We interrupt your regular broadcast to announce that an article of mine has just been published here on the Melbourne Fencing Society's website. The article takes a look at what various authors of sabre treatises said with regard to what kind of sabres should be used for fencing, collating all the preferences, specifications, and opinions I have been able to find so far.
I hope you enjoy.
28 June 2020
18 June 2020
The republication of Marchionni's 1847 treatise
Alberto Marchionni's Trattato di scherma was the first work to be published explicitly discussing the 'mixed' school of fencing, and was highly regarded by many of those in the north of Italy who were themselves also considered proponents of the mixed school. Although it is of great significance within the context of Radaelli and his contemporaries, I will not be discussing the technical matter contained in the treatise here today. Instead, I wish to provide a clarification for the publication of this important work which may not be immediately obvious upon first reading it.
The title page of this book gives a publication date of 1847, however, I wish to point out a few parts of the book which indicate that the majority of copies which can now be found online (and presumably those found in libraries) were published almost 20 years later.
Our first clue of this is contained at the end of part 1, where one finds the following note to the reader from the publisher:
Further on he gives praise to Carlo Tambornini and Cesare Alberto Blengini for their treatises, calling the former the best sabre treatise written to-date, and commending the latter for his methodology for group fencing instruction.3 Given that Blengini's treatise was published in 1864, the republication of Marchionni's treatise cannot have occurred earlier than this.
By searching outside Marchionni's text, we find an issue of a short-lived newspaper from 8 August 1864 by the name of l'Esercito Illustrato. In this issue, we find an article by an unnamed writer giving a review of Marchionni's treatise, which he says was in fact republished twice in that year:
1 Alberto Marchionni, Trattato di scherma sopra un nuovo sistema di giuoco misto di scuola italiana e francese, [2nd ed.] (Florence: Federigo Bendici, 1847 [1864]), 206.↩
2 ibid., 373.↩
3 ibid., 373–4.↩
4 Bibliografia, L'esercito illustrato: giornale militare, 6 August 1864, 445.↩
5 Jacopo Gelli, Bibliografia generale della scherma con note critiche, biografiche, e storiche (Florence: Tipografia Editrice di Luigi Niccolai, 1890), 167.↩
The title page of this book gives a publication date of 1847, however, I wish to point out a few parts of the book which indicate that the majority of copies which can now be found online (and presumably those found in libraries) were published almost 20 years later.
Our first clue of this is contained at the end of part 1, where one finds the following note to the reader from the publisher:
In 1847 the author undertook the printing of this treatise, but due to the political events that took place in 1848, he had to suspend its publication in order to take part in the war of independence as a volunteer, and then due to various circumstances having to continue his military career, where he still finds himself with the rank of major on leave of absence.Thus we already see that this edition must have been published some time after the First Italian War of Independence. At the end of the book, Marchionni includes various acknowledgements to his friends and colleagues for their support in continuing the publication of his treatise. Among others, he lists Enrichetti at the Royal Military College in Florence as having bought one copy of the book, Maestro Pini in Livorno as buying 4, a Maestro Radaelli in Milan buying 5, and Maestro Lambertini buying 2.2
Encouraged by several of his old associates, and urged on again by various masters of this art who would like to see this treatise completed, he took to continuing it.
Hence we are more than certain that this book will receive universal approval, due to the useful considerations demonstrated by the author, and due to it truly being a complete treatise on this most noble art.1
Further on he gives praise to Carlo Tambornini and Cesare Alberto Blengini for their treatises, calling the former the best sabre treatise written to-date, and commending the latter for his methodology for group fencing instruction.3 Given that Blengini's treatise was published in 1864, the republication of Marchionni's treatise cannot have occurred earlier than this.
By searching outside Marchionni's text, we find an issue of a short-lived newspaper from 8 August 1864 by the name of l'Esercito Illustrato. In this issue, we find an article by an unnamed writer giving a review of Marchionni's treatise, which he says was in fact republished twice in that year:
The first instalment of this important work was published in 1847, the second and the third date from 1864.4So with a republication date of 1864 (or better yet, two republication dates), we can fairly safely assume that the masters cited by Marchionni would have been Giuseppe Pini (father of the famous Eugenio Pini), Bonaventura Radaelli (older brother of Giuseppe Radaelli, who at this time was following Avogadro and the Monferrato cavalry in their various postings in Italy5), and Clemente Lambertini (father of Vittorio Lambertini).
1 Alberto Marchionni, Trattato di scherma sopra un nuovo sistema di giuoco misto di scuola italiana e francese, [2nd ed.] (Florence: Federigo Bendici, 1847 [1864]), 206.↩
2 ibid., 373.↩
3 ibid., 373–4.↩
4 Bibliografia, L'esercito illustrato: giornale militare, 6 August 1864, 445.↩
5 Jacopo Gelli, Bibliografia generale della scherma con note critiche, biografiche, e storiche (Florence: Tipografia Editrice di Luigi Niccolai, 1890), 167.↩
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