing the mentita.  Had Giuseppe instead insulted Camillo’s honor on the battlefield, prompting Camillo to strike him, Giuseppe could then come back and say that the strike was unjustified since his previous statement had been true.  At this point Camillo would be able to respond saying, “You lie!  I hit you because you were spouting falsehoods about me.”  Here Camillo would become the defendant and be able to choose the arms.  To complicate matters even further let us say that no one else is in the room while this debacle occurs, or that at least there had been no other witnesses to Giuseppe calling out Camillo’s honor on the battlefield.  Here, in response then to Camillo’s calling Giuseppe a liar, Giuseppe could then retort saying, “You lie!  I said nothing of the sort about your comport on the battlefield.”  Here Giuseppe would become the defendant, thus possessing the all-important choice of arms.  We can take away from all of this how formalized and convoluted an institution dueling was.  So much so that it even had rules that you could game.

Now let us examine who would be able to engage in a duel.  As noted in the chapter on honor, you had to have been an adult male who was not Jewish.  We have examples of women engaging in duels in fourteenth century Germany, the most notable example being that of Hans Talhoffer’s martial arts treatise.  However, rights have hardly progressed in a linear fashion and as such, by the sixteenth-century women were no longer allowed to engage in duels.  The other necessity was that those engaging in the duel be two equal parties.  This requires them to be the same in both class and number.  So if someone of a lower class challenged someone of a higher class to a duel, the latter could refuse the duel without having their honor tarnished.  Although the vast majority of duels were fought between two individuals, there are multiple accounts of formal duels fought between groups.  For example, “The Challenge of Barletta (1503) was a famous example of a duel in which the two equal parties were not individual but two groups of 15 knights each.”[21]  Just as Giuseppe could have insulted Camillo’s comportment on the battlefield, so too could he have insulted that of Camillo’s entire unit.

Next let us look at the different kinds of mentita.[22]  There are a variety of ways you would have been able to call someone out as a liar.  The most basic form is a mentita certa.  This is the kind of mentita illustrated in my initial example.  A mentita certa entails that someone says something about you that you believe is false and you proceed to call them out on it.[23]

The next type is a mentita condizionale.  Here we return to how the system of dueling might be gamed.  This is not meant to imply that this kind of mentita is necessarily dishonorable, only that it is much easier to manipulate than a mentita certa. The mentita condizionale is, as the name implies, a conditional mentita.[24]  Let us say that before Camillo accuses Giuseppe of anything, Giuseppe had stated that if Camillo ever says that Giuseppe questioned his honor on the battlefield, that Camillo would be lying.  Giuseppe is implying here that if Camillo has not accused Giuseppe, that Camillo has not lied.

Like most everything else in dueling, things can become even more complicated.  In response to this mentita condizionale Camillo could retort with a mentita certa by saying that Giuseppe has lied about Camillo accusing him.[25]  At this point Camillo would become the defendant, putting him in a superior position.

Alternatively, Giuseppe could have offered an extremely vague mentita condizionale in an attempt to secure the choice of arms.  These were actually given their own subcategory entitled a mentita generale.  Within this there are two further types.  With the first one Giuseppe could say that anyone, without specifying whom, is a liar if they say X of him.  The second would be for Giuseppe to call Camillo out on insulting his honor without specifying what the insult was.  With the first example, Camillo would not be required to respond since his name was not listed.  With the second, it would not be considered a fully legitimate and binding mentita (thus not requiring a duel) until the offense was specified.[26]  It is easy to see how ridiculously general these could be.  In the first situation it would be plainly ridiculous to force someone to speak up and answer the call to duel if they had ever said anything bad about anyone else.  Although dueling may have existed in large part to discourage people from slandering one another, people were still people back then, and as such, they occasionally made less than positive comments about one another.  With the second situation, we can see that although you might be able to call someone out in public without stating what they did, this alone was not a sufficient condition for a duel.  It may work as a trick to play on a guilty conscience to make it seem like you knew what happened.  However, without having any specific to back it up, the other party would not be expected to meet the challenge.

The next type of mentita is a mentita speciale.[27]  The mentita speciale, “is given to a particular person, about a particular stated fact (as opposed to just an accusation of moral character).”[28]  Let us return again to our original example.  Let us say that Camillo had issued a mentita saying that Giuseppe had lied about Camillo’s actions on the battlefield.  Had Giuseppe merely said Camillo was dishonorable on the battlefield, it would not be specific enough to be considered a mentita speciale.  However, had Giuseppe said that Camillo had abandoned his fellow troops at a particular battle though; it would then be considered a mentita speciale.  At this point Giuseppe could issue a retraction by stating that he did not say anything of the sort.  If that happens, that would mean that Giuseppe had not issued a mentita of his own since he is not accusing Camillo of anything, all he has done is to try to prove his own innocence.  Let us say that Camillo had only flimsy evidence of Giuseppe’s statement.  At this point it would be dangerous for Camillo to issue a mentita since Giuseppe could easily issue one in return, “with a stronger legal value.”[29]  This would be the case were Giuseppe able to produce a witness with Camillo only basing his claim on rumor.  Before putting your life on the line, it is important to remember to have sufficient evidence to ensure you retain the choice of arms.

The final kind of mentita is that of a mentita sciocca.  This, unlike a mentita generale, was considered inherently abusive, as opposed to just being possibly abusive.  The reason for this is that issuing one of these would secure you the choice of arms.  Although you would not be likely to see one of these, it still would have been a logical (in the formal sense) possibility.  These were thought of as absurd situations such as Giuseppe saying that if Camillo ever said X of him, that Camillo would automatically be a liar.  Another would be attacking Camillo’s very thoughts by saying that if he even thought of saying X about Giuseppe, he would be a liar.  Finally, this would also include a situation where Giuseppe called Camillo a liar if he either did or did not say X of Giuseppe.[30]  It would hardly have been considered honorable to say that regardless of a person’s actions or intent, they are necessarily a liar.  So although these kind of mentita existed, they were hardly respected as legitimate.  If Giuseppe issued a mentita sciocca against Camillo, and Camillo was already looking for a way to pick a fight with Giuseppe, he might be brash enough to respond to Giuseppe’s mentita.

After an accusation was made and the final mentita (of whichever sort) was issued, both parties would return home.  Upon returning home, the plaintiff (likely with the help of his lawyer) would sit down and write what was called a cartello.  The, “cartello was a binding document in the form of a written challenge from the plaintiff, which prompted a riposta or ‘riposte’ from the defendant, which would either include the recusation or the election of arms.  The cartelli had to follow an appropriate form, starting with the defendant’s name and last name, followed by a terse and direct statement of the facts and ending with the plaintiff’s signed name and the signature of three witnesses of as high a rank or reputation as possible (best if military officers).”[31]  There are a few things that can be taken away from this.  The first is that a mentita might be issued without the intention of choosing arms.  Although it is unlikely that Giuseppe would willingly cede the right of arms to Camillo, he was still able to if he so chose.  Next we see that duels were not something you went into by yourself.  You wanted the highest status people you could get to back you up to ensure that your claim came across as legitimate.  People would be much more likely to believe you if you had Lord Baldesar backing you up as opposed to Nicoletto the farmer.

Like with the mentita, there were multiple kinds of cartello.  These included, “The cartello proper, the rogito (signed by a notary) and a manifesto (to be pasted on walls instead of delivered).  It was specified that the best way to issue a cartello was to both hand-deliver it and to publish it as a manifesto, to give the counterpart a reasonable chance to see it.  All these cartelli had to go through the judicial authorities.  Failure to comply with specifications regarding content, style and delivery method could lead to the disqualifications of the cause.”[32]  Although by this point both parties knew that a duel would take place, it was important that they both show up in the same place at the same time.  Also, in places where dueling was illegal you would never deliver you cartello in the form of a manifesto.  Were you likely to be arrested for dueling, no one would expect you to publicly post your intent to commit a crime, nor would you be expected to go through the local authorities.  You would still have witnesses sign the document; it is just that these witnesses were likely to be your personal friends and relatives as opposed to your local lord or military commander.  In places where dueling was legal, it would be acceptable to deliver your cartello only in the form of a manifesto if you so chose.

The next part of the mentita was the choice of arms.  There were three nonexclusive categories that arms could fall under.  The first of these were offensive arms.  Was it with swords, spears, daggers, lances?  If so, what kinds?  The second category was that of defensive arms.  Was armor to be worn, were there to be shields used?  Lastly, was the duel to be fought on horseback or on foot?  The, “choice of arms had to meet two legal criteria—that of parity and that of capacity.”[33]  Parity meant that the weapons must be equal in length, sharpness, and make.  Capacity meant that the plaintiff (Camillo) would need to be able to obtain and afford the weapon, as well as physically be able to use it.  Social status did not always imply wealth.  Titles were something you were generally born with, regardless of financial choices you or your predecessors might have made.  So although two combatants might be of the same class, it could be the case that the defendant would be able to afford to fight on horseback in full armor while the plaintiff would not be able to.  Also, if the defendant demanded the plaintiff fight with a weapon they were unable to wield, the plaintiff could at that point back out without recourse.  If it was known that Camillo’s left hand had been cut off in battle, it would be hard to believe Giuseppe’s claim if he demanded that they fight with two-handed swords.  Generally, though, Giuseppe would realize this and would likely pick a one-handed weapon so as not to come across as trying to game the system.

I would like to note two things here.  The first is that by the middle of the sixteenth-century, fighting a duel from horseback had fallen out of fashion.[34]  The reason for this trend was that duelists did not want to share their victory with their horse as the horse could easily be the deciding factor.  If one horse maneuvered better, or one horse suddenly bucked, the tides could easily be changed. However, with both combatants on foot, the outcome was up to them and them alone.  The second is that at the time, the noblest of these options was to fight only using offensive weapons.[35]  Without any armor you wanted to be darn sure you were right (and that God was on your side), because the smallest lip up could lead to you being skewered.  Even if you were able to slay your opponent, there was still a reasonable chance that they would have mortally wounded you too.  As this proved to be the riskiest option, armor was often seen on the dueling list.

Seeing as the two parties were furious enough as to wish to kill each other, they would not meet again in person until the duel took place.  Thus, all communication would be done through emissaries delivering the cartello and the riposta.  Once the arms had been finalized, “each party would send an emissary to the opponent to ensure that no subterfuge would take place”[36]  This emissary would serve as collateral and would dissuade either side from fleeing.  From this we can see that duels were not merely quarrels between individuals.  They necessitated great amounts of trust between the duelists and their friends.  Whether it was signing your name to a possibly illegal document or going to the opposing party’s house to serve as collateral, those assisting the duelists had to have had great investments in preserving the honor of the duelists.  If, for instance, Camillo was the head of his household, the honor of everyone in that household could be on the line.  If you were the descendant of, or worked for a man considered to be duplicitous, people would likely suspect you of the same.  Most people back then did not travel very far from where they were born, so stories of how you were the son of a man who abandoned his commander, would circulate throughout your entire life.

The Duel

[37]

            The mentita has been issued, the cartello has been signed and sent, and the riposte has been sent in return.  The place and the arms have been solidified.  There would then be a period, generally about forty days, before the duel took place.  This was intended both for each party to get in shape and to set their affairs in order.  It was generally no longer than forty days (with exceptions for being called up to war or being ill) in order that each party might have a speedy trial.[38]  Duels were often the result of brooding tension between households, or other such groups.  Ideally, a duel would function to settle these instead of prolonging them.

            After this time had passed, both parties would arrive at the campo franco.  This would typically occur a few hours before sunset (more on that later), not at sunrise like popular media often leads us to believe.[39]  When the two parties arrived, they would typically, “be accompanied by their godfathers, who absolved the same role as the witnesses in the cartello—and indeed could be the same people.  The arms would be brought out, and a witness from each side would inspect them to ensure that no subterfuge had taken place.  Then, the herald would read the cause of the duel”[40]  At this point the herald would give the defendant (in the case of our example, Giuseppe) one last chance to retract his mentita and avoid going through the duel.  For the sake of education let us say that Giuseppe at this point still maintains that Camillo is a liar and that he did not insult Camillo’s honor.  At this point the herald, “would issue a warning to the spectators, demanding silence under penalty of death.  This was done to ensure that no sudden noise or shout would influence the outcome of the trial.  Lastly, the herald would sound his trumpet, at which point the duel would begin.”[41]  At public sporting events, it is not uncommon to hear an audience chanting in favor of one side or the other.  This becomes a different matter entirely, though, when death is on the line.  Outside interference would work to make the claim of either party less legitimate.  As well, if someone who had arrived with Camillo, shouted out Giuseppe’s name, for instance, this would be seen as Camillo having to rely on trickery in order to win, and thus his claim would be deemed illegitimate.  However, where before the duel occurs, an illegitimate claim could be dealt with peacefully, since no one would be in immediate danger, during the duel it could lead to an unjust death.[42]  As such, a harsher disincentive was required.

            Within the campo franco there was a space set aside for the duel to occur separate from where the observers would stand.  This space was called a staccato and was demarcated by either a fence, or by poles connected by a rope.  The only people allowed near the staccato were the combatants, their seconds, and a third party acting as the judge/referee.  The role of the seconds would be to inspect the other party’s arms to ensure they met the agreed-upon parameters.  The seconds would fight in the duel if the intended combatant was unable to or had not arrived.  These seconds were also likely the ones who signed and delivered the cartello and the riposta.  Spectators, such as the lord whose land this might be fought on, were confined to standing outside of the staccato.[43]  Discrepancies in the size of the staccato were necessary to accommodate either for more than two combatants, or for the use of horses. Were any of the combatants to touch the ropes, they would instantly be considered the loser (more on winning and losing in just a bit).  Thus, indefinitely backing up would not have been considered a legitimate strategy.

Even at this point, the roles of plaintiff and defendant are not yet finished with.  As part of the role of the plaintiff, it would have been Camillo’s duty to begin with the first committed attack.[44]  It might seem that moving first would be advantageous, such as receiving the ball in football.  When it comes to swords (or any other handheld weapon), though, the opposite is the case.  By giving an attack you have limited the amount of options available to you as your movement gets closer and closer to the point of no return.  Although the defendant must respond to this action, their options are kept significantly more open.  They could counter with a parry, a void of the body, stepping off line, intercepting their opponent’s blade with an attack of their own, or any other number of moves.  So by being the one who issued the initial challenge, Camillo loses both the choice of arms as well as the ability to counter the first move however he pleases.

Once the duel began, there was no stopping until a winner was determined.  There were no rounds, no time-outs, no water breaks.  There are accounts of duels starting earlier in the day and raging on for hours on end.  For example, we have accounts of combatants starting on horseback, fully armed, and ending up wrestling on the ground with one party holding a dagger and the other empty-handed.  Once the trumpet had sounded, all of the noncombatants just stood back and watched.  The only time there would be interference would be if the judge saw something particularly egregious occurring, such as a hidden weapon being produced.

Let us say that both parties have arrived, that Giuseppe had not confessed to being in the wrong, and that neither of them touches the ropes of the staccato.  At this point, there are three ways the duel could be decided:  One of them is injured to the point of no longer being able to fight, one of them dies, or both of them die.[45]  In the last case, whichever one of them survives longer after being mortally wounded is deemed the winner.  Although that might not do them much good in the grave, it will impact how those attached to them (servants, family members, etc.) are perceived.  To demonstrate how this could happen, let us say that Camillo stabs Giuseppe in the heart, mortally wounding him.  However, Giuseppe, before he succumbs to his wounds, manages to stab Camillo through the skull, killing him instantly. 

This situation may initially come off as absurd.  However, there are multiple accounts of people surviving for surprising amounts of time after having suffered from being mortally wounded.  We have multiple accounts from duels in period were combatants were able to continue fighting long enough to kill each other after being stabbed through the chest.  There are even some of combatants being stabbed in the chest, proceeding to bludgeon their opponent to death, and going on to live.  Backing this up are multiple modern medical records of individuals surviving for surprising amounts of time after being stabbed in the heart, or being similarly mortally wounded.  Although much has changed these past five hundred years, being stabbed in the chest remains, medically, the same.  For instance, “in 1936, a paper was presented to the American Association of Thoracic Surgery in which thirteen cases of stab wounds to the heart were cited. Of these, four victims were said to have collapsed immediately. Four others, although incapacitated, remained conscious and alert for from thirty minutes to several hours. The remaining five victims, thirty-eight per cent of the total, remained active: one walking approximately twenty-three meters and another running three blocks. Yet another victim remained active for approximately ten minutes after having been stabbed in the heart with an ice pick, and two managed to walk to a medical facility for help.”[46]  Thirty-eight percent might seem like a small chance for most things.  However, you start to consider the odds a bit differently when your life is on the line.  So, even if you stabbed your opponent in the heart, one of the more vital areas of the body, there was still a good chance he would be capable of returning the favor, leaving you both there to die.  Being stabbed in the heart is an extreme example, but this just goes to prove that a duel ending in both parties being mortally wounded would not have been unlikely.

As has been mentioned earlier, there are many actions you could take within the duel that would show you to be disreputable.  Within the duel, even if you are the only surviving party, you could have gotten there by means that would have deemed you as the loser, or at the very least make the outcome disputable.  These included weapons being broken or dropped (not disarmed), a horse being killed, randomly thrown kicks and punches (as opposed to clean technique), producing forth an illegal weapon, or setting a trap in the ground beforehand.[47]  It was the job of the judge of the duel to determine what was considered unacceptable according to the previously agreed-upon rules.  Within these constraints though, there were still many techniques that we may now consider ungentlemanly.  There was still quite a bit of grappling, taking out your opponent’s legs (either with sword or with hand), pommel strikes (where we get the word “pummeling”), joint breaks, multiple stabs to the same area, as well as a litany of other techniques.  There are many accounts of duels ending as particularly bloody affairs with one combatant standing over the other and bashing them repeatedly with his weapon.

In popular media we often see duels as something that was fought to first blood, instead of to the death.  However, this, “was scorned as ridiculous and cowardly, even as late as the 1890s.”[48]  Instead duels were fought until either everyone in the crowd agreed that there was a clear winner and that no further fighting was required to demonstrate this, or that one combatant was no longer able to continue fighting.  This latter, and more common, case occurred either due to an incapacitating blow, or because one of the combatants had died.  This idea of fighting to first blood really does not pop up until the popularization of the epee.  Epee duels emerged as a reaction to dueling being increasingly outlawed.  By fighting to first blood, it was much easier to pass dueling off as respectable, instead of as a barbarous leftover from times past.  As a result of this, the whole body is target in Olympic epee fencing.  This is opposed to foil (originally a training simulator for smallswords, descendants of rapiers themselves) and sabre, the other two categories of Olympic fencing, where only the torso is considered a legitimate target.

The duel is a form of consensual violence.  Violence, both then and now, comes in many flavors.  Surely it is wrong to attack someone randomly on the street.  However, we generally have no ethical problems with two people entering a boxing ring.  Boxing, unlike the street, is considered “civilized” since it has rules and takes place within certain physical bounds that work to contain the combatants as well as to separate them from everyone else.  This way, violence is unable to spill over into a crowd of people who had not consented to violence.  In boxing it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to knock your opponent out.  Other maneuvers (such as kicking) are looked down upon and can function to instantly cede the match to the other party.  This too, was the case in dueling.  However, although both boxers know that there is a chance of receiving a fatal blow, killing your opponent is considered to be morally wrong.  This is the major line between dueling and other forms of consensual violence, whether or not death is an acceptable outcome.  Those who supported and or participated in the institution of dueling supported the idea that the individual ought to be able to consent to possibly lethal violence.  Whereas we generally support the idea that lethal violence ought to be a tool of the state (e.g., police and military) and that the individual is justified in implementing it only in cases of self-defense, duelists believed otherwise.  It is important to remember though, that dueling was illegal throughout many of the Italian states during the sixteenth-century, exemplifying that consensual, lethal violence was hardly something that was universally supported.

            Now, violence was a much larger part of everyday life back then.  Part of it was due to the absence of modern police forces and techniques to help root out violence.  Another part was that wars were much more common and as such, so too was being a member of the military.  Victory on the battlefield, though, was not seen as high-up as victory in the staccato.  Part of it was that typically, your life was at a greater risk in the duel seeing as the opponent is always aiming at you in particular.  This is proved by the fact that even losing armies almost always have soldiers who return home.  More significantly, the outcome of a battle often had nothing to do with how well and valiantly you yourself fought.  If you had an incompetent general, then you could not rightly be blamed for the loss.  In the duel, though, how well you did is nothing but a direct reflection on your own capabilities.[49]  Thus it was the duel that held the higher status.

The Rapier

            Duels have been fought with a variety of weapons.  In fact, I suspect that duels have been fought with pretty much everything designed to be held by one person in order to kill another.  We know for a fact that duels have been fought with pistols, clubs, shields, flails, knives, and a variety of other killing devices.  To cover all forms of dueling is far outside the scope of this project, and as such I shall be focusing purely on the rapier.

[50]         The rapier was the weapon of choice for dueling in renaissance Italy.  More specifically, the rapier, “is a long, straight-bladed cut-and-thrust single-handed sword optimized for the thrust and featuring a guard that affords good protection to the hand; the rapier sees its apogee between the last third of the Sixteenth Century and the end of the Seventeenth.”[51]  This was a weapon that had grown out of thousands of years of sword-smithing in Europe.  The appearance of the rapier’s long, thin blade teaches us two lessons.  The first, as mentioned, is that the thrust had become favored over the cut.  This is likely due to the increased popularity of the lunge during fighting, as well as studies in trigonometry being used to convince students that it is generally more efficient to thrust than cut.  The second is the advances in metallurgy needed to get to this point.  The increased popularity of the lunge as well as more encompassing guards may have contributed towards the thrust being favored.  However, it would not even have been possible for a rapier to have been created much earlier.  Steel that thin has to be rather sturdy if it is to be expected to take on anything that might come its way.  Earlier steel would simply not have been strong enough to meet such a demand.

[52]

            There were three principles that governed rapier fighting: line, measure, and tempo.  Line was the path that either your or your opponent’s sword traveled.  If you stood with your sword in your right hand you would have your inside line, everything left of your outstretched arm, and your outside line, everything to the right of it.  As well, you would generally aim to keep control of your opponent’s line by placing your sword on top of his and moving his point “off line” so that it no longer pointed at you.  This was called gaining your opponent’s blade.  Measure, or what we nowadays might refer to as “range,” was divided into two.  First there was your narrow measure (mesura stretta) which would be anything you could hit merely by extending your arm.  Second there was wide measure (mesura longa) which was everything you could hit if you lunged or took a single step.  It was important to remember that your measure and your opponent’s might be different since you would likely be of different heights and have limbs of different lengths and if they could stretch to different degrees.  Measure would be partially determined by the length of your weapons and if there was any discrepancy between them.  Finally there was tempo.  Each single motion took up a single beat, or tempo.  Ideally, you would aim to reduce the overall number of tempo you required as not to waste movement.[53]  You could, as well, aim to move in mezzo tempo which meant that you would take your action in the middle of your opponent’s, disrupting their rhythm and plan of attack.

Despite being a primarily civilian weapon, the rapier was hardly a one-trick pony.  Rapiers were the first choice for the nobility and the upper middle class.  They were used for duels, sport, battles (on rare occasion), and as a self-defense tool.[54]  These were expensive swords, but were also made to last.  They would be passed down from father to son, and although they did occasionally break, were designed to withstand a good deal of abuse.  With that in mind though, it is important to remember that despite what we see in movies and read in books, people did not unsheathe their swords and point them at one another on a regular basis.

Rapiers were light enough (typically around 3 lb) that they could be carried around with ease, yet practical enough that they could deal with most any situation.  Walking out of your house, you would have no idea as to what might transpire.  The rapier was suited to defend against clubs, longswords, and even multiple opponents at the same time.[55]  It was not made to deal specifically with getting around shields or caving in armor.  Whether in self-defense or in a duel, you could not always predict what you would be facing.

Oddly enough though, rapiers were not referred to as “rapiers” in Italy at the time.  Instead, they were, “simply known as ‘spada’ (=sword), while in other countries like England, a sword may have been called a ‘rapier’ just by virtue of being used by a foreigner, especially an Italian.”[56]  Thus my usage of the word rapier is anachronistic in nature.    The word itself was of British origin (like the backsword) and was rejected by certain fencing masters at the time.[57]  As a result of needing to describe this atypical weapon, they likely invented the term “rapier.”

Perceptions of the Duel in Period

Despite how proliferous the duel was at the time, the duel had quite a few detractors.   Many writers at the time claimed that the duel was unnatural and inherently unreasonable.  They argued that whether or not you had dishonored someone, “could no more be proved by a duel than could one’s surpassing an opponent in running or in drinking”[58]  Anyone who has ever been in close proximity to a college sports team or a fraternity can tell you that this is an issue that still persists to this day.  Truth claims are in no way related to your skills in any particular field.  Unfortunately, perceptions of truth claims often are.  While codes of honor may call on you to act a certain way, reason might tell you to take a different direction.

            The sheer absurdity of the claim that violence proved whose voice should be listened to hardly went over the heads of writers at the time.  One even went so far as to ask sarcastically, “whether physicians, if they disagreed, should fight a duel to determine what should be the patient’s medicine.”[59]  The same goes for saying that because Camillo is a better fighter than Giuseppe, that Camillo did not abandon his post on the battlefield.

At the time many appealed both to and against a sense of following the laws of nature.  Some claimed that, “Violence is proper to wild beasts, and in the ability to use it they are superior to men . . . On the other hand, men can protect themselves by erecting walls and by enacting laws. All these facts show that man was intended to settle his differences not by fighting but by reason.”[60]  This assumes that humans are by nature rational, which is questionable at best, and that animals have neither walls nor governing rules.  That last part is plainly false seeing as animals such as gorillas and wolves clearly have an established power structure and that beavers clearly erect walls. 

Others, instead, attempted to appeal to a sense of days gone by.  This idea was present throughout the Renaissance as seen in such phenomena as Neoplatonism and the Church’s rejection of Galileo due to his contradicting the ideas of Aristotle.  They claimed, falsely, that duels were clearly unnatural since the ancient Greeks and Romans had not participated in them.[61]  Thus, since these civilizations supposedly embodied being truly natural, what diverged from their practices was inherently wrong.

Appeals to nature and antiquity were used by the other side as well.  They saw the duel as an extension of self-defense, something in and of itself natural, since your honor was a part of your essential self.  They argued, as well, that there had indeed been progress made since the days of ancient Greece and Rome and that Aristotle was, on occasion, wrong.[62]  Thus, the duel was natural and a step forward from the days of old.

There were though, more compelling arguments put forth.  One was that the duel served as a poor judge since, “its judgment was unreliable and sometimes self-contradictory.”[63]  As we saw earlier, there were a plethora of methods with which you could game the system.  Even without these, duels could end up inconclusive.  If both combatants lunged simultaneously into each other’s skulls, both would likely die instantaneously.   Returning to our original example yet again, this would leave us with no way of knowing whether or not Giuseppe had really insulted Camillo’s honor. Although often times what really happened is somewhere in-between what each party said, there are cases where something either did or did not happen.  In cases such as this, it is highly problematic if the only witnesses are dead and the verdict remains inconclusive.

An argument for dueling (as well as the carrying around of swords on a daily basis) is that of deterrence.  This argument in particular has persisted and has evolved to deal with modern weapons.  If Camillo and Giuseppe get into an argument at a pub and draw their swords, there is now roughly seven feet of steel between the two of them.  If they’re smart they’ll both back up as they do this, which would mean that they would both be out of each other’s narrow measure.  Swords served as a visual reminder, as well, since there really is no way to carry around a three to four foot weapon on a daily basis without it being seen.

Additionally, duels, as an institution, did indeed provide some form of deterrence.  If Giuseppe went around town insulting everyone’s honor, he ought not to be surprised that someone might challenge him to a fight to the death over it.[64]  Camillo would be deterred, as well, from walking around accusing anyone of insulting his own honor since he would then likely be issued a mentita in return.  In addition, duels offered a sort of finality.  If one party was incapacitated or killed and the other was not, then the argument was ideally settled.[65]  Everyone knew who was right and who was wrong and the matter would be laid to rest.  Although in reality, a duel could lead to a cycle of vengeance, it was intended to serve as a finalized form of judgment.

Another argument was that duels prevented lesser evils.  By providing a formalized outlet for civilian violence, authorities could prevent worse events from transpiring.  These could include more “barbarous” acts such as assassinations or street brawls.[66]  Duels were often symptomatic of larger disputes between factions.  By having a formal way for one member from each group to fight it out, a larger fight could be avoided.

            Thus far we have seen both sides of the issue and the case against dueling seems pretty overwhelming.  Why then, we might ask, was the duel such an important institution?  The answer to that is simple, “it was approved by public opinion. Some held that custom must not be preferred to human and divine law.  They noted, furthermore, that the duelist did not receive the praise which was founded on virtue; he was not lauded by the judicious. This was because he preferred the approval of the rabble; he risked his life unnecessarily; and, if he was killed, he lost body, soul, and honor.”[67]  This notion would contradict most everything discussed thus far about the duel’s aim to preserve honor.  My response to this is that there are two ways of looking at honor.  The first of these is that honor is some sort of abstract virtue, independent of whatever might be popular that day.  The other conception of honor is whatever the public decides the signifier “honor” signifies.  If you believe that “honor” was valued at the time since it defined social interactions, then this is the conception for you.  If you however believe that “honor” transcends time and place, I offer you the former conception.

            Throughout the 1540’s, numerous city-states however, outlawed dueling entirely.  Cities and territories such as Naples, Venice, Milan, and Tuscany all enacted various sorts of punishments for dueling.[68]  These ranged from imprisonment, to the execution of both the duelists as well as to their seconds.

            Despite this, duels continued to flourish throughout the sixteenth-century.  Some of this was due to the laws against dueling being viewed as ridiculous.  It was also because there was hardly any consensus within the knights, the lords, or the lawmakers as to what the fate of dueling ought to have been.[69]  It is particularly hard to change long-standing customs when there is no general consensus on which way to go.  Dueling was an ancient institution, one that supposedly brought justice directly into the hands of the people.  The same people who might be tasked with enforcing the ban on dueling were often the ones most likely to engage in duels.  Also, punishing someone for being violent with a fine or more violence could be self-defeating.  In fact, “some would think that incurring this risk indicated bravery, those without property would provoke to duels men who had something to lose, and injury would be given to the participants’ innocent families.”[70]  As such, many at the time proposed that the duel be reformed to limit how often it might occur instead of outright banning it.

Dueling Statistics

In addition to looking at the arguments from both sides and hearing anecdotal reports, it is important to have a few statistics in order to best view the larger picture.  Looking at, “sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italy (contrasted with France)evidence suggests that despite a vibrant fencing culture, and a generally more violent society, death by the sword in civilian duels was not inordinately common. Most violence fell outside of duels, and stopped short of killing, while most fencers would never need to apply their skills to lethal effect.”[71]  Just like modern day martial artists, those at the time would likely train for years without ever having to directly employ what they had learned.  Were swordsmen required to call on their skills, it was much more likely to be in the context of self-defense as opposed to that of the duel.  Although dueling aimed to mitigate spontaneous violence, it was hardly able to do so entirely.

Despite the formal duel as explained here originating in the Italian states, it was France that saw the highest amount of duels per capita.  The numbers for dueling in France, “are significant (a homicide rate of 175 per 100,000 among French gentlemen, from duelling alone) but in perspective, they suggest only 1 in 570 French gentlemen were killed in duels in any given year. This equates to 1.8 deaths from duelling per 100,000 of the overall population.”[72]  So although the duel held a widely recognized role in society, it was not something that occurred all that often.

            On the other hand, there was always plain old murder.  With what evidence we have, we can estimate, “murder rates per 100,000 ranging from: 5 in late sixteenth-century Kent, 10 in Cologne from 1557-1620, between 20 and 36 in Stockholm from 1545-1625, to a high of 47.3 in Rome from 1560-1585 . . . the country with the highest homicide rate in 2010 was Honduras with 82.1, while in the same year the United States had a rate of 5.0”[73]  We can see here that despite the duel’s mystique and place of importance, people generally resorted to homicide instead.  Although there are likely those that used the duel as a way to justify murder, it was clearly not so wide-spread a phenomena that murderers across the board resorted to it.

            By the end of the seventeenth century, dueling was practically nonexistent in Italy.  It had reached its peak just after the middle of the sixteenth-century (only a few decades after most of the major anti-dueling laws were established) and then steadily declined beginning at the end of the century.[74]  We have a handful of accounts of dueling occurring in Europe during the early twentieth century, but otherwise, dueling is something that had largely fallen off of the public’s radar.

            The reason for this is thought to be largely due to the increasing severity and enforcement of anti-dueling laws.  In Europe as a whole, though, dueling did not really go out of fashion until 1918.  While combatants had switched to pistols and sabers, the customs of the mentita and the duel stayed largely intact.  In fact, the nineteenth century saw a drastic number of fatal duels occur across the continent.  It was, though, the overwhelming blood of the First World War that finally turned the public’s opinion on settling private matters through the use of force.[75]  In an ironic twist it was violence that solved violence.

Conclusion

At this point we have seen just how immense an institution the duel was.  It was remarkably intertwined with the idea of honor, something which at the time was held as the basis for society.  Whether honor was internal or bestowed upon you externally, it was the dueling field where you went to ensure the opinion of those around you.  Despite it going in and out of legality, duels persisted for hundreds of years.  People sacrificed all they had for an idea, because for them that idea is what held everything together.  That idea, honor, is what gave everything around them worth.

The fact that honor was held in such high regard did not mean that men acted honorably.  Although the duel may have served as a deterrent towards unbecoming behavior, it was not as widespread as some might think.  Although its many rules likely kept many in check, it is clear that it was still a man-made system, and like all others of its kind, could be gamed.

            At the end of the day, though, the duel was abandoned as a form of judgment.  It was an excess of violence that ultimately brought the duel, as a form of judgment, to its knees.  People moved on and new values were established.  Although the concept of honor remains with us today, it is distinct from its ancestor.  The duel was both rigid and codified as well as brutal and violent.  We must now find new ways to evaluate our worth.

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[1] Barbara Holland, Gentleman’s Blood:  A History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk (New York:  Bloomsbury, 2003), 23-24.

[2] Fredrick Bryson, The Point of Honor in Sixteenth-Century Italy: an Aspect of the Life of the Gentleman (New York:  Columbia, 1935), 1.

[3] Fredrick Bryson, The Point of Honor, 1.

[4] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 2.

[5] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 2.

[6] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 3.

[7] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 5.

[8] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 5.

[9] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 10.

[10] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 10.

[11] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 10.

[12] Bryson, The Point of Honor, 9.

[13] Tom Leoni, “The Judicial Duel” In In The Service of Mars Volume I, edited Gregory D. Mele, 237.  Wheaton, IL:  Freelance Academy Press, 2010.

[14] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 239.

[15] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 239.

[16] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, page 240

[17] Fredrick Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel; a Study in Renaissance Social History (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1938), 45.

[18] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 238.

[19] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 246-247.

[20] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 240.

[21] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 237.

[22] I realize that in Italian, the word mentita is in fact singular.  I have avoided conjugating it here, though, in order to avoid confusion for readers who are not familiar with Italian.

[23] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 241.

[24] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 241.

[25]Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 241.

[26] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 241-242.

[27] As you might have noticed, these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

[28] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 242.

[29] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 242.

[30] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 242.

[31] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 244.

[32] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 244.

[33] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 245.

[34] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 47.

[35] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 246.

[36] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 245.

[37] Ridolfo Capo Ferro, Great Representation of the Art and Use of Fencing (Sienna, Tuscany: 1610).

[38] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 246.

[39] I cannot speak hear for traditions in other areas of the world as to whether or not duels may have taken place at dawn like we see in so many movies.

[40] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 247.

[41] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 247.

[42] I use the term “unjust” here not to refer to our contemporary ideas of what is and what is not just, seeing as that could easily exclude dueling as a whole.  Instead I use the term to describe sensibilities of the time.

[43] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 246-247.

[44] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 247.

[45] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 247.

[46] “The Dubious Quick Kill,” last modified Mar 26 2006, http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.php

[47] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 247-248.

[48] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 249.  The emphasis here is from the original source and was not added in by myself.

[49] Leoni, “The Judicial Duel”, 238.

[50] “The rapier: facts, factoids and unanswered questions,” last modified Oct 28, 2011, http://www.salvatorfabris.org/WhatIsTheRapier.shtml

[51] “The rapier: facts, factoids and unanswered questions.”

[52] Capo Ferro, Grand Representation.

[53] I acknowledge that the word “tempo” is technically a singular form, but I have kept it as such in order to best communicate to an English-speaking audience.

[54] “The rapier: facts, factoids and unanswered questions.”

[55] “The Rapier Revisited,” last modified Oct 28, 2011, http://www.salvatorfabris.org/WhatIsTheRapier2.shtml

[56] “The rapier: facts, factoids and unanswered questions.”

[57] George Silver, Paradoxes of Defense (England, 1599).

[58] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 87.

[59] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 87.

[60] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 87.

[61] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 88.

[62] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 90-91.

[63] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 88.

[64] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 91.

[65] Remember, double jeopardy meant that the duel could not be refought were there to be a conclusive winner.

[66] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 95.

[67] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 94.

[68] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 103.

[69] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 113.

[70] Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel, 99.

[71] “Fencing Culture, Duelling and Violence,” last modified Aug 5, 2013, http://www.hroarr.com/fencing-culture-duelling-and-violence/

[72] “Fencing Culture, Duelling and Violence.”

[73] “Fencing Culture, Duelling and Violence.”

[74] “Fencing Culture, Duelling and Violence.”

[75] Holland, Gentleman’s Blood, 23-24.

---

Works Cited

Fredrick Bryson, The Point of Honor in Sixteenth-Century Italy: an Aspect of the Life of the

Gentleman (New York:  Columbia, 1935).

Fredrick Bryson, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Duel; a Study in Renaissance Social History

(Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1938).

Ridolfo Capo Ferro, Great Representation of the Art and Use of Fencing (Sienna, Tuscany:

1610).

Barbara Holland, Gentleman’s Blood:  A History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at

Dusk (New York:  Bloomsbury, 2003).

Tom Leoni, “The Judicial Duel” In In The Service of Mars Volume I, edited Gregory D. Mele.

Wheaton, IL:  Freelance Academy Press, 2010.

George Silver, Paradoxes of Defense (England, 1599).

“The Dubious Quick Kill,” last modified Mar 26 2006,

http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.php

“Fencing Culture, Duelling and Violence,” last modified Aug 5, 2013,

http://www.hroarr.com/fencing-culture-duelling-and-violence/

“The rapier: facts, factoids and unanswered questions,” last modified Oct 28, 2011,

http://www.salvatorfabris.org/WhatIsTheRapier.shtml

“The Rapier Revisited,” last modified Oct 28, 2011,

http://www.salvatorfabris.org/WhatIsTheRapier2.shtml