Radaellians Respond to Pecoraro and Pessina (Part 1)

Having exposed and discussed the differences between the two editions of Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre treatise in the previous post, we can now turn our attention to what the public debate around the treatise was like before and after the publication of the first edition. The digital availability of Italian newspapers leaves a lot to be desired at present, thus it is not feasible to capture the full scope of discussion taking place in the public press; however, thankfully for us, Ferdinando Masiello took this debate rather seriously and reproduced several of his own articles and the authors' replies in his 1910 booklet of commentary on the treatise (the main subject of a later post), which we will avail ourselves of here.

The saga begins in April 1910 when Masiello received two letters from Pecoraro and Pessina announcing the imminent publication of their new sabre treatise:

Dear Colleague,

So that sabre fencing may be held in the regard it deserves and so that the diversity of methods and views do not hinder it or retard its gradual improvement, we have decided to compile a theoretical-practical treatise, which will bear the title:

Sabre Fencing

and will be published by the publishing house Giuseppe Romagna of Rome.

With this we do not intend to make a vain display of theories or untimely rhetoric, nor do we attempt speculation of a commercial nature, but we aim to bring the modest contribution of our experience for the complete triumph of the art which has constituted the ideal and the sole aspiration of our whole life.

To better achieve our aim, we count not only on your kind assent—of which we do not doubt—but also on that of your friends who are sincerely devoted to our art.

S. Pecoraro - C. Pessina

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Dear Colleague,

We confirm to you what we already said in the published circular which you will now certainly have received regarding the publication of our theoretical-practical treatise: 'Sabre Fencing'.

We will be grateful if, for the triumph and perfecting of the art so dear to us, you will assist us in the aim of unifying the various pre-existing systems and methods.

We also hope that, in time, that is to say after having examined the treatise, you will us give your sincere and impartial opinion on it.

Thanking you for everything, we are glad to reaffirm ourselves as,

Your dear colleagues

S. Pecoraro - C. Pessina¹

Rather than waiting patiently until read the book was published, Masiello immediately penned a harsh response to the aspiring authors, which first appeared in the Roman newspaper La Tribuna on 1 May 1910 and then in Florence's La Nazione on 3 May.² Masiello begins by reminding readers that he is someone who has been fighting for  his views in the public sphere since 1876, and that as a result of his tireless efforts he has produced a well-regarded treatise of his own and seen his method be officially adopted in the British and German armies. He had spent his entire public career 'glorifying' Radaelli and fighting against both 'Enrichetti, my master' and Masaniello Parise purely for the sake of the art, not personal interest. In contrast, Pecoraro and Pessina had instead spent the last 20+ years supporting Parise and training young fencing masters in accordance with Parise's method. He is therefore unable to conceal his sense of 'pained astonishment' on reading their announcement where they call on Masiello specifically to assist them in 'unifying the various pre-existing systems'.

Masiello clearly feels a sense of betrayal, as he feels that Pecoraro and Pessina have abused their high positions in the Master's School to push their own theories and deny recognition to those such as Masiello who have achieved so much outside of official Italian spheres. If their work were simply a compilation of the best Italian sabre had to offer, then why had Masiello and his colleagues not been asked by the Ministry of War or even the nascent Italian Fencing Federation (founded only one year prior) to contribute to this new method, even anonymously? If the work were not in fact a simple compilation, then that would mean Pecoraro and Pessina were attempting to impose their original work on the country's fencers; yet would provide no benefit to Italian fencing, because thanks to the labours of Masiello and his colleagues, 'nothing truly new, nothing truly useful and rational, and therefore nothing substantially practical and combative can now be added'.

If the authors intend to follow 'pure Radaellian theories', then this would simply be a return to the outdated theories of 30 years prior, thus negating all subsequent developments; if they were to follow the theories of Parise, then their method would be immediately ostracised as fundamentally flawed, just as Parise's was. A middle road between these two paths would also be impossible, because they are too contradictory on a fundamental level. After all this speculation, Masiello unsurprisingly did not have high hopes for the new treatise, but he now had no choice but to sit and wait for its publication.

In the meantime, Pecoraro and Pessina chose to respond to Masiello's hasty judgement and provide some clarification to hopefully temper attitudes and preconceptions prior to the book's publication. On 4 May in La Tribuna the two authors address Masiello directly and assure him that they have not simply resorted to republishing outdated Radaellian theories, but have followed the inevitable evolution and development that the field has since experienced. They also claim to have no pretence of creating an original work, because just like Masiello himself, they are only building on what has been written by those who came before. This does not mean, however, that their book is a 'simple compilation', because they are convinced that they have presented some ideas not yet contemplated in Masiello's work, and that the era they are writing in marks a new phase of fencing's evolution. So, in their own view, their treatise has 'no originality, but only improvement, which brings us closer to a relative perfection, in the belief that, strictly speaking, absolute perfection is never achievable.' They again ask for readers to withhold further judgement until the book is released.

Masiello granted them at least this wish, since it was only after the book was published a few months later that he gave his response, in the form of a lengthy review of the work. The article occupied more than half a page (just over three of the page's six columns) of La Nazione on 19 August, which indicates the respect the newspaper's editors must have had for Masiello and how important the topic was among some sections of Italy's literate public. Given his negative preconceptions prior to the treatise's publication, it should be unsurprising that after a thorough reading Masiello found within it 'nothing truly useful, substantially new and practical which has not already been said'. So extensive was his criticism that he admitted being already in the process of writing a standalone booklet which will go into greater detail on all the treatise's flaws and omissions. Thus his article in La Nazione should only be considered a summary of his full thoughts.

Thankfully for everyone, Masiello decided in his critique to overlook the 'many inaccuracies of language which, together with a true deluge of commas, render the reader asthmatic, and often obscure the author's intentions for those who are not well acquainted with the material.' This still left plenty for Masiello to remark on of course, with a particular bugbear being the authors' definitions, which he finds to be either poorly stated when they are not absent entirely. For one example, Pecoraro and Pessina chose to use the phrase 'in the full hand' to describe their method of gripping the sabre (a phrase also used by Settimo Del Frate in his 1868 book which later proved to be controversial), which by all appearances was likely intended to be the standard Radaellian method. Other instances of poor or imprecise language maligned by Masiello are the authors' use of non-metric units such as dita, palmi, and piedi, or their description of the sabre blade as 'slightly curved'. The fact that the authors would prescribe something as old-fashioned as a curved blade was itself a sin to Masiello (apparently even the army had ceased using curved blades), but they could at least have been precise in what an appropriate amount of curvature should be!

In instances where the authors are more precise, even then their decisions are questionable. Masiello finds it absurd that the lunge is discretely described as extending the foot 40 cm from the guard position, which surely cannot apply to both children and adults. The authors state that there are five invitations and that same number of engagements, yet simultaneously they add that low 3rd and low 4th can be performed as invitations, so would that not mean there are in fact seven engagements and invitations? Masiello's nit-picking extends to the terminology introduced for various techniques, such as the authors replacing the term 'coupé' with the nebulous 'fendente' or their referring to the thrust as a 'colpo di punta'. Nor could they even be consistent with this terminology, such as their many different phrases throughout the book (Masiello counts at least five) to refer to the 'azioni circolate di punta', which are themselves never defined very well. Masiello wonders why the authors did not simply use his well-thought-out terminology rather than their own inconsistent and imprecise versions.

Aside from just word choice, Masiello still finds much to criticise in the more technical details. Pecoraro and Pessina's first innovation, the preliminary exercises, are only detrimental for students, claims Masiello, as they habituate them to move the sabre without any coordination with the body, a key feature of the traditional Radaellian exercise molinelli. Although he admits that movements very similar to Pecoraro and Pessina's preliminary exercises are very commonly done by Italian fencers prior to bouts, just as a singer does vocal exercises before a performance, such warm-ups have no place in a formal fencing course. He also points out the close similarity to exercises first proposed by Nicolò Bruno in his 1891 treatise (where they are called 'flexion exercises'), perhaps implying a degree of plagiarism.

A more obvious appropriation by the authors is the inclusion of what they call 'parries in the opposite direction' from what Masiello calls the 'old Radaellian school' (which Del Frate simply designated 'counter parries'). This is clear evidence of their poor judgement, as these parries had supposedly been 'discarded' by other Radaellians by then. As for perceptible elements of Parise's system, Masiello recalls that the 'fili sottomessi' (forced glides) described by the authors were jokingly referred to as 'fili compromessi' (compromising glides) when they were first introduced by Parise, due to them being so dangerous for the one attempting them. Parise was at least lucid enough to only include them in his foil material, while Pecoraro and Pessina inexplicably consider them perfectly serviceable in sabre fencing too. The same could be said for their inclusions of the contrazione and the inquartata, which Masiello points out are lacking in the vast majority of Italian sabre treatises released up to that point, clearly indicating their unsuitability. Masiello assumes that these (supposedly ill-advised) inclusions are what the authors were referring to when they claimed in their May article that the treatise contained some ideas and views 'not contemplated' in Masiello's work. Masiello asserts that the reason he did not include such techniques was not because he never considered them, but because his judgement and experience showed that they were altogether unsuitable for sabre fencing, judgement which Pecoraro and Pessina do not seem to possess themselves.

At several points in his critique Masiello compares his own publications with that of Pecoraro and Pessina to emphasise that they have not improved on what has already been written. One example Masiello points to is the lengthy justification provided in the 2nd and 3rd editions of his sabre treatise for why a fully-inclined lunge is to be preferred over the fully upright posture adopted by Pecoraro and Pessina, for which they provide no explanation. Masiello also gives a list of ten concepts which are not explained in any significant detail, such as the method of wielding the sabre, its mechanics when considered as a lever, nor whether the cuts should be done by slicing (as per Parise) or as hammer blows (Radaelli). These are, of course, all things which Masiello asserts to have expounded on in great detail in his own work.

Although Masiello cannot completely refute the assertion made by Pecoraro and Pessina in their article from La Tribuna that even his treatise did not reveal anything truly original in the field of fencing, in his concluding remarks he maintains that he at least replaced 'baroque empiricism' with rational rules, using physical, anatomical, and physiological reasoning. This, in his eyes, was at least an original approach, and for the past 25 years nobody had been able to incontrovertibly invalidate any of his conclusions, even if many did disagree with them. Pecoraro and Pessina, on the other hand, have not evolved the field, only retrodden old paths and committed the errors of previous authors, while adding their own new errors.

Masiello expresses great doubt in the stated aim of the publication. If the treatise were to be adopted by the Master's School, not only would it worsen the confusion around sabre fencing that supposedly already exists in the army, but it would also be an insult to those who were ranked below Parise in the government's infamous fencing treatise competition of 1882 and 1883. That is, the last time a fencing treatise was officially adopted by the Italian military, it ostensibly underwent a process which placed it in contrast with works submitted from around the country. In mentioning this event, Masiello assures he cannot be accused of self-interest, since, as he claims, he never submitted a work of his own to that competition.

When looking past the rather nit-picky character that Masiello's critique often assumes, one must note how his remarks could just as easily be aimed at other Radaellian authors who had published works prior to 1910. Many of the elements Masiello was critical of in Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, such as their inclusion of the 'parries in the opposite direction', the upright lunge, imprecise terminology, brief definitions, and so on, can all be found in the treatises of Giordano Rossi, Nicolò Bruno, and Luigi Barbasetti, yet he never took such a strong public position to denounce these perceived flaws. Despite the fact that these authors had all published their works over a decade ago, the main reason Pecoraro and Pessina received such a harsh reaction from Masiello was likely due to their positions as vice-directors of the most authoritative institution in Italian fencing, the Military Fencing Master's School in Rome. The stakes were simply too high for Masiello to remain silent.

In part 2 we will read criticism from another Radaellian, Giovanni Pagliuca, as well as hear how Pecoraro and Pessina were reacting to the lively debate around their work.

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1 Reproduced in 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), 17–8.^↩
2 The full article was also reproduced in Masiello, op. cit., 18–20.^↩