The Flower of Battle of Master Fiore Friulano De'i Liberi
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The Flower of Battle of Master Fiore Friulano de’i Liberi Being a Concordance of the Prefaces and Several Plays from His Four Extant Manuscripts Including translations by Kendra Brown • Michael Chidester • Rebecca Garber • Colin Hatcher Guy Windsor Based on transcriptions by Kendra Brown • Michael Chidester • Rebecca Garber • Francesco Novati Guy Windsor Edited by Michael Chidester www.wiktenauer.com Preface, introduction, Morgan translation, and Pisani Dossi translation © 2015 by Michael Chidester Getty translation and Pisani Dossi grappling, baton, and dagger translation © 2015 by Colin Hatcher Pisani Dossi transcription 1902 by Francesco Novati (public domain) Florius translation and transcription © 2015 by Kendra Brown and Rebecca Garber Vadi transcription and translation © 2016 by Guy Windsor Digital images of Ms. M. 383 © 2008 by the Morgan Library, New York Digital images of Ms. Ludwig XV 13 courtesy of the Getty Museum’s Open Content Program Facsimile of Pisani Dossi Ms. published by Francesco Novati in 1902 Digital images of Ms. Latin 11269 courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France Vadi preface is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon these works even for commercial purposes, as long as you credit the authors. The complete license can be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Introduction, Pisani Dossi, Getty, and Morgan translations are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon these works non-commercially, as long as you credit the authors and license your new creations under identical terms. The complete license can be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ All rights for all other non-public domain content reserved. No part of these works may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the authors, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Version 3.2, 2016 Published by Wiktenauer, the free library of Historical European Martial Arts books and manuscripts A project of the 501(c)(3) H.E.M.A Alliance www.wiktenauer.com Contents Editor’s Preface ..................................................................................................................................................... 1i What’s in This Book ................................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 1 Notes on Ms. Latin 11269, “Florius de Arte Luctandi” ....................................................................... 11 Preface .................................................................................................................................................................... 21 Seven Swords ....................................................................................................................................................... 35 Grappling .............................................................................................................................................................. 45 Baton ...................................................................................................................................................................... 69 Dagger .................................................................................................................................................................... 77 First Remedy Master of Dagger ............................................................................................................... 89 Second Remedy Master of Dagger ....................................................................................................... 115 Third Remedy Master of Dagger .......................................................................................................... 121 Fourth Remedy Master of Dagger ........................................................................................................ 135 Fifth Remedy Master of Dagger ............................................................................................................ 147 Sixth Remedy Master of Dagger ........................................................................................................... 165 Seventh Remedy Master of Dagger ...................................................................................................... 177 Eighth Remedy Master of Dagger ........................................................................................................ 185 Ninth Remedy Master of Dagger .......................................................................................................... 197 Sword vs. Dagger .............................................................................................................................................. 211 Sword in One Hand .......................................................................................................................................... 229 Sword in Two Hands ....................................................................................................................................... 245 Wide Plays .................................................................................................................................................. 271 Narrow Plays ............................................................................................................................................. 293 Mixed Weapons ................................................................................................................................................. 325 Sword in Armor ................................................................................................................................................. 329 Ax in Armor ....................................................................................................................................................... 361 Mixed Weapons vs. Spear ............................................................................................................................... 379 Spear ..................................................................................................................................................................... 389 Spear vs. Cavalry ............................................................................................................................................... 403 Mounted Dueling .............................................................................................................................................. 408 Appendix A: Philippo di Vadi’s Introduction ............................................................................................ 455 Appendix B: Transcriptions ........................................................................................................................... 473 Editor’s Preface ii — Preface This book is the culmination of a project begun over nine years Fast forward to 2015, when Wiktenauer had gone from an ago, in mid-2006, before Wiktenauer was even a twinkle in Ben impossible pipe dream to a legitimate source for HEMA Michels’ eye. I was a member of ARMA at the time, and had research. Buoyed by our successful fundraiser in 2014, when recently earned the rank of general Free Scholar and told to we unexpectedly raised over $3,600 on a goal of just $500, choose a treatise to study and eventually bring back to the Richard Marsden and I put our heads together and decided to group. Since most members of my study group were focused plan out a real funding drive for this year and see if we on treatises in the Liechtenauer sphere and tended to quote the couldn’t double that number with a little planning and famous crank George Silver on the merits of Italian fencing organization. We plotted an ambitious (we thought) budget of whenever the subject came up, I decided I would try working $10,000 for 2015 and pulled together a few ideas for through the writings of Fiore de’i Liberi. inexpensive perks for donors—shirts and patches from the I soon discovered, however, that the resources I expected to HEMA Alliance shirt-and-patch guy, easily-downloadable use in this endeavor simply didn’t exist. No one had produced packets of manuscript scans, and so on—but we felt like we a syncretic text laying out the three known versions side by should have a big-ticket item that would encourage people to side. Indeed, the only real publication in English at that point spend bigger. Then I remembered the Liechtenauer and Fiore wasn’t even about Fiore, it was Greg Mele and Luca Porzio’s study guides I had once created—texts that still, several years translation of Philippo di Vadi’s treatise. Somewhat later, had not been reproduced by any authors in the field—and demoralized, I realized I would have to build this book myself. I thought they might be the incentive people needed. Then an opportunity to do just that presented itself, as I We all know how this story ends, of course: you, my shattered