The official establishment of the single, national Military Fencing Master's School for the Italian army in December 1874 was the culmination of six years of trials initiated by the Ministry of War. What started as three individual schools all in northern Italy quickly became consolidated into two, and beginning in 1873 it became evident that one school, or perhaps just its technical director, had risen to the top of the Ministry's favour when it declared that Giuseppe Radaelli would take on the role of inspector general of all military fencing halls.1
Marking the official establishment of the unified school was the War Minister Cesare Ricotti-Magnani's short circular summarising the nature of the school, which opens:
1. At the Milan military recruiting office a fencing master's school has been instituted to train NCO fencing instructors and sub-instructors for the army.
2. The direction of this school will be entrusted to a brigade commander of the Milan garrison, and instruction will be imparted by the professor of fencing Mr. Giuseppe Radaelli.2
Although far from a list of governing regulations, we see that the stated primary goal of this institution was simply to train fencing instructors for the army. Consulting the other circulars and acts published around this time, the only other purpose given to the school was to conduct the necessary assessments to award promotions to the newly-created civil master role.3 The method taught at the Master's School is stated as that created by Giuseppe Radaelli, and it is clear that all active military masters would have to receive training in it; however, there are no comments on the method's qualitative superiority or any of its ideological associations. The authority of the school, its aims, and its means are assumed, not explained or justified. The duties of military fencing masters are clearly laid out, but very little structure is given to the Fencing Master's School itself, suggesting that the school enjoyed considerable independence in its day-to-day operation.4
So if the Milan school is notable for its apparent lack of framework and ministerial oversight, the complete opposite can be said for its Rome counterpart when it was instituted in 1884. In addition to the functions which the school served in Milan, it now takes on a larger responsibility for the Italianisation of fencing in the army. This is made clear at the very beginning of the Ministry's official announcement for the school's institution (emphasis added):
To the end of spreading within the army, with uniformity of method, the instruction of sword and sabre fencing according to the Italian school, this Ministry has come to the decision to institute in Rome a military fencing master's school.5
This new fencing school was national not only because its graduates would be dispersed throughout the whole army or because of its location in the Italian capital (only incorporated into the Italian state after the Milan school first became operational), but also because its curriculum would be proudly Italian—based on the 'Italian school', which until then had been a theoretical ideal, a tradition preserved in a select number of fencing halls throughout the peninsula, but now becoming a physical, official institution.
This nationalist language echoes that seen in the original announcement for the Ministry's fencing treatise competition in 1882, which stated that submitted works must be 'informed by the sound and glorious traditions of the Italian school'.6 What the Italian school consists of exactly was never defined, and Radaellian critics saw this as merely a dog whistle for Southern or Neapolitan fencing, and the treatise commission's interpretation of this passage the following year only confirmed this suspicion when it concluded early on its deliberation: 'Neapolitan sword, therefore Neapolitan school.'7 The Neapolitan school, the report argued, preserved the old tradition of Italian fencing during the Napoleonic era when Northern Italy came under the influence of French culture and adopted French fencing customs. Adopting the Neapolitan method was therefore not only patriotic, but logical.
In the weeks after the Master's School began operations the Ministry of War published the 'Internal service regulations for the military fencing master's school', which contained 75 articles outlining the school's purpose, course structure, and the roles and responsibilities of the people employed by the school.8 The regulations opened by repeating the previously quoted mission statement of teaching in accordance with the 'Italian school', but adding that this would be 'in compliance with the treatise approved by the Ministry of War', subsequently explained as that written by Masaniello Parise, which had been 'examined and selected by a special commission'. The treatise is referred to seven times throughout the regulations, repeatedly emphasising that all instruction is beholden to this text. Even the technical director is obliged to conform to it, removing the possibility for another master to take Parise's place and make sweeping changes to the curriculum. Any threat to the sanctity of the approved method is a threat to the school, thus there must be no alterations to it 'so that the necessary and perfect unity of direction is maintained at the school.'
Within just the first few items we can see a marked contrast with the language used around the school's previous iteration in Milan. The primary purpose of the school is no longer to train fencing masters for the army, but to propagate Italian fencing, as detailed in its authoritatively selected treatise. As it later stated even more explicitly (again, emphasis added):
All discussions of the various fencing methods which have existed in Italy until now are absolutely prohibited, as are all comparisons. Everyone must therefore keep in mind that the school was instituted with the sole aim of propagating throughout the army knowledge of the method chosen by the Ministry.
Graduates of the school were now to be cultural agents of the Italian state within the army, or as it wished to be seen, 'the school of the nation'.9 This made it necessary to insist on the essential Italianness of the school's fencing method, because Italian had to become synonymous with the typical Risorgimento ideals of cultural superiority and progress. The years of campaigning by partisans of Neapolitan fencing ensured that it was their method that became synonymous not just with 'Italian fencing', but also 'scientific fencing'. This was achieved partly by insisting on the continuity of the modern Neapolitan school, as professed at the National Academy of Fencing in Naples, with the Neapolitan school depicted in the seminal Italian fencing treatise of the early 19th century, Giuseppe Rosaroll and Pietro Grisetti's The Science of Fencing.10
The old Radaellian regime could claim no such traditional foundation, indeed it was decidedly empirical. As the famous Radaellian Salvatore Arista later put it: '... in its own favour the Neapolitan school cites traditions, while the Radaellians are instead supported by experience; something which could theoretically resemble the conservatives and the progressives in politics.'11 When it came to the foil, Radaelli's self-proclaimed 'half-Italian school' stood little chance of surviving under the Ministry of War's new direction, especially after the string of critical publications against Radaelli's method that had been released by 1884.12
A near endless amount of discussion can be had about nationalism and political discourse with Italy's modern fencing scene, beyond the more blatant expressions seen in the later fascist period of the 20th century. There is likely much to be uncovered in the archives of the Ministry of War about the government's involvement in these controversies, but I hope that this short article was able to present the existing information in a new light, keeping a yet more hopeful eye towards deeper analysis in the future.
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1 Giuseppe Radaelli was known by the Italian press as having this role from as early as February 1873. See "Banchetto Sociale," Cronaca, Il Secolo, 6 February 1873, 2.↩
2 Cesare Ricotti-Magnani, "N. 251. — SCUOLE MILITARI (Nota N. 5). — Scuola magistrale di scherma — 6 dicembre," Giornale Militare 1874: Parte Seconda, no. 44 (11 December 1874): 492.↩
3 Cesare Ricotti-Magnani, "N. 249. — ORDINAMENTO DELL'ESERCITO (Nota N. 29). — Istruttori e maestri di scherma per l'Esercito — 4 dicembre," Giornale Militare 1874: Parte Seconda, no. 44 (11 December 1874): 489–92.↩
4 A view also shared by Ferdinando Masiello, who prior to 1864 had attended the Master's School at Parma. Ferdinando Masiello, "L'insegnamento della Scherma in Italia," La scherma italiana, 2 September 1923, 2.↩
5 Emilio Ferrero, "N. 107. — SCUOLE MILTARI. — Istituzione di una scuola magistrale militare di scherma in Roma. — 9 giugno," Giornale Militare 1884: Parte Prima, no. 25 (13 June 1884): 323–4.↩
6 Masaniello Parise, Trattato teorico-pratico della scherma di spada e sciabola (Rome: Tipografia Nazionale, 1884).↩
7 Paulo Fambri, "Relazione," in Masaniello Parise, Trattato teorico pratico della scherma di spada e sciabola: preceduto da un cenno storico sulla scherma e sul duello (Rome: Tipografia Nazionale, 1884), x.↩
8 Emilio Ferrero, "Atto N. 123. — SCUOLE MILTARI. — Regolamento di servizio interno della scuola magistrale militare di scherma. — 27 giugno," Giornale Militare 1884: Parte Prima, no. 29 (4 July 1884): 453–61.↩
9 Ministero della Guerra, Regolamento di disciplina militare (Rome: Carlo Voghera, 1872), 21.↩
10 Giuseppe Rosaroll Scorza and Pietro Grisetti, La scienza della scherma (Milan: Stamperia del Giornale Italico, 1803).↩
11 S. M. Arista, "Quattro parole sulla scherma," Don Giovanni, 23 February 1888, 60.↩
12 See this series for my own translations of said works.↩
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