The death of Masaniello Parise, technical director of the Military Fencing Master's School, in 1910 marked the end of not only the life of one of the most revered figures of Italian fencing, but also the end of the official suppression of the Radaelli sabre method. Only four months after Parise's death the two masters who had taught at school not long after its founding in 1884, Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, announced to their colleagues that they would soon be publishing a sabre treatise of their own, in which they intended to 'unify the various pre-existing systems and methods.'1 Shortly after, this treatise entitled La Scherma di Sciabola was released to the public. Here I am pleased to share scans of my own original copy of it.
This copy is in fact the 1912 edition, rather than that originally published in 1910. The earlier edition was released to some controversy among the old Radaellian guard, such as Masiello and Pagliuca,2 who believed that it provided no notable innovations to the Radaelli method, as well as the fact that it was a complete reversal of the method that the two authors had spent the better part of three decades supporting, that of Masaniello Parise. Masiello even dedicated an entire 160-page book to criticising Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise which was widely circulated. Despite this reception, after a period of experiments among the fencing masters of the army their method was soon adopted by the military, and the book was revised and republished in 1912, which became the most widely-distributed version. The Master's School would soon close after the outbreak of the First World War, but when it was reopened in 1926 Pecoraro and Pessina's text was again chosen as the sabre textbook. The book was republished in 1927 in order to provide students with their own copies, but curiously Pecoraro was no longer listed as an author, and the introduction was removed.3
Although the 1912 edition did not address every issue Masiello had with it, he appears to have warmed to it slightly over time, calling it in a 1923 article 'a sabre treatise which, especially in the second edition, I will not hesitate to declare in many respects to be coherent and worthy of consideration.'4 Perhaps the highest praise that could be hoped for from such a man! The mostly minor differences between the 1910 and 1912 editions will be the topic of a future article, but the most important change to the later edition was a complete re-write of the introduction, making it explicit that the method was an attempt by the authors to reflect the reality of how sabre fencing was then being done, using a combination of Radaelli's elbow-focused blade carriage and Parise's body carriage.
Despite this compromise, the treatise is as Radaellian in character as any of the others, keeping the exercise molinelli as the foundation of instruction and even adding in six 'preliminary exercises' to ease students into the exercise molinelli with simpler, more relaxed movements. The text is complemented with 32 photographs; I am able to recognise the hairier of the two models as Francesco Innorta, and the bald one may perhaps be Salvatore Angelillo.
Those who wish to read the book in English should check out the excellent translation by Chris Holzman.
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1 Ferdinando Masiello, La Scherma di Sciabola: Osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina, Vice-Direttori della Scuola Magistrale militare di Scherma (Florence: G. Ramella, 1910), 17.↩2 For Pagliuca's criticism, see Giovanni Pagliuca, "La scherma di sciabola di Pecoraro e Pessina," La Nazione, 7 October 1910, 2.↩
3 Carlo Pessina, Scherma di Sciabola: trattato teorico pratico (per uso esclusivo della Scuola e fuori commercio) (Civitavecchia: Prem. Stab. Tip. Moderno, 1927).↩
4 Ferdinando Masiello, "L'insegnamento della Scherma in Italia," La Scherma Italiana, 2 September 1923, 2.↩
One of my favorites. Gets a little bit more sporty while still retaining the Radaellian side of things. Look forward to a comparison of the two editions in the future. – MotS
ReplyDeleteI tend to find notions of their book as being more 'sporty' Radaellianism is overstated. I would nevertheless be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
DeleteTo me, their system largely resembles those of their peers aside from the addition of a few elements from Parise's. Their direct cut from the extended guard without any preparatory bend of the arm is perhaps the only thing that stands out as being arguably sporty, but even so there are treatises from decades earlier that describe the same thing.