Vittorio Argento on Neapolitan sabre fencing

Throughout the 19th century, sabre fencing in southern Italy was always considered a secondary discipline to sword (foil) fencing, a preference which its proponents justified by looking to the centuries-long tradition their region boasted in this regard. In this article from Gazzetta dello Sport, published 18 & 21 August 1899 under the title 'La scherma di sciabola a Napoli', journalist and amateur fencer Vittorio Argento takes stock of the last century and highlights the individual Neapolitans who went against the traditional neglect for sabre and instead elevated it to new heights, citing such names as Augusto Parise, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Barraco, and Saverio Cerchione.

---

Sabre fencing in Naples

By now the custom of giving little consideration to the handling of the sabre, widespread amongst the majority of our fencers, has almost completely stopped; but once, not too long ago, if this weapon was not held completely in contempt, it was not appreciated according to its true value.

And to think that even then most duels were done with sabres!

What a contradiction! Fencing enthusiasts who can never believe they have trained enough with the sword, who sacrifice most of their time to the handling of this weapon and give it the utmost importance—in the only case in which it should be of use to them, they set it aside and choose the sabre as their preferred combat weapon, perhaps due to the preconception of thinking it less capable of producing mortal wounds; as if it were not possible to thrust with a sabre, or as if, even excluding murderous intentions in duels, cuts were not often fatal too. But let us not get off-track.

So there were very few who sometimes deigned to take the sabre in hand, and those rough wooden scimitars stayed hanging in fencing halls, full of cobwebs and almost never being disturbed.

If a master was asked by some students for a sabre lesson, he immediately tried to dissuade them.

Why waste time with the sabre? The art, the true art of fencing consists in sword fencing. Those who wield this weapon well can also wield the sabre as a consequence. With this conviction they pushed on.

Nor was there reason to be disillusioned, because in the event—and this was a rare event—that two fencers, recalcitrant to their master’s advice, wished to indulge themselves by having a sabre bout, being at the same level, they certainly could not have realised their own deficiency.

This is the rate at which it progressed for so many years, with the known offensive actions confined in the limits of backhands and double backhands, forehands and double forehands, vertical strikes, horizontal strikes, etc., more or less like in the old spadancia fencing system. Defence consisted of attacking with the aim of saving oneself with body parries; parries were rarely done by opposing one’s own blade to the opponent’s.

This was the state of things when Maestro Augusto Parise returned from Modena, where he had been a fencing teacher for some time at the military school, and where he had had the opportunity to train in handling the sabre with his other colleagues, especially with Enrichetti, Simonetti, Lupi, Pavia, and Pinto. He opened a fencing hall in our city, dedicating himself primarily to the teaching of sabre fencing and introducing us to steel blades for the first time.

With the first boost from this master, sabre fencing gradually began to be cultivated with greater care even in other halls, and the masters Annibale, Raffaele, and Eduardo Parise, Giuseppe Lopez, Vincenzo La Marca, Giuseppe Zugiani, and many distinguished amateurs such as Morbillo, Miceli, Rizzo, and Anzani were also strong sabreurs at that time. But soon these fencers preferred the sword again, which, through its limited target to be defended and the numerous means of defence which it offers, is less exposed to surprises and better lends itself to a serious and rational game.

One who with rare perseverance, and more through his own intuition than through any training acquired, cultivated and kept sabre fencing alive in Naples was the young amateur Vincenzo Bellini, then a medical student. He set about it with such passion that he almost totally abandoned his studies in order to devote himself exclusively to the profession of this art. I do not think he had anything to regret. Working tirelessly, he was able to produce many strong fencers, first and foremost Locascio.

He also published a treatise about his system which may be criticised, discussed, perhaps found incomplete; but the conscientious critic cannot help but consider that it was edited when the teaching of sabre was in a rudimentary state, lacking in exact rules and a rational progression, and that any art in its first development is subject to continuous changes before being able to approach perfection.

Besides, if Maestro Bellini publishes a new edition of his treatise, it will immediately be seen if and in what manner he will have followed and appreciated the continuous progress made by sabre fencing in recent times.

Those who have given the greatest influence to sabre fencing were, without any doubt, the military masters who went on to the various regiments stationed in Naples and nearby cities or at the Nunziatella military college.

The masters Monti, Pessina, Cerchione, Pagliuca, Barraco, Nappi, Cafarelli, Macri, Marenco, and so on—strong young men, willing to work and eager to show their valour—presented themselves in all the exhibitions, participated in all the fencing gatherings, frequented the best halls, fencing with sword and sabre, but naturally giving preference to the latter, which is the soldier’s weapon.

To see these young masters fence sabre, our fencers were convinced—from the evidence of the facts—that as strong as they were with the sword, they were completely insufficient with regard to the sabre. They started to give up the prejudice that this weapon was something like a coachman’s whip or a goatherd’s stick, and instead became persuaded that in the hands of someone who knew how to use it well by cultivating its handling with accurate and conscientious study, the sabre lent itself to a more elegant and finer game, no more or no less than the foil, and they devoted themselves—some with their own master, others with some of the best military masters—to training in the handling of the sabre.

It was then that Maestro Barraco, either through kindness or by his own choice, took leave of the army and opened in Naples the hall which produced Giuseppe Del Pozzo, Giuseppe Morelli, Aspreno Brancaccio, Luca Caracciolo, Captain Roberto Galato, Gaetano Fernandez, Enrico Formento, and others.

By staying faithful to a single system, Barraco—a profound connoisseur of his art, a strong fencer and intelligent teacher—would have been able to create students who should have all been similar, both in handling the weapon as in the tactics of fencing; but his restless spirit, the passion of always wanting to find new things, induced him to bring continuous innovations into his system, such that his students often differed from each other to the point that they seemed to be trained in different schools; and if this did not diminish the merit of the individuals, it did cause the lack of a standard which should have distinguished his school from all the others.

Now sabre fencing in Naples has progressed in a truly admirable way, especially in the last ten years.

Having witnessed public and private bouts with Pessina, Greco, Cerchione, Pecoraro, Guasti, Drosi, Conte, Nappi, Caprioli, Marenco, Mormile, Campanella, Burba, and many many other famous masters and amateurs, who, in being strong fencers, became very likeable through the grace of their movements, the plasticity of their pose, and above all the precision and lightness of their blade carriage, which has been so useful that our sabre fencers have slowly begun to refine their game, to force themselves to dominate the blade, guiding it until it barely touches—I would almost say grazes—the opponent. Those huge deep sea diver helmets, those padded vests which made sabre fencing so clumsy have almost completely gone into disuse. In Cerchione’s hall, for example, where the cream of sabre fencers is found, such as Filippo Salvati, Marquis Mastellone, Giuseppe Giurato, masters Russomando, De Simone, Galimi, etc., they fence with light jackets and often even with foil masks and foil gloves; nor once the bout has ended does one ever see those bruises on the chest that were seen (despite the padded vests) when cuts were given by letting the blade fall on its own.

In short, if we do not have that great number of strong sabre fencers that we should have, taking into account the number of inhabitants in our city and how many of them, it is said, study fencing, on the other hand we have fencers who are greatly esteemed and appreciated by the strongest masters and amateurs of Italy and who can, without fear of being accused of presumption, aspire to making those people reconsider who once rightly asserted the Neapolitans to still be children with regard to sabre fencing.

Vittorio Argento