Visualising the Italian fencing lineage

Sources

Several years ago I began researching how the northern Italian school of sword fencing came to differentiate itself from the traditional Neapolitan school over the course of the 19th century. Early on it became apparent that before determining what the defining characteristics of each school are, one must first determine which fencing treatises belong to which tradition, and from whom their respective authors derived their knowledge. My endeavour to trace the transmission of fencing knowledge eventually became a project in and of itself, and I expanded the scope to include not just Italian authors for sword fencing, but also for sabre and épée and various foreign authors. The tree diagram shown above (open in a new tab or download to zoom) is the result of these efforts.

I have also provided a list of the sources used to create this diagram, arranged alphabetically by individual. This bibliography may not list of every single source used for a given person, but it should give a general impression of what I consulted. In some cases I have also included the names of other masters the individual studied under as well as the relevant sources, although some are less reliable than others. Additional sources, where present, will happily be provided on request. Readers are of course encouraged to make their own trees in this style. The software I used was the draw.io desktop application, but there are many other similar programs out there of this kind.

Since the primary intention was to understand the relationship between the various Italian or Italian-derived treatises, this diagram mainly focuses on those who published books on fencing and for whom it is possible to identify at least one master that connects them to the greater Italian lineage. The word 'lineage' is of course doing a lot of heavy-lifting here, since this tree in contains several distinct lineages, but for the purposes of simplicity it does not attempt to differentiate between them.

Names are spelt as they would be in the person's native language, e.g. 'Giuseppe Scansi' instead of the Hispanicised 'José Scansi' as rendered in his treatise. For consistency with the others, Hungarian names are shown with the given name first instead of the surname. Below is an alternative colour-coded version of the tree, with each individual shaded according to their fencing publications. Yellow signifies an individual who published a foil (/sword) treatise, red for sabre, orange for foil and sabre, blue for épée, purple for sabre and épée, green for foil and épée, and pink for all three weapons. Grey signifies a weapon other than these three or a publication that would generally not be considered a treatise per se.

Before drawing any conclusions from this diagram, several caveats must be made. First, it must be emphasised that this is a necessary simplification of the information. This diagram does not include every master an individual studied under, nor does it necessarily show those whom that person considered most influential to their understanding of fencing; ideas in fencing are not shared purely through master-student relationships, thus diagrams of this kind often neglect peer collaboration. Second, several significant authors are missing from the tree simply due to the fact that not enough is currently known about whom they learnt from. This is particularly the case for authors prior to the Radaellian period. Finally, many assumptions and inferences were made in order to make this tree as complete as possible. This could be something as simple as determining an individual's year of birth based off reports of their age, to more significant decisions such as linking two people together based off a merely implied master-pupil connection (as in the case of Giovanni Battista Rossi and Bonaventura Radaelli), or linking an individual to only one other in the diagram even though others may have taught them at some point. The latter was done so as to avoid multiple appearances of the same person, with the notable exception here given to Masaniello Parise and William Gaugler, for the first due to reasons of practicality and for the second due to his significance to many modern practitioners and to symbolise his breadth of experience by placing him at both sides of the tree.

Despite how the tree simplifies the relationships between individuals and their methods, I hope that it can nevertheless enlighten readers on the complexity involved in tracing the transmission of practical skills and theoretical concepts. The significance of lines of transmission and 'living lineages' can sometimes be overstated by modern fencers and fencing historians, and so it is always important to keep in mind that fencers, like humans, are a product of their environment, and everyone has their own unique experiences which shape the way they think about and practise fencing. As always, I welcome any feedback and suggestions; I will update the image if any new sources come to my attention which warrant changes.