From Benevento to Naples (Part 3)

The third and final part of our fencing tour of Naples features many of the people introduced in part two, with the additions of notable Neapolitan journalists Vittorio Argento and Enrico Casella, some of whose articles I have translated for this blog in the past.

In addition to Ferruccio's observation of the large number of beggars in the streets of Naples, the last portion of the article in particular, while unrelated to fencing, serves as a poignant reminder of the great economic disparity between the northern and southern parts of Italy which still lingers today.

It also demonstrates the highly skewed perspective offered by sporting magazines like the Gazzetta dello Sport. Ferruccio and his fencing friends were undoubtedly all very wealthy men, with time for leisure and the means to travel wherever they liked, at a whim, to attend exclusive sporting clubs and social events. Not only that, but at the beginning of the 1910s literacy rates in many parts of Southern Italy were still under 50%, especially so for women, making the audience for articles such as these a very select portion of Italy's population.¹

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From Benevento to Naples

III.

A great idea; before returning to Benevento, where my affairs and bills are calling me, I thought it would be good, in order to make your Gazzetta dello Sport more well-known and popular, to penetrate various fencing halls not only as your Benevento correspondent, but as a man of arms for your newspaper, and with that said, I pulled from my trunk a fencing jacket, canvas pants, and my little 'service' sword, which had been sleeping peacefully for months and months.

You can easily understand how excellent a result this decision of mine has yielded if you consider that I made sure it was very clear that the armiger of the Gazzetta dello Sport would only cross blades with gentlemen of the 'Order of Subscribers'.

Once this decision was made, it goes without saying that I had to work like a dog. Incidentally, I do not know why people use this expression when dogs are known for spending the whole day…lounging about.

It was Maestro Galimi Lacaria, whom I believe I spoke to you about in my previous correspondences, who first obliged me with a sword bout in Cerchione's hall.

Galimi is a clean, elegant, and very correct fencer: a gentleman fencer.

Felice Galimi Lacaria, c. 1913.
Source: byterfly.eu

Then I 'went at it' with Maestro De Simone, whom I can assert with complete certainty has become much stronger than he was years ago at the Mantua tournament, and then again with Captain Pinelli who, like a good wine when bottled, improves with age.

I had a sabre bout with Marquis Mastelloni, a fencer with a good eye and a firm parry, and endured a sword bout with Mr. Vittorio Argento, fencing editor of Napoli-Sport.

'Press versus press,' I said as I came on guard.

Vittorio Argento, an excellent writer on fencing matters, from his ever-sound judgement and that competence which his eyes exude, as evident as the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac, he is also a fencer of uncommon strength, from his wide, flying, and somewhat irregular game, perhaps carried out more by intuition and personal conviction than by an assimilation of lessons, but enough to bewilder even the oldest sly foxes of the piste. With the utmost ease he touches and takes the blade from any position, and I assure you that once he has launched into action, his final thrust or remise rarely misses.

I freely admit that even my 'metal grinders', as your man Weysi called them when I was in Milan, had little effect with him; but I was nevertheless very pleased to have pitted myself against this opponent, because I have always liked when those who usually wield a pen when discussing matters of fencing can also wield a sword and a sabre.

For the record: recently in one of Greco's exhibitions, the closing sabre bout was reserved for him and Argento. Greco, who can serve as wonderful touchstone between the various opponents who are pitted against him, was still Greco, naturally, and there would be no reason for a parallel between him and the opponent; but I was told that Vittorio Argento had an 'edge' which many other fencers must have envied.

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To cut it short, I endured seven long bouts in less than three days, with different opponents, in various halls, and I can tell you that, for me, who for a long time has found himself in an auxiliary position, they were Herculean tasks.

I cannot claim that your Benevento correspondent left too good an impression as a fencer. Certainly if my place had been taken by Weysi, Balossi, Galbiati, Tiboldi, Carabelli, Mossotti,² or someone else, things would have gone better; but on this sublunar planet you have to know how to be satisfied or resign yourself, and even the most beautiful girl on earth cannot give more than she has.

When it was the seventh day of my sojourn in Naples, I felt the need to rest, just like good Lord felt many years ago...in the time of the world's creation, so I went wandering here and there through this vast and noisy metropolis, which would be so beautiful if not for the plague of three thousand carriages and their coachmen, as bothersome and insistent as flies and as arrogant as the genuine professional beggars here who, in numbers ten times greater than the coachmen, scour every road, every street corner, every café, every theatre, day and night, at all hours.

So it was that, while idling about with Maestro Cerchione, I had the pleasure to again see Edoardo Casella, a distinguished amateur foilist, whom I had seen at the Palermo tournament—and so it was that, while idling about, I had the pleasure to be introduced for the first time to his brother,

Source: gallica.fr

Enrico Casella.

Enrico Casella—very well-known for his sporting articles and for organising Le Figaro's first tournament in Paris—was with Miceli, the Baron of San Giuseppe, Baron Anzani, Dusmet, and other very talented amateurs of the Neapolitan fencing tradition, whose flag he held high for many years, with the pen and the sword, in the French capital, where he took up permanent residence.

Enrico Casella, who was in Naples for just a few days, is the one who recently played a very important and likeable role in the Dreyfus affair.

Tall, elegant, a speaker endowed with a wholly Southern accent and wholly Parisian wit, he is the model sportsman in the loosest sense of the word.

After Cerchione introduced me—and I told him that I was your correspondent—Enrico Casella was drawn by me to talk about fencing and sport in general, and his words flowed as easily and rapidly as water from a swollen creek, and in less than half an hour he was rattling on—lucidly—about so many sport-related projects that, if it had been possible for me to record them on a dictaphone, I would have no difficulty sending you at least a dozen excellent articles for the various columns of the Gazzetta dello Sport.

But there was one thing that I aimed to do when talking with Enrico Casella, and it was to encourage him to send me some of his writings, from Paris, for your newspaper—in short, to make him one of your correspondents; and, God willing, when I left him I took with me an almost formal promise.

Are you pleased with my work, or will you dare ask for more and better?

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When I had achieved this unexpected success, I 'turned my prow' towards Benevento; but to have a little bit of fun and rest my eyes in the still dense greenery of these lands blessed by nature but not by the farmers—who barely feel the sting of progress and who still break up dirt clods with the plow of Virgil—I thought to follow the road through Cancello, Arienzo, Montesarchio, Benevento, as picturesque as any other.

The journey from Naples to Cancello is half an hour by train; then a one-horse carriage, which in less than half an hour leads to Arienzo, where you leave the carriage for a prehistoric stagecoach with two horses as thin as temporary government employees, with which you bounce along directly to Benevento.

While in Arienzo, a pleasant, pretty, and modern town of over 4,000 inhabitants, as the carriage was being sheltered in the depot and the stagecoach horses were prepared and harnessed with that slowness which these regions are typically known for, I thought of going to get a cup of coffee.

And on seeing in the piazza a shop bearing the heavy sign 'Café del Genio'³, I headed there, looking forward to the delight of my mocha or my Puerto Rican coffee, at the owner's pleasure.

But the single hall, which served both as an entrance and the rest of it, I found deserted. And do you want to know what furniture adorned it? A double bed with a red quilt covered in stains; a rickety kitchen table; in one corner, a brick fireplace with two burners and above this, hanging on nails, three frying pans, a skimmer, and a coppino (a ladle); against the wall in front of the bed, a large maple cupboard which the flies had slowly but surely varnished with small, shiny black dots; on the ground, a small tub of water; next to the bed, a chest of drawers, with exquisite wood perforations owing to the brilliant nocturnal work of a friendly woodworm; four chairs dangling from the walls like four hanged men; six chickens pecking around and under the bed, where towered a vase as large as Pandora's, but which certainly wasn't the real one—and nothing else.

As soon as I had entered, I unhooked one of the four chairs from the gallows and sat down comfortably, waiting for the owners, taking these notes undisturbed to kill time. After a good quarter of an hour I thought of going to take a seat in the stagecoach and, still undisturbed, I headed off.

However, when I was almost halfway across the piazza a dark-haired young lady, with her bulging breast 'to the wind'⁴ and in her arm a rosy young baby angrily gnawing at the breast, explained to me that coffee could be served to me at the opposite side of the piazza, there, behind a door with the word 'Club' written on it.

I set forth; I knocked with my hands and my feet three times; I waited five minutes—nobody came to open it, and I started thinking that maybe in Arienzo coffee is a luxury that is only displayed on signs.

What sacrifices the work of a correspondent demands!

And to think there are those who dare suggest that this wage is stolen!

Ferruccio.

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1 Gabriele Cappelli and Michelango Vasta, 'A "Silent Revolution": school reforms and Italy's educational gender gap in the Liberal Age (1861-1921),' Cliometrica 15 (2021): 203–229, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-020-00201-6.^↩
2 All prominent amateur fencers in the Milanese scene.^↩
3 The word genio can refer to both a genius or an engineers corps in the military.^↩
4 A pun on the word poppa, which can mean both a human breast or the stern of a ship.^↩

From Benevento to Naples (Part 2)

In this second part of our tour through the fencing halls of Naples, we are given a peek inside the storied halls of the Grand National Academy of Fencing, a title which, while still mostly aspirational in this period, does nevertheless reflect its centrality in the Neapolitan scene. We are also introduced to a young Edoardo De Simone, a loyal adherent to Parise's method who would later spend several years as an instructor at the Military Fencing Master's School in Rome.

At the end of the article the enthusiastic sporting activity of the 10th Bersaglieri regiment is contrasted with the entirely deserted fencing hall of a locally garrisoned infantry regiment, whose fencing master had been seconded to other more menial day-to-day tasks. This was a common complaint among Italian military masters at the time, frequently cited as one of the main reasons why many left the army not long after their mandatory service period had expired. As our author Ferruccio points out, the vibrancy of a regimental fencing hall depended not only on the enthusiasm of its fencing master, as whether or not they were allowed time to carry out what was ostensibly their primary role in the regiment was up to the whims of their superiors.

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From Naples

II.

The National Academy

If I am not boring you, I will continue my Parthenopean fencing review.

The first fencing circle that Saverio Cerchione took me to visit was the National Academy. He is at home there, because he sits on its technical committee.¹

The National Academy, an institution which your newspaper has already spoken about extensively, is the most aristocratic and luxurious meeting of fencers I know of. The salon of the Maddaloni Palace, in which the members do their daily and nightly training, is decorated in an astonishing splendour. The ceiling and walls bear very famous 16th century paintings. Six pairs can comfortably bout at the same time, and for invitational exhibitions there is another room, equally as rich and artistic, but large enough to contain just under a thousand spectators.

When I set foot in the training hall, to which all the city's masters are in turn called to lend their services, Franco Vega was bouting at foil with Filippo Salvati, and Maestro De Cugni with Marquis Mastelloni.

There have been too many occasions for the Gazzetta dello Sport to talk about Franco Vega to repeat here the praises of this prince elect of the sword, one of the most faithful and pure followers of the noble traditions of the Sicilian school.

It would be better for me to instead talk to you about his opponent, the magnificent fencer whose name, owing both to his innate modesty and his loathing of public tournaments, is not well known—as it should be—in the Italian fencing world.

I introduce to you:

Source: Museo UNASCI

Filippo Salvati

Young, of pleasing appearance, dark-haired, an intelligent eye, shapely body, correctly proportioned, average height. He possesses a truly rare balance of physical and intellectual faculties.

His mastery of the blade, a marvellous fusion between the blade, arm, and legs make him—someone with a swift intuition of actions as well as the most obedient means of execution—one of the strongest amateurs I know, perhaps the strongest—and I've met a fair few.

His game is clear, indeed I would say pure: no abuse of the counter parry, no use of the disordinata; such knowledge of measure, firmness in the parry, and readiness in launching the riposte, whether simple or with feints, enough to marvel anyone who sees him—and baffle any opponent. Filippo Salvati's ripostes are bullets; bullets from a rifled barrel, of the latest model.

And what's very rare: the same applies for both sword as well as sabre.

I give this praise for Filippo Salvati all the more willingly inasmuch as I know he, like his valorous master Cerchione, is modest. Few know how to treat fencing, philosophically, like he does: for it alone, for the beauties within it, without any concern for the satisfaction it may give to one's self-esteem.

The other bout I mentioned was the one at foil between Maestro De Cugni, of the Royal Navy, and the amateur Marquis Mastelloni.

De Cugni—tall, elegant, courteous—is a fencer very worthy of note who, having been condemned to inaction for a couple of years at La Maddalena, where he was garrisoned, is now training here with all his energy—and this is enough to quickly bring honour to Neapolitan professionalism.

Marquis Mastelloni, aside from his bout with Maestro De Cugni, also fenced sabre with the amateur Bellucci.

Mastelloni, also educated by Cerchione, like Filippo Salvati, in rigorous artistic principles and full of good will and passion, and who was already a very good amateur, will soon take his place at the forefront of fencers, gifted as he is with excellent means.

I must also give equal praise to Mr. Giurato, another amateur whom I also admired in a bout at the National Academy. Cunning as a wolf and endowed with a great fencing intuition, Giurato is already a fencer whose glides can entangle his opponents.

And now, if I may, I lead my readers on a visit to the Arabian phoenix of military regiments, in a fencing sense.

The 10th Bersaglieri Regiment

It's a safe bet to say that this is the regiment that does the most fencing.

Is the credit for this due to Maestro Edoardo De Simone or to its commissioned and non-commissioned officers? Probably both one and the other. The fact is they all work with a rare persistence and with progress relative to that persistence.

Listen to what a small team of fencers and, note, good fencers the 10th Bersaglieri has.

In order of rank: Cav. Major Miozzi, a very challenging foilist, capable of provoking thought and study even in skilled fencers; Captain Aroldo Pinelli, too well known in the amateur fencing scene to need an introduction: still young, still energetic, and still an exquisite sabreur, it is by his example that a small cohort of his regimental companions are enthralled and encouraged towards the seductions of the art of arms; the blond Lieutenant Carpentiero, with his pale blue eyes and inexhaustible joviality, who days ago won first prize in the regimental sabre competition; lieutenants Pasquale De Ferrante, Luigi Giuliani, Pavia, Marullo, and De Donato, a remarkable sword and sabre fencer, and then the non-commissioned officers Bardelli, very talented, Biasiello, whom I have seen in various tournaments, Chiaria, and also Antonio Pappano, who aspires to get into the Master's School.

What more could you want?

There has been no shortage of work for Maestro De Simone, who has become rejuvenated and slimmer in marriage, and it's a good thing for him that he has such a passion for his art and such intelligence.

Edoardo De Simone, c. 1921.

In conclusion, the 10th Bersaglieri regiment and its instructor De Simone deserve, with respect to fencing, to be pointed out and held up as an example for others.

And to say that in this very city there is an infantry regiment (at a time in which the practice of fencing should be taken up with enthusiasm) whose fencing hall has just been closed because it is cluttered with various objects, and the master was permanently assigned to the non-commissioned officer's mess hall!

Ferruccio.

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1 The Academy's technical committee is in charge of the curriculum and the assessment of fencing master candidates.^↩

From Benevento to Naples (Part 1)

Within the wealth of sporting magazines and newspaper articles which commented on fencing in late 19th century Italy, there are several journalists who stand out for their entertaining or unique writing styles, providing a refreshing break from simple tournament reports or the often dry, technical writing of fencing treatises. Journalists of this calibre such as Jacopo Gelli and Roderico Rizzotti have been recurring characters in this blog over the years, and even some fencing masters like Luigi Barbasetti could demonstrate a respectable command of language suitable for newspaper and magazine formats.

The three-part series of articles I will be sharing today and in the following weeks is an amusing and informative tour of the vibrant fencing scene in late-1890s Naples, in which the pseudonymous author provides intimate snap-shots of famous civilian fencing halls such as the National Academy of Fencing as well as the gymnasia of the local military garrison. We will meet figures such as Enrichettian-turned-Radaellian master Saverio Cerchione, the humble yet formidable amateur Filippo Salvati, the young scion of the Rome Master's School Edoardo De Simone, and many more.

The articles in question were published in Milan's Gazzetta dello Sport between 25 November and 5 December 1898, written by a correspondent with the pseudonym 'Ferruccio'. I have yet been unable to identify who this author was, although given the fact that they claim to have recently moved to Benevento from Milan, the pseudonym 'Ferruccio' may be hinting that they were a former member of the Circolo Tiratori Milanesi e Ferruccio, a popular fencing club in Milan that had closed a little over a year before these articles were published. Aside from Roderico Rizzotti, who was co-director of the Gazzetta della Sport and published under his own name, the two most prominent members of the club at the time of its closure were Primo Tiboldi and Andrea Weysi, but all were still living in Milan at the time, suggesting a less well-known figure.

To complement the articles, where possible I have provided some photos of the various characters encountered throughout our tour of Naples, starting off here with Saverio Cerchione.

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From Benevento to Naples

I.

When, three months ago, I moved my curtains from Milan to Benevento and I was given the honour of becoming a correspondent for your newspaper, more than in any other sporting movement that I have found in this ancient city, I felt confident in how much my energy could do in favour of sport in general and fencing in particular.

A vain illusion of mine!

Here all the energy of my muscles and my will is subdued or is such a deep sleep that it cannot be shaken even by the bestial and vulgar cry with which the donkey drivers urge their long-eared quadrupeds to hasten their sluggish pace.

For centuries and centuries, Benevento's only energy has been of the tectonic variety. Ten times it was shaken from its foundations, being struck by ten earthquakes in little more than a millennium, sometimes leaving it almost half destroyed.

Here is the sad and unenviable record of such beautiful, picturesque, and brilliant land!

While few cities present, like Benevento, such a richness of environs and picturesque outings, favoured by smooth and clean roads, cycling, which had a vertiginous development across the globe, is the same here as it was as it was ten years ago, and the best means of locomotion for the fellow citizens of Niccolò Franco¹ is still a one-horse carriage, no matter how narrow and ramshackle, or the bare back of a docile donkey.

I knew that Benevento used to have a fencing master—a very good one, even. It was Pisanelli, whom I had met at Palermo in 1892, and with whose help I was hoping to achieve something. But I had counted my chickens before they hatched, or rather, counted on Pisanelli, who, after having spent several years doing all he could to encourage the otherwise intelligent youth of Benevento to attend his fencing hall, he was forced to close up shop and move to Lucera in search of better luck.

Another young volunteer, Mr. Peluso, previously a non-commissioned officer of the cavalry and now a gymnastics master and fencing teacher at the local boarding school, hoped to do what Pisanelli could not; but the fencing hall, which is also a venue for target shooting, remained empty and silent.

It is therefore natural that, given these surroundings, I too shut myself away.

However, when days ago I received your letter reminding me of my duty as a correspondent, I sprang up like an animal lashed by the tamer's whip, as it dawned on me that I had been stealing my stipends for too long. With no other way to go digging for material to prove my good will to you, I immediately set out for Naples.

I had a feeling that I would straight away be in my element, and my feeling did not deceive me. Indeed, while I was idling around for a short time in Via Toledo, I was approached by a man, short in stature, slightly lame, and leaning on a cane due to the arthritis he suffers from.

It was Saverio Cerchione, the talented master and a correspondent of yours who, as soon as he sees me, bursts into an exclamation of joy and greets me with a truly fraternal warmth.

'Oh it's you! Well, how are you?' he asks.²

'Still standing!,' I respond with that wit which so distinguishes me, and I embrace him.

'Yes,' he replies, 'I can see that, you f-' and here, in place of the f he gives an energetic exclamation which I cannot recall, even though it did not seem new to me, and which I think rhymes with pucker.

Straight away I take the small, kind Cerchione arm-in-arm, as if he were a treasure given to me by chance, and I immediately think, without a double meaning, that I am finally 'on the right track'.³

Saverio Cerchione

For those who don't know him, he is the most highly regarded of Neapolitan masters.

Having come here 11 years ago from the Rome Master's School with well-established fame as a talented teacher and fencer, he, who was one of the purest Radaellians, had to endure a great struggle to carve a path through professionalism and prevail over amateurism, which in Southern Italy has a lot more weight than in Northern Italy.

Yet his adamantine character, heart of gold, tirelessness, and above all his artistic talent, being made abundantly clear in a hundred public and private exhibitions, soon helped him move onwards and upwards.

Saverio Cerchione, unlike many other masters, never renounced the principles of the school he came from, and the merits of this can be felt with sword in hand, with sabre in hand.

So it was that in Naples the word 'Radaellism'—which in the field of fencing once sounded almost like artistic blasphemy, certainly like barbarism—could be pronounced and carve out a space.

For several years Cerchione, afflicted by painful arthritis, no longer performs in public, but his work as a teacher is still the same as ever, and his fencing hall in Via Santa Lucia still produces students who give great credit to their master, as well as themselves.

It is enough to mention Filippo Salvati, whom I will tell you about later, and Vittorio Argento, the highly competent fencing editor of Napoli-Sport and a challenging amateur for any opponent, able to take on even the best fencers.

I also note Marquis Mastelloni, whom I have had the pleasure to bout with in sabre, and finally Mr. Giurato, still a young sapling, but who will not take long to bear good fruit.

Of the Grand National Academy, the fencing hall of Maestro Vega, the 10th Bersaglieri regiment, and still other halls which, thanks to the courtesy of my mentor Cerchione, I have been able to visit, I will talk about in another issue, because I think today I have taken up enough of your space.

Ferruccio.

22 November

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1 A 16th century poet and writer from Benevento. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Franco_(pamphleteer).^↩
2 In contrast to the author’s use of standard Italian, Cerchione’s replies here are written in Neapolitan dialect.^↩
3 The potential for a double meaning is, unfortunately, lost in translation.^↩

La esgrima moderna by Enrique Bossini

Despite the geographical and linguistic proximities between Italy and Spain, there was relatively interaction between the fencing scenes of the two nations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whilst retaining its own regional characteristics, Spanish fencing was, like most of Europe, much more influenced by its French neighbour. Nevertheless, there were several Italians who, with varying degrees of success, attempted to carve out a place for themselves in Spain during this time, such as Garibaldi Geraci and Luigi Merlini. Arguably the most successful of all, however, was in the four-decade long career of Enrico Bossini, whose treatise La esgrima moderna (bearing the Spanish version of his first name, 'Enrique'), I have provided below.

*** Scans ***

Born in Brescia on 26 June 1884 to parents Giovanni Battista Bossini and Clementina Zavaglio,¹ Enrico Bossini first emerged onto the Italian scene as a teenager in 1903 when he took part in a national amateur tournament in Castiglione delle Stiviere. Bossini was part of the four-person team representing the Forza e Costanza Society in Brescia, whose fencing hall was directed by the military master Giulio Cesare Guerrini. The Brescia team placed first among the six that competed, and Bossini himself received gold medals in both sabre and foil as well as a special prize for his performance in the grand exhibition.² Buoyed by this early success, by October the following year he had enrolled in the 18th cavalry regiment, then stationed in nearby Verona, and was training diligently with the regimental fencing master, Giuseppe Pirrò, apparently with the intention of being selected as a candidate for the Military Fencing Master's School in Rome.³ The young up-and-comer did not go unnoticed by Italy's foremost sporting newspaper, the Gazzetta dello Sport, which noted that Bossini was becoming 'ever more sly, he does beautiful and clean fencing, energetic in his actions'.⁴

Participants of a fencing exhibition in Verona in November 1904. Bossini is in the back row, second from the right, labelled no. 3; his master at the time, Giuseppe Pirrò, is labelled no. 6 in the centre of the front row.
(Source: byterfly.eu)

He appears to have been unsuccessful in his attempt to enter the Master's School for whatever reason, as by 1907 he was no longer in the military. He nevertheless continued to receive praise for his laudable performance in exhibitions and regional tournaments, spending a short time in Genoa training at Ruggero Tiberini's club and winning the regional foil championship of Liguria. Alfredo Grosso of the Gazzetta dello Sport observed that aside from his demonstrated skill in foil, Bossini was also 'a good sabreur and excellent épéeist, this latter weapon which he really prefers and studies.'⁵ In 1908 he was back in his native Brescia, where he continued his training with the military masters Fernando Sormani, Lorenzo Barbieri, and his old master Guerrini, winning the local foil and sabre championships in 1908 and the local épée championship in 1909.⁶

Bossini in 1907.
(Source: byterfly.eu)

From mid-1909 I have found no further mention of Bossini's activity in Italy, but at some point in the following years he left Italy altogether and ended up in Spain by the year 1912. He soon settled in Melilla, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, where he took up the post of fencing master at the local Military Casino in 1913. Whether or not he had achieved master status in Italy prior to leaving the country is unknown, but there was clearly some attempt on his part to inflate his own pedigree within the Spanish scene, as articles from the time noted that he was a student of various internationally well-known masters such as Eugenio Pini, Athos di San Malato, and Carlo Pessina. Despite the questionable claims, public bouts with several prominent Spanish masters in 1915 quickly cemented his name and reputation in the country.

His skills as a master were also well appreciated in Melilla, generating great interest in fencing and soon making it the most popular sport among military officers of the local garrison where he also taught.⁷ Throughout his decades-long career Bossini commanded great respect among fencers in the European settlements of Morocco, and also throughout the greater Spanish scene. He died in October 1954 at the age of 70.⁸

Bossini (second from the left) with several of his students at the épée championships of Spanish Morocco in Melilla, 1926. Wrist straps are visible on two of the fencers.
(Source: gallica.bnf.fr)

Bossini's fencing treatise saw its first edition published in 1928.⁹ In a 1925 interview with Bossini, the journalist was positively glowing in his assessment of the manuscript copy he had read, calling it 'the best that has been written on fencing.'¹⁰ It was received well enough by the Spaniards that a second edition ('corrected and augmented') was published in 1946, which is the version I have provided above.

In his preface to the reader Bossini states that his method has been based 'on the main rules of the art of fencing written and taught by he who was the first director of the Military Master's School of Rome and my distinguished friend, Sir Masaniello Parise'. Despite this professed foundation, Bossini's foil method contains clear influence from both the French and Italian schools, as seen in his adherence to the French numbering system for the parries. The section on épée is only 28 pages long, but is more recognisably 'Italian' that the foil section due to his preference for the Greco model épée out of all existing Italian models and advocating for the extended-arm guard favoured by the the Greco brothers.

The sabre section is, in my opinion, the more interesting of the three, due to the interesting mix of Italian influences perceptible in the material. It is possible that these features trace back to Bossini's diverse pedagogical influences throughout his time as a young amateur fencer. Bossini's first master, Guerrini, began his professional career as a Radaellian, but remained an instructor in the military after undergoing the conversion course to Parise's method 1885.¹¹ Pirrò, Sormani, and Barbieri were all products of Parise's school, graduating in 1890, 1898, and 1901 respectively. Finally, Ruggero Tiberini boasted a broad experience of studying under around half a dozen masters, most prominent among them being Eugenio Pini, his student Giuseppe 'Beppe' Nadi, and then later the fiery Radaellian master Vittorio Sartori.¹² The methods which Bossini was exposed to therefore broadly encapsulated the diversity of fencing methods in existence in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century.

When it comes to gripping the sabre, Bossini is explicitly opposed to resting the pommel in the palm of the hand, preferring to grip closer to the guard (à la the Radaellians) in order to provide sufficient resistance in parries and blade actions. Students first learn the guard of 3rd, with the weapon arm semi-extended at breast height, and once all the parries have been taught they are then introduced to the 'guard of 2nd in line', again familiar to all Radaellians. The parries are done with a retracted arm in a similar vein as Parise, and Bossini also follows this master's numbering for the parry of 'yielding 6th' rather than the Radaellian name of 7th.

No exercise molinelli are to be found in Bossini's curriculum, and cuts are performed more in line with Parise's mechanics by simply extending the arm directly from the guard position, although Bossini omits and recovery swing after completion of the cut. For Bossini, the term molinete specifically refers to a double feint to the chest and head, rotating the sabre through wrist motion, and finishing the strike to the chest. Following the technical material on the three weapons is a historical overview of fencing, an appendix containing the full regulations for international tournaments, and finally a bibliography of fencing works from the 15th century up to 1944.

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1 Archivio di Stato di Brescia, https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/detail-nominative/?s_id=32945047^↩
2 'Il grande torneo nazionale dilettanti a Castiglione delle Stiviere,' La Gazzetta dello Sport, 10 July 1903, 3.^↩
3 'Convegno a Verona,' La Gazzetta dello Sport, 28 October 1904, 1; 'A zonzo per le sale,' La Gazzetta dello Sport, 20 March 1905, 2.^↩
4 'Risveglio veronese,' La Gazzetta dello Sport, 14 November 1904, 2.^↩
5 'Il Torneo Regionale Ligure,' La Gazzetta dello Sport, 7 June 1907, 5.^↩
6 'Campionato bresciano alla Forza e Costanza,' La Gazzetta dello Sport, 18 December 1908, 4; 'Campionato Bresciano di spada da terreno,' La Gazzetta dello Sport, 12 May 1909, 4.^↩
7 José M. Sagnier, 'La esgrima en Melilla,' Stadium, 10 April 1915, 229–231; 'Del torneo de esgrima: Enrique Bossini,' La Patria (Madrid), 29 May 1915, 1; A. de L., 'Fiesta de esgrima,' El Liberal (Madrid), 1 June 1915, 4.^↩
8 Diario de África, 7 October 1954.^↩
9 Enrique Bossini, La esgrima moderna: tratado teórico-prático de la esgrima de florete, espada y sable ([Melilla]: Regimiento de Infantería Africa 68, 1928).^↩
10 Julián Candon, 'El maestro Enrique Bossini,' Armas y Deportes, 15 August 1925, 10–11.^↩
11 Domenico Cariolato and Gioacchino Granito, Relazione del torneo internazionale di scherma tenuto in Milano nel giugno 1881 (Naples: Tipi Ferrante, 1881), 128; Cesare Ricotti-Magnani. “N. 2. — Corsi eventuali presso la scuola magistrale militare di scherma. — (Segretariato generale) 2 gennaio.” Giornale Militare 1885: parte seconda, no. 1 (7 January 1885): 2–3.^↩
12 'M.° Ruggero Tiberini,' Bollettino di Informazioni della Federazione Italiana di Scherma, 26 March 1942, 4; 'Scherma Italiana: Ruggero Tiberini,' La Stampa Sportiva, 20 April 1902, 6.^↩

Comparing editions: Parise 1884 vs. 1904

A recurring topic on this blog has been the internal and external pressures placed on the Military Fencing Master's School in both the Radaelli and Parise periods. With respect to the latter master, I have discussed how dissatisfaction within the cavalry in particular lead to noteworthy reforms in Parise's sabre method, leading to the so-called Parise-Pecoraro method, which I discussed in a three-part series of the same name (1, 2, 3). As mentioned in the third article of that series, the post-reform cavalry regulations of 1896 show some similarities with the changes that were made to the sabre portion of Parise's fencing treatise for the fifth edition, which was published in 1904. However, these were not the only changes made to the material. Those interested in all the individual changes (at least those I was able to find) can find my side-by-side comparison of the first and fifth editions here. What follows is a summary of what I consider to be the most significant differences.

The introductory material, comprising the treatise commission report and Parise's historical summary, are almost entirely unchanged save for the addition of Del Frate's 1872 foil book as well as Bellini's 1882 sabre treatise in bibliography. The changes mostly concern the technical material, and in this respect the foil treatise remained remarkably intact. The opening paragraph of the foil material shows one change which, while relatively subtle, would no doubt have been noticed by a reader as fastidious as Ferdinando Masiello. In the first edition of the treatise Parise declared that 'haste and force are the prime enemies of fencing' and that the use of force causes a reduction in speed, a statement subsequently mocked by several Radaellians, Masiello in particular.¹ In the fifth edition this was changed to 'haste and rigidity', which seems to have been a more acceptable choice of wording for his critics.

The most obvious change from the first edition on the whole is the illustrations, which have been updated almost in their entirely to highly lifelike illustrations, probably copied from photographic references. One detail which these new illustrations bring into question is how rigidly Parise's students were adhering to the treatise's statement that the front foot should only move forward by one foot length in the lunge (§ 13), as the illustrations of the fifth edition show a more typical lunge of around two feet, as well as some variations in the angle of the torso and rear arm.

Top: Parry of half-circle, 1st edition
Bottom: Parry of half-circle, 5th edition

Some illustrations, such as those for the cartoccio and the invitations, were not reproduced for the fifth edition, although the imbroccata is newly depicted in the latter. The largest textual additions are the entire sections battuta di seconda and finta di fianconata di quarta o di seconda circolata al fianco, while other examples of changes are the several occasions where thrusts by glide are replaced with forced glides, and in the section on 'offensive actions from performed from one's own engagement' (§ 158) replaces the (tactically questionable) feint to the face with a feint to the chest. The rest of the changes largely consist of a few rearrangements of sections and paragraphs, added sentences, and minor word changes.

The most significant changes in the fifth edition are undoubtedly found in the sabre treatise, most prominently for the molinelli, which are now performed 'with assistance from the elbow' rather than 'minimal assistance' (§ 18). Despite what this minor change in wording suggests, the molinelli have been transformed from entirely wrist-focused actions to exercises involving the use of the whole arm. Where the first edition has all the molinelli performed by the wrist with the arm extended in front, the fifth edition has the fencer chamber the arm first, i.e. bending and raising the arm to head height before performing the cut, which greatly increases the power generation and represents a clear concession to Radaellian cutting mechanics. Compare the two descending molinelli from the first and fifth editions:

1st edition

5th edition

There are two diagonal molinelli from high to low, or descending, which are from the opponent's left to right and from their right to left. The molinello from left to right is performed in two movements: First, from the guard of third the arm is extended, with the hand turned to third-in-fourth at shoulder height, edge towards the ground; Second, keeping the same hand position, a powerful cut is given in a diagonal direction from left to right, and then turning the hand into second, the sabre is withdrawn by describing a circular arc with the point, grazing one's left shoulder, coming back into guard. The other molinello is performed in the same way, but from right to left, with the hand in second-in-third; and following this, while withdrawing the sabre, is an external rotation, that is, behind the shoulders, with the hand in fourth, carried out to bring the sabre back into the guard position.

There are two diagonal molinelli from high to low, or descending, which are from the right and from the left. The descending molinello from the right is performed in two movements: First, from the guard of third the sabre is raised, bringing the hand, turned into third-in-fourth, to a palm away from the right temple, with the blade diagonally to the rear; Second, keeping the same hand position, a powerful cut is given in a diagonal direction, and then turning the hand in second-in-third, the sabre is withdrawn by describing a circular arc with the point, grazing one's left shoulder, coming back into guard. The other molinello is performed in the same way, from the left, with the hand in second-in-third; and following this, while withdrawing the sabre, is an external rotation, carried out to bring the sabre back into the guard position.

Despite this significant change to the molinelli, the subsequent descriptions for the regular cuts remain completely unchanged from the first edition. Yet there is one more subtle change which also suggests a shift towards greater inclusion of forearm movement in Parise's system, and that is in the description of the transition from the parry of 2nd to parry of 3rd, where a somewhat Radaellian parry movement is prescribed (emphasis added):

1st edition	5th edition
The passage from parry of second to that of third is easily achieved by raising the point of the sabre solely through wrist rotation and vice versa.	The passage from parry of second to that of third is easily achieved by raising the point of the sabre through wrist rotation, simultaneously bending the arm, and vice versa.

A footnote is also added to the parries section noting that a defence system based on the parries of 1st, 2nd, and 5th is 'preferable', a system for which the Radaellians had been advocating for several decades and which in 1904 was beginning to be seen as characteristic of Italian fencers.² The then common Italian preference for lighter sabres, a trend sometimes attributed to the Radaellians, has also been reflected in the fifth edition, where instead of stating that sabre blades should be between 2 and 2.5 cm wide, Parise now only states that blades should be 2 cm wide, but in an added footnote begrudgingly concedes: 'For the bout the following proportions are tolerated: 15 mm at the base, 8 or 9 mm at the point.' The list of the sabre's parts is also missing the backstrap in the fifth edition, thereby matching the accompanying illustration which illustrates the 2nd Parise sabre model, introduced to the army in 1902, featuring a knurled aluminium handle rather than a wrapped wooden grip with a backstrap.³

As for the method of gripping the sabre, Parise has modified the wording to remove the advice to grip the weapon 'like a stick', and adds that the thumb should end up only a centimetre from the guard, perhaps to ensure that readers do not shift their hand too far down the grip. Two sections which are entirely new to the sabre portion of the book are those on the tocchi di passaggio (passing beats) and the inquartata, the latter being a fairly rare inclusion in Italian sabre texts.

Following the sabre portion are the largest single additions to the fifth edition, the first of these being a list of 95 theory questions regarding the preceding material. It is likely that students of the Master's School were prompted to answer several of these questions in their examinations to ensure that they had a good grasp of the theory curriculum. Precedent for these questions can be found in Barbasetti's handwritten notes contained in his special student edition of Settimo Del Frate's 1876 book, which suggest that this was a typical assessment or revision method for student fencing masters.

Immediately after these theory questions we find an added part four of the treatise entitled scherma da terreno or 'fencing on the ground'. This part, 46 pages in total, consists of advice on how to adapt one's technical and tactical approach when fencing in a duel or any other situation where the blades are treated as sharp and the traditional target and scoring conventions do not apply. Also provided are rules for a competition in the 'fencing on the ground' style (sometimes referred to as gare uso duello), which in 1903 the Ministry of War made a mandatory event for all corps or military schools to run at least once per year.⁴ Despite Parise's effort and the strong regulatory assistance from the Ministry of War, this style of fencing soon waned in popularity, and appears to have all but vanished by the end of the 1910s.

Returning now to the most noteworthy change to the sabre material, that being the revised sabre molinelli, it is worth emphasising how the shifting of the centre of rotation creates a disparity between the molinelli and the practical cuts, in that the former prescribe a chambering of the arm prior to extension, while the latter involve only extension directly from the guard position, with the cut's power coming from the lunge alone. It is therefore unclear how much of an effect these specific changes on their own would have had on how Parise's students wielded their sabres when bouting; however, there is convincing evidence to show that the chambered molinelli were indeed being taught at the Master's School and by many of its graduates. As mentioned in my series on the Parise-Pecoraro method, the chambered molinelli were likely being taught to all students and alumni of the Master's School from at least 1891. Despite the apparent concession to the Radaelli school which these molinelli represented, Luigi Barbasetti did not consider them an improvement:

What was taken from the Radaelli system ends up being inferior even to the true Neapolitan sabre school, which, by being the fruit of long experience and the inspiration for true and respectable artists in fencing, which was at least not without an organic homogeneity, and allowed those who practised it to develop such an exercise as to make themselves relatively strong, and thus a game which appeared logical and effective.⁵

Another graduate of Radaelli's school, Antonino Ferrante Caccamo, came to the same conclusion as Barbasetti, but differed from his colleague in that he even preferred the cutting mechanics of the 'old Neapolitan school' to the Radaellian mechanics he was originally taught.⁶ Despite this view, if a student of Parise did not eventually embrace Radaellian mechanics outright after leaving the Master's School, as many did, it is likely that the molinelli they taught to their students were the type described in the fifth edition. When Arturo Gazzera, who graduated from the Master's School in 1893, published an abridged German translation of Parise's treatise with the assistance of Jacob Erckrath-de Bary in 1905, it was the fifth edition and its chambered molinelli which they translated, even introducing their own subtle changes to deemphasise the use of the wrist.⁷

Similarly, after a Master's School graduate named Beniamino Alesiano spent several years teaching in Prague, a student of his by the name of Jindřich Vaníček published a sabre treatise which faithfully reproduced Parise's chambered molinelli, strongly suggesting that this was how Alesiano taught them, or at least that Vaníček had consulted the Parise's fifth edition text.⁸ Finally, in the posthumously published treatise of Leonardo Terrone, who graduated from the Master's School in the late 1890s, he includes two exercises to help 'develop cuts correctly' which are simply the fifth edition versions of Parise's two descending molinelli.⁹

Overall, the changes made in fifth edition of Parise's treatise do not constitute an overhaul by any means, even with the significant concession symbolised by the new sabre exercise molinelli, rather they an effort on Parise's part to better reflect the reality of the fencing curriculum at the Master's School as well as the Italian scene more generally. It is therefore crucial to be aware of these changes if we wish to develop a thorough understanding of how Parise's method was put into practice by his students, both long before and long after the fifth edition was published in 1904. Despite the regulation status given to the treatise by the Italian government, the text was not inviolable and should not be assumed to fully reflect the precise teachings of the Rome Master's School at any given time.

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1 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: G. Civelli, 1887), 19, 128, 148, 173; Carlo Pilla, Arte e scuole di scherma: conferenza tenuta alla società bolognese di scherma nel febbraio 1886 (Bologna: Società Tipografica già Compositori, 1886), 38; Jacopo Gelli, Brevi note sulla scherma di sciabola per la cavalleria (Florence: Luigi Niccolai, 1889), 26.^↩
2 See for example Gustáv Arlow, A kardvívás (Budapest: Az Athenaeum Irodalmi és Nyomdai R.-T., 1902), 67–68.^↩
3 Coriolano Ponza di San Martino, "N. 22. — Amministrazione e contabilità — Sciabole e spade per le sale da scherma. (Con una tavola di disegni). — 28 gennaio," Giornale Militare 1902: Parte prima, no. 4 (1 February 1902): 137–140.^↩
4 Giuseppe Ottolenghi, "N. 126. — Istruzioni ed esercitazioni militari. — Scuole militari. — Regolamento per le sale di scherma dei corpi di truppa e delle scuole militari, e programmi per l'insegnamento della scherma. — 22 aprile," Giornale Militare 1903: Parte prima, no. 17 (25 April 1903): 359–370.^↩
5 Luigi Barbasetti, "Commenti e…. Commenti," La Rivista Sportiva, 10 January 1894, 3–4.^↩
6 Antonino Ferrante Caccamo, Dei varî sistemi di Scherma Italiana e del vero modo di muovere l'arma (Naples: G. Cozzolino, 1905), 25–27.^↩
7 Masaniello Parise, Das Fechten mit Degen und Säbel, trans. Arturo Gazzera and Jacob Erckrath-de Bary (Offenbach am Main: self-pub., [1905]).^↩
8 Jindřich Vaníček, O šermu šavlí (Prague: Pražské tělocvičné jednoty Sokol, [1919]), 47–54, https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/uuid/uuid:fa222078-6db5-43e3-8c7b-53f428659d54.^↩
9 Leonardo F. Terrone, Right and Left Hand Fencing (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1959), 94–96.^↩