The most recent addition to my antique book collection is one that, despite being written by a student of Radaelli, is perhaps one of the least remembered in the Radaellian tradition. Today I am pleased to present Nicolò Bruno's Risorgimento della vera scherma di sciabola italiana ('Revival of true Italian sabre fencing'), published in Novara in 1891.
With the release of these scans, it thus means that every treatise written by a '1st generation' Radaellian (i.e. those who attended Radaelli's school in Milan) is now available to read online (excluding some later editions), these being the treatises of Settimo Del Frate (1868 and 1876), Giordano Rossi (1885), Ferdinando Masiello (1887), Nicolò Bruno (1891), Luigi Barbasetti (1899/1936), Salvatore Pecoraro & Carlo Pessina (1912), and Poggio Vannucchi (1915).
Bruno's illustrations are particularly interesting for the Radaellian practitioner due to the interesting detail shown in several of them. In figure 27, shown above, three dotted lines show the paths for the large, regular, and small molinello to the head from the guard or parry of 2nd or 1st in line. Figure 13 below demonstrates the parry of 1st in line and angled 1st, while at the same time showing the path the sabre follows in a molinello to the head from these parries, as well as the path the sabre follows when performing the parry of counter 1st.
Bruno is a great supporter of Radaelli's sabre mechanics and terminology, however, in his introduction he is quick to assert that he did not agree with Radaelli's teaching method, which was supposedly only successful due to the fact that Radaelli's students were young, well-disciplined military men.
Bruno introduces his own teaching method, one which he claims is better suited for producing talented fencers while still providing an enjoyable and rewarding learning experience. In addition to this, Bruno greatly decreases Radaelli's torso movement, teaching the molinelli with a fully upright body initially, then introducing 'natural' torso movement later on when the student has mastered the actions.
The teaching progression of Bruno's method contains many preparatory flexion and extension exercises in addition to traditional exercise molinelli, motions based on the 'oscillation of a pendulum', a recurring theme in Bruno's writings. These preparatory exercises serve to teach the student to move the sabre correctly and keep the body well-balanced in all these motions before moving on to the 'true lesson', that being the various blows on the lunge, feints, ripostes, etc.
At the start of his introduction, Bruno states that sabre fencing has been in gradual decline, and that he felt compelled to publish his book after waiting in vain for someone else to come forward and publish their own work correcting the flaws of Radaelli's method. When Bruno's treatise was submitted to a competition for sporting publications in 1894, one of the criticisms the jury the made was in reference to these statements, saying that Bruno needed only consult the treatises of Rossi and Masiello to find what he was looking for. In response to this, Bruno states that he originally wrote his method prior to 1885, before any other Radaellian publication had come to light, publishing the unmodified treatise in 1891 only when others insisted he do so.1
If Bruno truly had not made any modifications to the original text prior to publishing it in 1891 as he claims, the presence of several references to Parise's treatise means that he must have still been writing it after August 1884, when the first edition of Parise's treatise was published.2
2 Cesare Francesco Ricotti-Magnani, "N. 107. - Pubblicazione del trattato di scherma di spada e sciabola compilato dal signor Masaniello Parise. - (Segretariato generale). - 11 agosto," Giornale Militare 1884: parte seconda, no. 33 (16 August 1884): 653–4.↩
Hi Seb, thanks for posting this scan of Bruno's work, I have found it quite interesting. I note that Bruno appears to hand 9 hand positions as opposed to Barbasetti's 6 hand positions. How does Bruno use the other 3 positions? Graeme
ReplyDeleteG'day Graeme, I'm glad to see others are enjoying it too!
DeleteAlthough the first plate does have 9 different numbered positions, Bruno's actually only showing 8 hand positions here. The first image is only meant to demonstrate how to correctly grip the sabre (something that Barbasetti's close-up photo shows more clearly), while the remaining pictures are the hand positions, which are, from no. 2 down: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 1st-in-2nd, 2nd-in-3rd, 3rd-in-4th, and 4th-in-1st.
The two that Barbasetti does not explicitly mention are 1st-in-2nd and 4th-in-1st. I use the word 'explicitly' here because they do appear in some of Barbasetti's actions, but for whatever reason he didn't think it necessary to name them in his book.
1st-in-2nd would be the position of your hand in guard of 2nd, as well as for rising cuts to the flank.
4th-in-1st would be the end hand position for a rising cut to the abdomen.
How do we know that he came out of Radaelli’s school?
ReplyDeleteExcellent question! For the sake of completeness, here are a few pieces of evidence from different sources:
Delete- There is a short biographical summary on Bruno contained in the August 1914 issue of the magazine 'La Scherma Italiana' which explicitly states this.
- Bruno himself makes a couple of passing mentions of the things he learnt and saw while attending the course at Radaelli's school when responding to some critical marks made about his treatise, with the responses being published across several issues of the similarly titled magazine 'Scherma Italiana' in 1894 (a completely separate magazine to the other one).
- He is included in the list of fencing masters ordered to attend a course at Parise's school in 1885 to learn the new method (which he clearly was not a fan of). This means that he was already a military fencing master by this point (also verifiable from other sources such as the 1881 Milan tournament), and so he must have attended Radaelli's school at some point prior to its closure.