Normally when I share a source on this blog it is to make a source freely accessible online for the first time; today, however, I wish to bring attention to a unique source that has been publicly available for some time already, but has only recently come to my attention, and is no doubt unknown to most readers. The source in question is this manuscript compiled by the fencing master Antonio Buja, which now resides in the Biblioteca provinciale Nicola Bernardini, Lecce. Its full title is Tavole illustrative della ginnastica per le armi bianche spada e sciabola, ossia scienza teorico-pratica della scherma ('Illustrative plates of gymnastics for the white [i.e. bladed] weapons sword and sabre, or theoretical-pratical science of fencing').
Antonio Buja was born on 12 March 1825 in Lecce, Apulia. Nothing is known about the first half of his life, but in the early 1860s he joined the National Guard, becoming a captain in 1866. Subsequently he became an employee of the town council of Lecce, seemingly remaining in this role the rest of his career. Since at least the 1870s he also worked as a fencing master in Lecce, having taught at the Real Collegio di San Giuseppe, and likely taught at a private hall in the city in his later years. Newspaper articles from 1874 to 1890 show Buja organising and participating in exhibitions as a respected member of the fencing community. Buja died in Lecce on 11 October 1906, aged 81.1 The only known published work of his was published in 1875, and consists of a collection of discussions around fencing, primarily its benefits as a physical and moral exercise in comparison to other pursuits such as gymnastics.2
Aside from a short preface, his unpublished manuscript consists entirely of illustrations: more than 100 of them spread across 57 plates on both foil and sabre fencing (although the numbering stops at 56, there are actually two plates labelled 'Tav. 5'). The preface explains that the illustrations depict the end of a movement, the beginning of a movement or the movement which most defines a given action. Buja explains that the illustrations are his own, 'drawn and copied from real life'. The word 'copied' here may be alluding to the fact that although Buja is a talented illustrator, many of them do bear great resemblance to illustrations in other, mostly Italian, fencing treatises. In only one instance does Buja give a source for the illustrations being copied, that being on plate 5 (that is, the first plate 5) where he reproduces several plates from the works of Achille Marozzo and Giuseppe Morsicato Pallavicini.3 There are other indications of Buja referencing images from Pallavicini throughout the manuscript, but no citations are given in such instances (e.g. fig. 13 and fig. X, plate 4).
There is a benefit that Buja's plagiarism provides, however, which is what they can tell us about when the manuscript was compiled. Of all Buja's derivative illustrations, the latest I was able to identify was fig. Y on plate 6, which bears close resemblance to one from Masiello's 1887 treatise, as shown below.4 Not only are the postures identical, but Buja even made sure to reproduce the particular style of fencing jacket, which is different to the rest of Buja's illustrations. This would therefore suggest the manuscript was composed no earlier than 1887, when Buja was at least in early 60s. In addition to the aforementioned examples, others show Buja being familiar with the illustrations from the treatises of Parise (figs. V, X, and Y, on the second plate 5), Domenico Angelo (the grapples on plate 34), and Ferrero.5
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| Left: Masiello (1887) Right: Buja manuscript |
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| Left: Ferrero (1868) Right: Buja manuscript |
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| Left: Angelo (1763) Right: Buja manuscript |
It would be tempting to give Buja a pass for the repeated plagiarism in this manuscript, as it was never published (to my knowledge); yet given the fact that the illustrations are individually labelled and that many of them, particularly the diagrams, show a level of detail that makes their purpose nearly impossible to determine by the image alone, it is very likely that pictures were originally to be accompanied by explanatory notes to enable dissemination, if not publicly, then perhaps locally. Regardless, Buja had already proven to be willing to publish plagiarised material under his name. In the final chapter of his 1875 publication, Buja provides a comparison of the various fencing schools of Europe which borrows heavily from a chapter first published in Blasco Florio's book Discorso sulla utilità della scherma and later reproduced in his 1844 treatise, La Scienza della Scherma.6
Despite Buja's reliance on other books, overall the manuscript gives a strong impression that Buja's intent was to demonstrate his own ideas on fencing, founded on both texts and personal experience. The guard position on the second plate 5 labelled fig. 18 resembles a typical Neapolitan guard position, but the rear arm is held in a manner similar to Marchionni.7 This guard is not copied from any Italian text (to my knowledge), and likely depicts Buja's personal preference, given that subsequent illustrations show this same arm position.
Further on we see that many of the plates depicting fencing actions have extra details such as the labelling of various points in space and on the fencers' bodies, lines showing the path of the point or the hand, before and after positions of the blade, etc. Buja was clearly using his illustrations to convey additional information beyond the superficial, static positions of the two fencers, providing a more comprehensive idea of the technical requirements of a given action. What he considered these intricacies to be exactly is unfortunately lost to us, given the absence of any explanatory text, but I have no doubt that experienced fencers today could surmise the meaning of many of Buja's lines and labels.
Buja's attempts to push beyond static depictions of fencing is further seen in his inclusion of many techniques that would at the time be considered unusual or unconventional, such as the leaning void on plate 22, the reverse passato sotto on plate 28, the grapples on plates 31 to 34 (very much forbidden in Italy by this point), the spinning inquartata on plate 43, and the ducking parry of 5th on plate 44. In addition to Buja's inclusion of parry of 1st, these positions suggest that Buja was not a strict adherent to the traditionalist and aesthetic ideals of many Southern foil fencers his age.
This unconventionality continues in the sabre section, where, in addition to the the standard depictions of parries and cuts, Buja has also illustrated ways for a soldier to hold their scabbard after drawing the sabre (plate 49), ways to perhaps cut at the leg (plate 54), two left-foot-forward guard positions (plate 55), and a demonstration of how to shield one's eyes from the light of the sun with the left hand (plate 56). When it comes to technique, however, Buja's sabre fencing shows much in common with the other non-Radaellian methods of the time, and shows no evidence of Radaellian influence.
Buja's wonderful illustrations shine a little bit of a light on a region that rarely gets a mention in Italian fencing literature. Even though Buja's motivations with the manuscript are unknown to us today, his work demonstrates that he was a keen observer of the development of Italian fencing throughout his long life and was relatively forward-thinking in his own approach to the practice. There are no doubt countless more interesting details to be found in the illustrations of this unique manuscript, and I look forward to hearing about what readers discover and any possible theories on what the various diagrams and labels are depicting.
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1 Jacopo Gelli, Bibliografia generale della scherma con note critiche, biografiche e storiche (Florence: Tipografia Editrice di L. Niccolai, 1890), 41; "Antonio Buja," Gazzetta delle Puglie, 13 October 1906; Corriere Meridionale, 18 October 1906. The earliest appearance of Buja I have been able to find is in Il Cittadino Leccese, 17 April 1874, 203.↩2 Antonio Buja, La scherma considerata sotto tutti i rapporti sociali, fisici e morali (Lecce: Tipografia Editrice Salentina, 1875).↩
3 Marozzo, Opera Nova de Achille Marozzo, Mastro Generali de l'Arte de l'Armi (Modena: D. Antonio Bergolae, 1536); Pallavicini, La seconda parte della Scherma Illustrata, ove si dimostra il vero maneggio della spada, e Pugnale, & anco il modo come si adopera la Cappa, il Borchiero, e la Rotella di notte, le quali regole non sono state intese da nessuno Autore (Palermo: Domenico d'Anselmo, 1673). ↩
4 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: Stabilimento Tipografico G. Civelli, 1887).↩
5 Masaniello Parise, Trattato teorico-pratico della scherma di spada e di sciabola (Turin: Tipografia Nazionale, 1884); Giuseppe Rosaroll-Scorza and Pietro Grisetti, La scienza della scherma (Milan: Stamperia Del Giornale Italico, 1803); Domenico Angelo, L'École des armes, avec l'explication générale des principales attitudes et positions concernant l'escrime (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1763); Giovanni Battista Ferrero, Breve trattato sul maneggio della sciabola (Turin: Tipografia Subalpina di Marino e Gantin, 1868).↩
6 Buja, La scherma, 138–144. Cf. Blasco Florio, Discorso sulla utilità della scherma (Messina: Giuseppe Fiumara, 1825), 32–8; Florio, La scienza della scherma (Catania: Tipografia del R. Ospizio di Beneficienza, 1844), 69–74.↩
7 Alberto Marchionni, Trattato di scherma sopra un nuovo sistema di giuoco misto di scuola italiana e francese (Florence: Tipi di Federigo Bencini, 1847), fig. 8.↩
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