Art of the Sword

"I want you to know that it is a beautiful mystery to know how to teach people well, more than to just play; for a man, if he knows how to play well and does not know how to teach, is not good (he is single): but one that knows how to teach well, is good for many people; and know that when he knows the one and the other, he is of double virtue and is a double master." Achille Marozzo "A new work" 1536

I'm just reading translations of Marozzo at the moment and it's just highlighted, again, one of my least favorite bug bears: the translation skipping the introduction. Sure, the introduction is often a role call of the authors noble patrons, the linage of swordmanship back to the Romans and comments on the parentage of other so called sword masters who slander the author. However the introduction is also often the source of summaries of the system that provide key information towards understand the rest of the text. Often they comprise the authors "how I learned sword fighting, from whom and how my opinions changed" and my "summary of my philosophy of sword fighting" paragraphs. When you look at the length of some summaries you realise that they cannot all be filler and there is undoubtedly some killer in there. Anyhow, whinge over. If some budding translator want to go out and translate all the missing introductions to treatises on Wiktenauer they...

"Art regards nature and sees that owing to the small capacity of matter, it cannot do all that which it intends to do, and however considers in many details its perfections and imperfections, and in the guise of architect takes thereof and makes such a beautiful model that it is thus refined, and sharpens the rough-hewn things of nature, reducing them little by little to the height of their perfection. From nature art has undertaken in defending oneself the ordinary step, the third guard for resting in defense, and the second and fourth for offense, the tempo, or the measure, and the manner as well of the placement of the body, with the torso now placed above the left leg for self-defense, now thrown forward and carried on the right leg in order to offend."  Ridolfo Capoferro, Art and use of fencing 1610

"So you see how much those who say that theory isn’t needed in the art of fencing  fool themselves, to which one can respond that if they don’t walk this path they’ll never  teach perfectly, since this it is which reveals the principles, the causes, the effects, and  finally teaches rationally and easily the rule and the method that one must follow in order  to teach it adequately."   Giovanni Dall'Agocchie

"Man is Naturally so selfish and invidious a Temper, that except what flows from himself, he can suffer almost nothing to pass, without either playing the Critick upon it, or starting Objections, altho' never so frivolous, against it: And this, certainly hath its rise from a selfish Pride; because upon no other Ground, for the most part, do People Criticise and Censure, but only out of, I may say, an ungenerous Concern, that another person should receive the Commendation and applause, which they would unjustly claim a Right to themselves; so that it Galls them to the very Soul, to think, that others are taken Notice of , while they are overlookt and neglected." William Hope: A New, Short and Easy Method of Fencing 1707