Having released scans of the 1902 edition of Masiello's foil treatise a few years ago and the 1902 sabre edition earlier this month, I thought it would be appropriate to provide a detailed comparison of these with the first edition, published in 1887. As opposed to being simple reprints, the 1902 editions contain significant changes to the earlier material, partly due to Masiello providing more detailed explanations for some concepts, but also due to the different context within the Italian fencing scene by this time.
A comprehensive side-by-side comparison of the different editions can be read here, in which each change is listed and highlighted according to whether it is a deletion, modification or addition. For those less interested in the specifics of each individual change, what follows below is a summary of the most significant changes in both the foil and sabre treatises. It must also be noted that while the 1902 edition is the second edition of Masiello's foil treatise, his sabre treatise saw its second edition published in 1893, thus making the 1902 sabre book the third edition. One must therefore keep in mind that many of the changes seen in the 1902 edition may have already been present in this 1893 edition. How exactly the second edition differs from the third is a topic that will have to wait until I acquire a copy of it myself.
Generalities
The first difference one encounters is in the physical form of the books. While Masiello's 1887 treatise is a single 593-page volume, in 1902 the foil and sabre material were published separately, the former coming in at 232 pages and the latter 278 pages. The reduction in the total number of pages between these two 1902 volumes is largely due to the removal of the 141-page historical summary at the beginning of the 1887 edition.
Gone too is Masiello's 6-page preface, where he summarises the competitive achievements of the military's fencing masters, declares himself to be an opponent of Parise's method, and describes the purpose for his treatise and the artistic influences that contributed to the conclusions it makes. In the 1902 volumes this is replaced by a short preface from the editors, who state that they chose to publish Masiello's work for the benefit of the Italian youth due to the 'unanimously favourable opinions' expressed for the previous editions (citing the adoption of his method in the British army), and explain that with Masiello's consent they chose to 'remove everything which could have hampered elementary teaching'. The illustrations were also updated, both in art style and in that they are now all in line with the text, no longer take up entire pages.
Thus it is apparent that the 1902 editions were intended to be more relevant and accessible to the new generation of Italian fencers, those who were unburdened by the ideological debates of the 1870s and 1880s and who may have been less familiar with French and Italian fencing material of previous centuries. This improved accessibility in part derived from the foil and sabre material being published separately, which would likely have reduced the purchase price for those who were more interested in only one or the other.
A significant part of how the 1902 editions were made more relevant to younger readers is the removal of all the criticism directed towards Parise's 1884 treatise. The first edition of Masiello's 1887 book was clearly written as a response to Parise's work, with the first half containing a chapter almost entirely dedicated to refuting Parise's discussion of fencing mechanics as well as over 20 footnotes citing Parise. By 1902 the Neapolitan-Radaellian debate was well and truly tired, and while the rebuttals may be interesting for today's fencing historian, they were clearly a product of Radaellian sentiments in the 1880s. In the 1902 editions the critical footnotes were removed and the refutations of Parise's mechanics were revised to remove all references to Parise's work, with each topic being distributed throughout the rest of the book as opposed to being in one dedicated chapter.
In fact all references to other fencing treatises were removed in the 1902 editions, such as Masiello's many citations of Rosaroll-Scorza and Grisetti's 1803 treatise. Unlike the first edition, Masiello's work is now intended to be appreciated entirely on its own merits, not as an improvement over the military's regulation method or as a part of a specific tradition. The only citations that are retained are those referencing works on physiology and biomechanics, a topic which Masiello devotes much more time to in the 1902 editions, adding many quotations from Fernand Lagrange's 1888 book Physiologie des exercices du corps.
The other expanded explanations we see in both the foil and sabre volumes were partly prompted by the questions and criticism he received following the publication of the first edition, most notably the remarks made by the jury of 1891 Bologna fencing tournament, who as part of a competition for fencing and duelling publications awarded his 1887 treatise and 1891 cavalry sabre manual with a gold medal, with their thoughts on these works being published in a report. Masiello's response to these remarks was published as a booklet and also printed in several magazines in subsequent years.
Foil
Stepping back from the book's content, the title of the 1902 volume dedicated to the thrusting sword is perfectly emblematic of how Italian fencing had changed in the 15 years since the treatise's original publication. When the first edition was published in 1887, Italians were by-and-large of the opinion that Italian sword fencing had lost none of its duelling application to artistic convention—unlike French foil, which made use of a weapon that beared little resemblance to its duelling counterpart, the épée du combat. By 1902, however, fuelled by increasing contact with the French in the growing international competitive fencing scene, there was a significant number of Italians who no longer held this view, and the term 'sword fencing' was no longer synonymous with foil, but rather with the duelling sword or épée. Thus we see that while Masiello's 1887 treatise bears the title Italian sword and sabre fencing, the 1902 volume for the former weapon is instead called Foil fencing to more accurately describe its content.
As mentioned above, the most significant edits made in the 1902 foil volume are the lack of comparisons to other authors, namely Parise and Rosaroll/Grisetti; but this is not to say that there were no new additions. The introduction was expanded from 3 pages in the 1887 edition to 14 pages in the 1902, although some of this material was already contained in the mechanics discussion in the 1887 edition. Further in the book, there are an additional 3 pages in the section on the lunge discussing the advantages of inclining the torso, both with regard to the extra reach and target minimisation it provides as well as how the torso can aid a swift recovery, and the section on disengagements now has more discussion of biomechanics, with Masiello drawing from the aforementioned Lagrange as well as other authors to justify his advocacy for using the shoulder joint to perform the action as opposed to the wrist.
While the separate publication of the foil and sabre treatises resulted in various chapters and passages being repeated in both volumes, the 1902 foil volume does lack the glossary of fencing terms found at the end of the 1887 edition (although the sabre volume retains it).
Sabre
If the most notable parts of the 1902 foil volume are what was removed, it is the opposite case for the sabre. Not only does the sabre volume contain all the aforementioned additions to the foil volume (i.e. the lengthier introduction and additional discussion in the sections on the lunge and disengagement) and repetition of the foil mechanics discussion seen in the 1887 edition, but it also has several other valuable expansions and clarifications.
Buried among all this additional content is a slightly more subtle and somewhat unexpected modification, and that is the addition of rearward weight shifting in the exercise molinelli. After a brief addition at the start of the section to explain the difference between exercise molinelli and cuts by molinello, the note at the end now begins with:
The first tempo of each molinello must be accompanied by the greatest rearward inclination of the torso (in a fencing sense) and accompanied by a slight extension of the right leg; and the second tempo, by the opposite inclination and partial extension of the left leg.
Although this back-and-forth weight shifting is present in Del Frate's 1868 text and both the 1873 and 1885 Italian cavalry regulations, Del Frate's 1876 treatise retains only the forward lean, and the only other Radaellian to include backwards leaning in their treatise is Poggio Vannucchi in 1915. The amplified weight shifting actually first reappears in Masiello's 1891 book Sabre fencing on horseback, so it does not seem that very long had passed after the publication of his 1887 treatise before he thought to alter the molinelli.
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| Molinello to the head from the left |
In the 1902 sabre text Masiello implies that this weight shifting serves to compensate for the asymmetrical muscular development of the right side of the body (as a consequence of lunging), thus preventing 'the vice of scoliosis'. The illustrations for the molinelli, now a single picture per molinello, show a more exaggerated forward lean, but they do not seem to reflect the prescribed rearward lean as accurately.
As for textual material from the 1887 edition that was removed, the only thing of note is the lack of fencing sabre specifications. While the 1887 sabre text began with a detailed description of each part of the fencing sabre, including its dimensions and weight, the 1902 edition leaves only a general description of each component. The design of the sabre is now different too, having a completely straight blade and a guard of perforated sheet steel instead of the carved branches seen in the 1887 edition, and Masiello no longer prescribes a 4 cm point-of-balance for the sabre, but expands the section on the 'balance of the sabre' and states that the it should constructed in such a way that its centre of gravity lies at the grip.
Conclusion
Through his increased reliance on contemporary science and mathematics to explain his precepts and innovations, it is easy to see why Masiello was widely considered among Italians to be the torchbearer of the Radaellians since the mid-1880s. Not content with merely publishing a treatise as large and comprehensive as his 1887 book Italian sword and sabre fencing, he was determined to make sure his theories were properly understood and still taken seriously 15 years later, updating his material to address possible criticism and make it more accessible to younger generations.
While lacking the fiery and reactionary jabs towards Parise and the fateful government treatise competition that make the first edition of Masiello's treatise so distinctive, the 1902 volumes are, in my view, much better expositions of Masiello's keen intelligence and ambition and are a credit to his lifelong advocacy for the Radaellian method.
