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.^↩