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.^↩

Comparing editions: Pecoraro & Pessina 1910 vs. 1912

The year 1910 is a pivotal one in the history of Radaellian fencing. For starters, less than a month into the year came the untimely death of arch-rival of the Radaellians, Masaniello Parise, aged only 59, which no doubt many Radaellians were hoping would provide an opportunity for the Rome Fencing Master's School to take on a new, non-Neapolitan direction. Four months later the vice-directors of the school, Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, announced their intention to publish a sabre treatise of their own, one which supposedly took into account the 'diversity of methods and views' followed in Italy at the time.¹ The book hit the shelves by August, a very respectable turn-around for a 255-page book.

Click *here* to view the 1910 edition and *here* for the 1912 edition.

The methodological foundation of Pecoraro and Pessina's work is undoubtedly Radaellian, even with their own additions and modifications which make them stand out from their contemporaries, which I have summarised previously. Nevertheless, their publication was subject to quite severe criticism from some of their Radaellian colleagues, in particular the formidable Ferdinando Masiello, who only a few months later published a 160-page book lambasting the treatise almost page-by-page.² The criticism clearly had an effect on the authors, as two years later they saw fit to publish a revised version (without ever labelling it as such). This must have been a sufficient enough improvement in the eyes of Masiello, as a decade later his judgement had noticeably tempered, deeming the second edition 'coherent and worthy of consideration'.³ I have compiled the following document which highlights the extent of the changes between the 1910 and 1912 editions of Pecoraro and Pessina's work.

*** Two-edition comparison ***

The vast majority of these changes will likely seem of little significance to modern readers, and indeed many are on an individual level. The single most profound and obvious difference between the editions lies in the preface, which was completely rewritten for the 1912 edition. To give a full appreciation of this, I have translated both of these prefaces below, starting with the original 1910 preface:

If Italian fencing, over a considerable period of time, and with heavy sacrifices, has finally been able to seat itself, a magnificent victor, on the glowing chariot of victory, this is in large part owed to sabre fencing.
However, as unfortunately happens in all human affairs, rather than raising a hymn to the shining steel which has managed to reap laurel branches in the most important tournaments and sought the perfection of the noble art in the unification of views and artistic principles, its importance has instead diminished, whether through the daily unveiling of new and always different systems, or with the acclamation, as almost everyone does, of foil and épée, to the detriment of the primacy which the sabre has been able to conquer for us.

It is very true that the foil and the épée offer considerable difficulties, both in the target area and in the execution of restricted movements, but one should not overlook the difference between the old and the modern method of fencing with the sabre.

One used to be forced to use protection for the legs, chest, thighs, and so on in order to not emerge from a bout in a battered state, while today, through the carriage and gradual balancing of the blade, the movements are performed almost with the lightness of embroidery, and with the same ease with which one performs wide movements, one performs those actions with the point which are characteristic of foil and épée.

One may therefore declare that the perfection of sabre fencing would implicitly mean the perfection of foil and épée, just as, by axiomatic truth, the whole comprises its parts.

Then why call the foil and the épée chivalric weapons par excellence, when the sabre belongs to the soldier, to whom the spirit of the knight, more than others, is suited?

What use would it serve if it were not used properly?

Fencing in general, and sabre fencing in particular, from the beginning of the century until to today has experienced the beneficial effects of a certain improvement, brought about on the basis of the different mechanical theories of the various pre-existing methods, but it is the task of those who harbour a lively and sincere affection for the noble art to perfect sabre fencing, considering that, in our opinion, it presents greater difficulties than foil and épée.

And since we have the full and profound conviction that, with respect to fencing, there are no absolutes, we have based ourselves on the relativity of execution of the various movements which make up the necessary whole of fencing.

We aim, therefore, for the unification of the various principles of different systems which, if on the one hand has practical importance for the perfection of our art, on the other will have the effect that, without distinction of regions or views, it may be fully called Italian fencing.

And here is the 1912 version:

In the first edition of this treatise we did not mention clearly enough the fundamental principles of our sabre method, believing that they would emerge by reading the first chapters, and perhaps this was the reason why the criticism was essentially limited to emphasising issues of pure form, in part acceptable and which we do not disdain to take to heart in this edition.

Here we offer, also for the suitable guidance of the reader, to express in a clear manner the principles our text is founded on and the aim which we have set ourselves in its publication.

Until now sabre fencing has been taught with different methods. There were those who based their system exclusively on wrist movements, thus creating an artificial, unnatural method; others, also keeping the system based on wrist movements, managed to improve its mechanics.

Redaelli was the one who understood the error of the aforementioned systems, and with a method based on forearm movements he came closer to the natural system of fencing with that weapon and had, in fact, results of an undoubtable superiority over the others.

Experience, however, has proven that all the fencers coming from the above-mentioned schools in practice carry out sabre fencing in a singular manner which is the most natural of all, and essentially consists of the Redaelli method combined with wrist movements rationally performed and always accompanied by the forearm.

But every fencer could not help but feel the effects of the received school and therefore frequently fall into the same errors: the Redaellians tended towards exaggeratedly wide and violent movements, those of the Parise school instead used movements that were tight in the wrist but wide with the point, with cuts not appropriately extended; meanwhile, most ended up adopting, with experience, a single system of fencing which is commonly called mixed.

Our treatise has the aim of ordering this mixed system and bringing it to its maximum perfection, making actions with the point as easily as those with the edge, adding actions never yet considered, however natural they are in sabre fencing, basing the system of execution on the naturalness and spontaneity of the movements.

Then with a series of preliminary exercises never before dictated, in those terms and in those lines, by any author, one will be able to achieve greater finesse and confidence in the mechanical execution of the various actions, a blade carriage which is not otherwise possible to obtain.

Thus our treatise, while for body carriage it is closer to what was masterfully dictated by Masaniello Parise, for blade carriage and the parries it is closer to Redaelli, in that the movements are performed essentially with the forearm but are based on a greater spontaneity and naturalness of execution.

This method of fencing—already generally known, as was said, in its broad outlines and with the improvements we have introduced—we hope will lead to the unification of the various systems, which will contribute to the development of this noble art.

The most immediately obvious difference in the 1912 version should be the repeated mention of Radaelli's method. While the original preface only refers vaguely to the aim of their method being 'the unification of the various principles of different systems', the updated edition makes it clear where their inspirations derive from, that being primarily Radaelli's foundation along with Parise's body carriage. The apologetic tone of the 1912 preface shows that they understood why a critical eye may have perceived the lack of credit to their masters in the original version as an attempt to pass off their method as something new and original. In the new preface they make it clear that their observations of Italian fencing at the time were that most people were already following a 'mixed' method similar to their own, and that the treatise was mainly an attempt at systematising this practical reality. The reference to their preliminary exercises as being 'never before dictated' in the same exact terms is likely a direct response to one of the many criticisms levelled by Masiello, who accused the two authors of copying Nicolò Bruno's 1891 work, which includes several elementary blade movement exercises that bear some resemblance to Pecoraro and Pessina's.⁴

Another obvious contrast between the two prefaces is the bemoaning in the 1910 version of the waning popularity of sabre fencing in favour of foil and épée, which was a common view among the older generation of Italian fencers at the time, particularly with regard to épée.⁵ The 1912 preface instead makes no allusions to a perceived decline of sabre fencing compared to the other disciplines. Along with the other changes mentioned, the overall result is that the latter edition takes on a much more positive, forward-looking attitude that does a much better job at setting readers' expectations of the rest of the material.

Looking beyond the preface, we find significantly expanded and revised explanations given to the section on the balance of the sabre, the explanation of how to grip the sabre, the introduction to the preliminary exercises (which goes from 135 words in the 1910 edition to 785 words in the 1912), and advice for bouting. Some material from the 1910 edition is simply rearranged within the book, such as the sections on invitations and the counter parries, while some were removed entirely. The blade transport in 1st is nowhere to be found in the updated edition, and the separate descriptions for the beat from each individual engagement is reduced to a single paragraph of general advice. Two completely new sections were added to the 1912 edition: a short section on beats followed by feints, and a full page of advice for actions to prefer in a duel.

On a much more general level, it is very easy to see an improvement in the general grammatical clarity of the writing in the 1912 edition. The first edition suffered greatly from poor copy editing, the authors being guilty of a serious overuse of commas and run-on sentences. Due to the sheer volume of these occurrences it was impractical to show this in my two-edition comparison, but is a single example taken from the section on the 'line of offence', translated literally to demonstrate the improvement in clarity made throughout the second edition:

1910 edition	1912 edition
It is called the line of offence, whenever the point of the sabre is found in a straight line with the chest, or with the flank, of the opponent, preventing the attack, without moving the blade.	The line of offence refers to that in which the point of the sabre is found in the direction of the opponent's chest or flank, in the natural act of threatening.

Individually these improvements may not mean much to readers today, but the awkward phrasing found throughout the 1910 edition could very easily have affected the perception of the authors at the time of publication. If the fencing masters were unable to convey their ideas well through text, it would be easy to accuse them of also being unable to teach these concepts to their students, whom the Ministry of War wished to portray as the best and brightest in all of Italy. It is unsurprising then that for the updated edition they shunned the publisher of the original edition, Giuseppe Romagna of Rome, instead employing G. Agnesotti of Viterbo in 1912. It is in this revised and greatly improved form that Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina's treatise would be most widely read. Although the Master's School was closed in 1914 as part of the Italian government's war preparations, when it was finally re-opened in 1926 Pecoraro and Pessina's works on both sabre and épée were again used as the official textbooks, which were republished for the sole use of the school's students (although this time both books were only credited to Pessina).⁶

In the next few posts we will take a closer look at some of the initial reactions to the publication of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, which will, among other things, provide more context around why the authors felt pressured to revise their work so soon after publication, as well as help to identify the specific critiques behind individual changes.

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1 The announcement is 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 Ibid.^↩
3 Ferdinando Masiello, "L'insegnamento della Scherma in Italia," La Scherma Italiana: Giornale degli schermidori, 2 September 1923. Translation available here.^↩
4 Masiello, La Scherma di Sciabola: osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina, 45. For Bruno's blade exercises, see Scherma di sciabola: risorgiento della vera scherma di sciabola italiana basata sull'oscillazione del Pendolo (Novara: Tipografia Novarese, 1891), 63–5.^↩
5 . To give just a few examples: Agostino Arista, "Coltiviamo la sciabola," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 2 February 1907, 3; Vittorio Sartori, "Decadenza dell'arte delle armi," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 11 October 1907, 4; Giovanni Franceschinis, "Schermisti italiani, ritornate alla sciabola!!," La Scherma Italiana, 28 February 1914, 25–6.^↩
6 Carlo Pessina, Scherma di Sciabola: trattato teorico pratico (per uso esclusivo della Scuola e fuori commercio) (Civitavecchia: Prem. Stab. Tip. Moderno, 1927); Scherma di Spada (Civitavecchia: Prem. Stab. Tip. Moderno, 1927).^↩

Italian foil blade length in the 19th century

Foil fencing equipment from Enrichetti (1871).
Source: KU Leuven

When comparing a French and Italian foil as they are commonly made today, it is solely the hilt which differentiates them. Until the turn of the 20th century, however, many considered blade length to be another key differentiating feature for both schools, with the Italians said to prefer the longer variety. How significant an effect these differing preferences alone had on the fencing is an interesting topic in itself, but for this particular study I will be focusing solely on determining exactly what blade lengths were used and recommended in Italy during the 19th century. The majority of this information comes to us now through fencing treatises, which cannot always be assumed to reflect the opinions of most fencers at the time. They are nevertheless often indicative of what experienced practitioners considered ideal in a doctrinal or traditional sense.

Before consulting the treatises, it is worth first providing a reference frame for readers so that any subsequent comparisons can be put into context. Today in Olympic fencing, as regulated by the International Fencing Federation (FIE), blade length from guard to point cannot not exceed 90 cm.¹ Foil blades at or near enough to this limit are now ubiquitous among adult fencers in competitions. This largest size blade is known as a size 5 blade; the modern blade size numbering was popularised by the French, and is now based off British imperial inches. A size 5 blade measures around 35.4 inches (89.9 cm), and each smaller size takes off one inch, so a size 4 blade is 34.4 inches (87.6 cm), all the way down to size 0, which is 30.4 inches or 77.5 cm.² These smaller sizes are mainly reserved for children today.

Foil dimensions for international competitions
Source: fie.org

Prior to the 19th century, if we are lucky enough to find an author stating their preferred blade or sword length, it will most often be given relative to the individual's height. A good example is Paolo Bertelli's treatise from 1800, where he states that a proportionate blade length is one that comes up to the height of the belt, i.e. the natural waist.³ Helpfully for us though, from this point onward specific measurements become the norm, starting with Rosaroll and Grisetti in 1803. While they do clarify that the blade should be proportional to the wielder, Neapolitans and Sicilians supposedly prefer the longest blades of all the Italian peoples at 4 palmi or 105.5 cm, which is what they say is customary in duelling; throughout the rest of the peninsula shorter blades of 3 ½ to 3 ⅔ palmi (92.6 to 97 cm) are more common.⁴ It is possible these measurements include the ricasso, so if we subtract a typical ricasso length of 5 cm that would leave the Neapolitans with roughly 100 cm of blade from guard to point, and 87 to 92 cm for the rest of Italy.

The scarcity of sources in decades following Rosaroll and Grisetti's publication makes it difficult to verify how broadly their preferences may be applied to their own camp, but they were a convenient enough reference point four decades later for Alberto Marchionni to use as an upper limit on the blade lengths used by Italians. In giving advice to the reader on what kind of foil blades to use in both lessons and bouting, he remarks that the length of foil blades at that time can vary anywhere between 28 and 33 pollici. We can get a rough idea of what Marchionni's pollice is equivalent to in centimetres from earlier in the book where he equates 29 pollici to 85 cm and 30 pollici to 90 cm, which reveals that 1 pollice is equivalent to just under 3 cm, making his range of blade lengths in the area of 84 to 99 cm. Marchionni himself recommends a mid-length blade at 31 pollici or ~93 cm.⁵ Since the type of foil used in Marchionni's system is of the 'mixed school' type—which lacks the ricasso of the Neapolitan foil—it might be assumed that all the provided figures refer to only the length of blade between the guard and point, in which case these figures would line up very well with those given by Rosaroll and Grisetti.

The reason why northerners were more partial to shorter blades was directly related to the prevalence of the mixed school, which incorporated both traditional Italian and French techniques into one method.⁶ Since some aspects of French fencing, in particular those techniques used at close measure, were less viable with longer blades, especially when using a ligature, proponents of the mixed school shied away from the upper limit of blade lengths purely out of practicality. A mid-range blade did not put one at too much of a disadvantage against a long Neapolitan blade, but gave an advantage against them at close measure as well as a reach advantage over the average French practitioner (who preferred blades on the shorter end of the scale, as discussed later). Southerners, on the other hand, whose long blades made their weapons heavier and more unwieldy, commonly made use of ligatures to mitigate this.⁷ As always in fencing, the weapon could be both a determiner of and determined by the method its wielder used.

With very few exceptions, Italian sources from this point on favour similar mid-range blade lengths as what Marchionni recommends. Beginning with Paolo De Scalzi's treatise in the early 1850s, we find a simple way for a fencer to determine whether nor a sword or foil is correctly proportional for their height. Standing upright, the fencer collapses their sword arm and places the palm of that hand on the same shoulder, keeping the elbow pointing towards the ground. Resting the point of the sword on the ground underneath that same arm, the pommel of the sword should lightly touch the folded elbow.⁸ This method of measuring a proportional sword length can also be found in two treatises on duelling written by fencing masters, the first one co-authored by the aforementioned Alberto Marchionni along with Cesare Enrichetti published in 1863, and the other by Pasquale Cicirelli in 1873.⁹ The first treatise states that this measurement applies to both duelling swords and foils, and in both texts this measuring technique is specifically said to correspond to a proportionate Italian sword. Given that the average height of Italian adult men born in the mid-19th century could be lower than 165 cm, depending on which region one was born in, such a method would probably yield a blade length on the lower end of the range Marchionni gave in his 1847 fencing treatise.¹⁰

De Scalzi even provides a quick rule-of-thumb to estimate this correct length, saying that a correctly proportioned sword, using the above method, should end up being 3/5 of one's total height.¹¹ For a 165 cm person De Scalzi's rule-of-thumb means a correctly proportioned sword would be about 99 cm, leaving a blade length from point to guard of around 84 cm if the sword had a ricasso, as they do in De Scalzi's illustrations. This is particularly interesting in Cicirelli's case, since at the time of publishing he was teaching in Reggio Calabria, a city deep within Southern Italy. He also provides a maximum allowable length for a duelling sword, 'not exceeding four palmi (1.06 m) from the pommel to the point.'¹² While this 'four palmi' measurement is familiar to use from Rosaroll and Grisetti, and the unit conversion to metric which Cicirelli provides is certainly nice confirmation for my own, it is important to note how it is now being used to refer to the total length of the sword, not just the blade, as Rosaroll and Grisetti did.

Returning to the north of the peninsula, masters Vittorio Lambertini and Cesare Enrichetti, who published their respective treatises within a year of each other at the start of the 1870s, echo the intermediate preferences outlined first by Rosaroll/Grisetti and Marchionni, and this may reflect the early stages of a narrowing range of blade lengths. The former recommends a blade between 90 and 100 cm long from point to incassatura (probably where the blade meets the shell) and states a preference for long blades, while the latter splits the difference and recommends 95 cm, not including the ricasso. In a discussion earlier in his treatise, Enrichetti declares that while in fencing different blade lengths between opponents is permissible, this is not so for a duel, in which a 'correct length' would be an average of the Neapolitan/Sicilian school, who use 'not less than 4 palmi', and the French, whose blades 'do not exceed 3 palmi [79 cm]'.¹³

Before going any further, this a good opportunity for a brief tangent regarding French foil blades, since they commonly served as a lower-end reference point for Italian authors throughout the 19th century. Compared to the ranges we have seen earlier on in Italy, French treatises generally agreed on a relatively narrow range of 80 to 90 cm, as seen in the table below.¹⁴ While this data does support the assertion that the French did prefer shorter blades than Italians in general, Enrichetti was likely exaggerating the reality.

Author	Blade Length
Saint Martin 1804	2.5 French feet [81.2 cm]
Chatelain 1818	30 to 32 pouces [80.6 to 86 cm]
La Boëssière 1818	at least 31 pouces [84 cm]
Gomard 1845	varies from 81 to 89 cm
Brunet 1884	no. 4 [84 cm] and no. 5 [88 cm] blades are most common

In the following decade and a half, the disparity between Italian and French blades would diminish even further, converging towards a relatively narrow range by the end of the century. The first appearance of what would quickly become the new normal in Italy was in the treatise of Masaniello Parise, the young Neapolitan who was placed at the head of the Military Fencing Master's School in Rome when it opened in 1884, the same year his treatise was published. Parise provides no range of typical blade lengths, just a single number: 'The length of this blade, calculated from the shell to the point or button, should be 90 centimetres.'¹⁵ Even including the 6 cm long ricasso, we are still about 10 cm off the 4 palmi measurement which Enrichetti gave as a supposed lower limit for Neapolitans just a decade earlier.

Given that the government approval of Parise's treatise was seen by many to be a return to tradition, we would expect the Neapolitan Parise to have preferred longer blades, but his prescribed 90 cm is much more akin to the compromise blade lengths seen in the north during the preceding decades. Nor do we find any of his critics, of which there were many, bringing up blade length as a point of contention, even when the state of Italian fencing in the late 1890s was described by one particularly virulent opponent as a 'Frenchified mess' thanks to Parise's efforts to modernise the old Neapolitan school.¹⁶ The cultural dominance of the north post-unification may go a long way to explain the shift in Neapolitan preferences in the latter half of the century. Longer blades may also have just become harder to come by, since most fencing blades towards the end of the century were from foreign manufacturers who no longer wishes to cater for a niche market. Whatever the reason for this change, by the 1880s it was evidently not considered important enough for either Parise's supporters or detractors to mention.

Further evidence that Parise was simply reflecting the common preference of the time can be taken from the fact that even two of his fiercest ideological opponents, Radaellians, soon published their own treatises also prescribing 90 cm blades. First was Giordano Rossi in 1885, who also clarified the blade should be 95 cm including the ricasso and the overall sword length 106 cm.¹⁷ Second was Ferdinando Masiello in 1887, who himself started out his foil fencing education under Neapolitan masters before later studying under Enrichetti and Radaelli. His excruciatingly detailed foil specifications produce a weapon that is 108 cm long in total and with a centre of gravity only 4 cm from the guard, as opposed to the typical 'four fingers' preferred by Rossi.¹⁸

The parts of a foil, from Masiello (1887).
Source: KU Leuven

The outlier for the 1880s comes from the only other treatise published in this decade, written by Sicilian master Antonino Guglielmo. He makes suspiciously similar remarks as Enrichetti regarding how Neapolitans and Sicilians do not use blades shorter than 105 cm and the French no longer than 80 cm, both being roughly equivalent to 4 and 3 palmi, respectively.¹⁹ Given that Guglielmo was not averse to plagiarising parts of several other Italian authors throughout his book, such as Settimo Del Frate, Giuseppe Cerri and unsurprisingly Giuseppe Rosaroll and Pietro Grisetti (leaning particularly heavily on the latter two in his section on foil), he may have simply been out-of-touch with contemporary practice and relying mostly on his readings.

Also beginning in the 1880s was an increasing amount cooperation and competition between Italian and French fencers, such that by the end of the century it is easy to find commentators comparing both the stylistic and materialistic tendencies of the two countries. The frequent interaction between the schools may be one of the key reasons why we also see the common blade lengths used by the two schools converge to within only a few centimetres by the late 1890s. Italian sports journalist Alberto Cougnet noted in 1894 that Italian blades were 90 cm from point to guard, with a typical ricasso of 5 or 6 cm, whilst the blade on a French foil was 87 cm, 'therefore it has three centimetres less than our Italian blades.'²⁰ Similarly, French military master Émile Coste's analysis of Italian fencing, relying heavily on Masaniello Parise's work, remarked that the 90 cm blade of Italians was 'longer than ours by four to five centimetres', and that Italian blades were also flatter and much more flexible, which gave their masters the advantage of not having to use a plastron when giving a lesson.²¹ This is a notable change from the 'long heavy blade, broad and perfectly rigid' that Baron de Bazancourt described on Italian foils less than four decades earlier.²²

A poster promoting the first Franco-Italian team foil
tournament in 1895.
Source: Gallica

So while the difference in blade lengths was noteworthy for commentators of both countries by 1890s, it was by no means as considerable as it apparently was in the middle of the century, yet this difference still seems to have been too much for some. At the very first Olympic games in 1896, the questionably-worded rules targeted Italianate fencers with the rule that those who chose to use an Italian foil 'may only use foils measuring less than 0.85 centimetres', which I can only presume meant a maximum blade length of 85 cm rather than mandating 9 cm foils.²³ This measure proved unnecessary in the end, as not a single Italian fencer ended up competing.

Subsequent foil competitions were much more accommodating though, with the Paris games in 1900 and Athens in 1906 mandating no. 5 blades, which by that point were likely very close or equivalent to 90 cm, and then at Stockholm 1912 the maximum blade length was explicitly set at 90 cm, with a maximum total weapon length of 110 cm.²⁴ This seems to have been the maximum length that the International Fencing Federation decided on for both foil and épée when it approved its first regulations in 1914, which is still the upper limit to this day.²⁵ This convergence was an inevitable effect of international competition and the agreements which arose to standardise such encounters. Since the French and Italian schools were the two most prominent at the time of the FIE's founding, as well as already using blades that were relatively similar in length, it is natural that they were the one who determined what should be considered acceptable, and it just so happened that by the time a decision had to be made, they were more or less in agreement over most of the general points.

So to summarise the trajectory we can observe in Italian foil fencing across the 19th century, the upper end of Italian blade lengths was set by the traditional fencers of Southern Italy at around 100 or 105 cm long. These were likely in common usage until the second half of the century, where they were slowly replaced by shorter and shorter blades until settling on 90 cm, probably by the late 1870s. In the north of the peninsula, a diversity of blade lengths matched the diversity of opinions and influences, most notably from the French. In the first half of the century, blades anywhere from 80 cm to the Neapolitan 105 cm could be found in use, but as the century wore on, particularly after unification, northerners gravitated towards the middle ground of 90 to 95 cm, and then eventually 90 cm during the 1870s. There are of course significant gaps and uncertainties left in this time, most notably regarding the practices of the Neapolitan school and its interactions with fencers from the north, so the conclusions I have been able to draw together here should only be considered a broad starting point for the evolution of the modern Italian foil blade.

*******

1 The most recent equipment rules from the FIE can be found here.^↩
2 Ben Paul, "Choosing the Right Size of Blade: A Simplified Guide," Leon Paul, 19 December 2023, https://www.leonpaul.com/blog/choosing-the-right-size-of-blade-a-simplified-guide/.^↩
3 Paolo Bertelli, Trattato di scherma ossia modo di maneggiare la spada e sciabla (Bologna: Ulisse Ramponi, 1800), 53.^↩
4 Giuseppe Rosaroll and Pietro Grisetti, La scienza della scherma (Milan: Giornale Italico, 1803), 4. For the conversion of palmi to centimetres, I have referenced Tavole dei pesi e delle misure già in uso nelle varie proncie del regno col peso metrico decimale (Rome: Stamperia Reale, 1877), 447. I have assumed that the authors were using Neapolitan palmi.^↩
5 Alberto Marchionni, Trattato di scherma sopra un nuovo sistema di giuoco misto di scuola italiana e francese (Florence: Tipi di Federigo Bencini, 1847), 143; 187.^↩
6 Marchionni, Trattato di scherma, 62.^↩
7 For a discussion on the use of ligatures, see Sebastian Seager, "Binding the Sword," Radaellian Scholar (blog), 18 August 2024, https://radaellianscholar.blogspot.com/2024/08/binding-sword.html.^↩
8 Paolo De Scalzi, La scuola della spada, 2nd ed. (Genoa: Tipografia e Litografia di L. Pellas, 1853), 26.^↩
9 Alberto Marchionni and Cesare Errichetti, Norme sui duelli e attribuzioni dei padrini (Florence: Tipografia di P. Fioretti, 1863), 18; Pasquale Cicirelli, Riflessioni sul duello seguite dalle norme per l'esecuzione pratica dello stesso e doveri del giurì d'onore (Reggio Calabria: Lipari e Barile, 1873), 52.^↩
10 Maria Enrica Danubio, Elisa Amicone, and Rita Vargiu, "Height and BMI of Italian immigrants to the USA, 1908–1970," Economics & Human Biology 3, no. 1 (March 2005): 33–43, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2004.11.001; Brian A'Hearn, Franco Peracchi, and Giovanni Vecchi, "Height and the Normal Distribution: Evidence from Italian Military Data," Demography 46, no. 1 (February 2009): 1–25, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25476004.^↩
11 De Scalzi, La scuola della spada, 26.^↩
12 Cicirelli, Riflessioni sul duello, 52n.^↩
13 Vittorio Lambertini, Trattato di scherma teorico-pratico illustrato della moderna scuola italiana di spada e sciabola (Bologna: self-pub., 1870), 28; Cesare Enrichetti, Trattato elementare teorico-pratico di scherma (Parma: Pietro Grazioli, 1871), 29–30; 62.^↩
14 J. de St. Martin, L'art de faire des armes réduit a ses vrais principes, (Vienna: Janne Schrämble, 1804), 4; Chatelain, Traité d'escrime a pied et a cheval (Paris: Magimel, Anselin et Pochard, 1818), 13; La Boëssière, Traité de l'art des armes, a l'usage des professeurs et des amateurs (Paris: Imprimerie de Didot, 1818), 13; Gomard [A. J. J. Possellier], La théorie de l'escrime enseignée par une méthode simple basée sur l'observation de la nature (Paris: J. Dumaine, 1845), 302–3; Romuald Brunet, Traité d'escrime: pointe et contre-pointe (Paris: Rouveyre et G. Blond, 1884, 21.^↩
15 Masaniello Parise, Trattato teorico pratico della scherma di spada e sciabola: preceduto da un cenno storico sulla scherma e sul duello (Rome: Tipografia Nazionale, 1884), 34.^↩
16 Luigi Barbasetti, "La miglior parata è la botta," La Gazzetta dello Sport, 20 August 1897.^↩
17 Giordano Rossi, Manuale teorico-pratico per la scherma di spada e sciabola con cenni storici sulle armi e sulla scherma e principali norme pel duello (Milan: Fratelli Dumolard Editori, 1885), 24.^↩
18 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: Stabilimento Tipografico G. Civelli, 1887), 174–6. The preference of a 'four fingers' centre of gravity on foils was shared by the aforecited Lambertini, Enrichetti, Parise, and Rossi.^↩
19 Antonino Guglielmo, Sunto ed innovazioni sulla scherma di spada e di sciabola (Messina: Tipi Caporal Fracassa, 1888), 7–9.^↩
20 Alberto Cougnet, La scherma di spada (nel metodo italiano e francese) (Reggio Nell'Emilia: G. Degani, 1894), 38–41.^↩
21 Émile Coste, Fleurets rompus... ([Paris]: R. Chapelot, 1899), 260–2.^↩
22 Baron de Bazancourt, Secrets of the Sword, trans. C. F. Clay (London: George Bell, 1900), 168.^↩
23 Jeux olympiques Athènes 5-15 avril 1896: sous la présidence de monseigneur le prince royal de Grece: Règlement du championnat international d'escrime (n.p.: [1896?]), 8.^↩
24 D. Mérillon, Exposition universelle internationale de 1900 à Paris: Concours internationaux d'exercices physiques et de sports, vol. 1 (Parisç Imprimerie Nationale, 1901), 144; Jeux olympiques internationaux a Athènes (22 Avril - 2 Mai 1906): Réglements: Première partie: Sports athlètiques, gymnastique, escrime, foot-ball, lawn-tennis (Athens: 1905), 35; Erik Bergvall, ed., The Official Report of the Olympic Games of Stockholm 1912, trans. Edward Adams-Ray (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1913), 1017.^↩
25 The earliest full set of FIE regulations I have found so far was published across several issues of the magazine L'Escrime et le Tir, from February to July 1923.^↩

Comparing editions: Masiello 1887 vs. 1893 vs. 1902

Two years ago on this blog we took an in-depth look at the 1902 editions of Masiello's treatises for foil and sabre and compared what changes were made from the first edition, published in 1887. While I remain satisfied with the thoroughness of that comparison, at the time of writing I had unfortunately not yet gained access to a copy of the 2nd edition of Masiello's sabre treatise, published in 1893. Now, thanks to the Museo delle Arti Marziali in Brescia, I am pleased to say that this gap can at last be filled. Below are scans of this 1893 edition as well as a document comparing all the changes between the various foil and sabre editions (noting again that, in contrast with sabre, there were only two editions of the foil treatise, published in 1887 and 1902).

2nd edition scans

3-edition comparison

In Masiello's preface to the 1893 edition, instead of justifying the publication of his treatise as being a response to Masaniello Parise's government-approved 1884 treatise (which he did in the 1887 edition), here he has removed all mention of Parise and the events of the previous decade, as well as throughout the rest of the treatise. He instead maintains that in this new edition, in response to the criticism he received from readers of the 1st edition, he wanted to make more explicit the foundational concepts shared by both sabre and foil, as well as provide more expansive discussions of key concepts throughout the book. Thus a significant amount of the added material in the 1893 was originally located in the foil section of the 1887 edition, which has been rearranged in a way that better suits the sabre-only nature of this publication.

The structure and order of material is the same that would be seen later in the 1902 edition, with no long historical summary and the section of mechanical discussion being broken up and distributed throughout the rest of the treatise. In two cases in the introductory discussion there are parts of the 1887 edition which disappear in the 1893, but then reappear in the 1902. In general, however, most of the large additions, such as the discussion on the guard, the lunge, and cutting mechanics were first introduced in this 1893 edition, as I had postulated in my original comparison of the 1st and 3rd editions.

Perhaps the most glaring omission in the 1893 edition is the illustrations of the various fencing positions. In his preface, Masiello states that readers are advised to consult those from the 1st edition. Yet two new illustrations are still included, these being the labelled illustration of the fencing sabre (now the newer 2nd model Masiello sabre with a perforated sheet steel guard) as well as the separate illustration of the gripping method; both of these illustrations appear in the 3rd edition a decade later, along with the new illustrations of the sabre-wielding Adonis. Thus while the 2nd and 3rd editions are very similar, the latter edition was intended for a wider audience of new and younger readers, while the former was for those already familiar with the first edition of his work. It is also worth noting that the first place that these 3rd edition illustrations appeared in print was in fact in the British Army's 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise, which is essentially a condensed version of Masiello's sabre method.

The presence of all the major changes to Masiello's method in the 2nd edition, such as the more exaggerated leaning in the molinelli and the prohibition of wrist flexion in the cuts, demonstrate that it was relatively soon after the publication of the 1st edition that Masiello began re-evaluating his views and teachings. Masiello's willingness to modify and update his method in response to his own reflections and the critique of his readership serve as a good reminder that the fencing methods we find preserved in the treatises are indeed merely a snapshot of a moment in fencing culture. The three editions of Masiello's work also reflect the active engagement of the author with the Italian fencing community, indicative of his significance within the cultural debates of the time. 

Refining the molinelli

The large blade-swinging exercise of the Radaellian tradition known as the molinello (plural molinelli) has been commonly misunderstood by fencing commentators from the 1870s right up to the present day. The prescribed motion has been variously described by critics as slow, overly exaggerated, and easy to exploit—and indeed many of these comments are not necessarily false. What the comments ignore, however, are the practical applications of the wide motions and how they can be refined into tighter movements as the situation requires, with the elbow still remaining the primary pivot point.

Although this separation between exercise molinelli and practical or 'regular' molinelli may at times be understated in the Radaellian treatises, it is a distinction the authors make. In the first book on Radaelli's system by Settimo Del Frate, he defines the molinello in the following manner:

The molinello is the movement of rotation that the sabre does when striking. The exercise molinello is therefore nothing other than a somewhat exaggerated rotational movement of that which is done with the sabre in performing an ordinary blow, and they are exaggerated because they make the later blows with a regular molinello easier.… Once the student is confident and performs these three types of molinelli with precision, he will perform all sabre blows with the utmost ease, because they are all merely molinelli with a wider or smaller motion.¹

Thus the molinello is simply a rotational movement pattern for a cut, and the exercise molinelli are a means to practise this movement pattern in an exaggerated manner in order to facilitate later learning. A good example of this is that the exercise molinelli contain within them positions which resemble certain parries, meaning that students are learning how to perform basic parry-riposte actions before being formally introduced to the concept.

Through the wide exercise molinelli, students learn not only how to move the sabre to and from every position, but also stop it wherever they want, which was a key attribute of the 'secure carriage' that the elbow-focused system was said to provide. Emphasis is also placed on giving the blow maximum reach and power, ending the action with correct edge alignment. As Giordano Rossi puts it, 'the more perfectly the circles are performed from the beginning of instruction, the lighter the sabre will seem, and the faster the blows with a regular molinello will be while staying well-directed, without imbalance in the hand, being ready for any other offensive or defensive action even after striking.'² To help readers visualise how the molinelli can be reduced in size, Rossi provides some illustrations depicting three different paths that the hand can follow in the molinelli, providing examples for three out of the six molinelli.

Top left: molinello to the head from the left
Top right: molinello to the face from the left
Bottom: Rising molinello from the left

This does not mean, however, that only the smaller movements are useful in fencing. In the parry-riposte, for example, a wide rotation is often necessary to free your blade from the opponent's and hit the most convenient target, as Rossi states:

The molinelli with wide rotation are very useful because, in addition to the aforementioned benefits, with them one obtains the actions that are performed in the bout; for example: if we from guard of second parry third and riposte to the opponent's inside flank, we perform the traversone with the exercise molinello. So too if we, from guard of second, parry first and riposte, we have thus performed the molinello with wide rotation.³

While the exaggerated weight-shifting and leaning in the exercise molinelli either disappear or decrease in amplitude in most Radaellian sources after Del Frate, this is less a repudiation of elbow molinelli than it is evidence of the system's refinement and the specialisation in an on-foot fencing context. This is in contrast to the system's origin as a cavalry system, where body movement must compensate for the inability to adjust the distance from an opponent through footwork. While Radaellian fencing treatises from the 1880s onward tended to de-emphasise weight shifting in the molinelli, it continued to be taught in the Italian cavalry until the early 1890s and was eventually reintroduced in 1912.⁴

The author who provides the clearest description of how the molinelli can be refined is Nicolò Bruno. In his framework, the motion of the molinello can be categorised as one of three 'circles', these being maximum, regular, and minimum. Maximum circles utilise full rotation of the forearm with accompanying movement of the upper arm, which is what the typical exercise molinelli entail. In minimum circles there is no raising or lowering of the upper arm, and the forearm 'turns on itself'. A 'regular' circle lies in between these extremes, with the elbow remaining stationary as the forearm rotates. This is the most common motion employed in the bout and in lessons.⁵

The description provided for fig. 27 on the right is: 'Molinello to the head from the left, starting from the guard or parry of 2nd or 1st in line, and demonstration of the maximum, regular, and minimum circle the sabre must describe. The same principles must serve as a basis for all other molinelli: that is, rising and to the face from the left, and rising and to the face from the right.'

Bruno includes in his treatise a helpful illustration of the molinello to the head which is almost identical to the type we saw in Rossi's treatise; as a slight improvement on Rossi's, however, is the fact that in the description for the illustration we are told that each of the three circles, i.e. maximum, regular, and minimum, are being depicted.⁶

In each of these variations the elbow is always the most dominant joint utilised in the arm, but this should not come at the exclusion of sensible use of the wrist where appropriate. The most obviously useful movement of the wrist joint is ulnar deviation to bring the sabre in line with the forearm and radial deviation in the more angled parries.

An illustration of wrist flexion (left) and extension (right).

The hand undergoing ulnar deviation. The opposite direction would be radial deviation.

Wrist movement was limited by the Radaellians so far as to ensure that the edge always travelled in the direction of the cut, as Salvatore Arista explains:

In the Radaelli sabre method, the pivot of rotation is indeed brought normally to the elbow, but it is not true that articulation of the wrist is totally abolished. In fact the wrist is well articulated starting with the blow to the head for the purpose of better finding the line and the target. The only inhibited movements are all the ineffectual or harmful movements of the wrist which cause the point to oscillate.⁷

These 'oscillations' are experienced when the blade flexes perpendicular to the direction of the sabre's path through the air, often as a result of wrist flexion or extension. Oscillations can serve as a feedback mechanism for the fencer, as they highlight when the edge is misaligned as it travels or if a force is being applied to the sabre that deviates it from the initial plane of motion. For Poggio Vannucchi, an otherwise very conservative Radaellian, this still allowed for wrist motion beyond the typical ulnar and radial deviation, saying that the sabre 'is wielded mainly through movement of the forearm and arm, with harmonious lateral and adduction movements of the hand, but never flexion.'⁸

With the end goal of the molinelli being to eliminate oscillations and ensure complete domination of the sabre, the precise size of the movement reduces to being only as wide as necessary to move from one place to another while avoiding obstacles such as the opponent's blade. Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina seemingly take this to its logical conclusion when they state that as soon as the student has achieved the necessary blade control through the exercise molinelli, the rotations should 'be gradually reduced to the lowest limits, i.e. performing them with the simple turn of the hand accompanied by a slight bend and successive abrupt extension of the elbow.'⁹

Not all Radaellians agreed with this level of reduction, however, and Pecoraro and Pessina were criticised by their fellow Radaellian Ferdinando Masiello over this particular point. Although Masiello occasionally described cuts by molinello with terms like ristrettissimo, meaning 'very restricted' or 'very tight', at least by 1910 he was of the firm opinion that a molinello should only be a circular motion with a radius that corresponds to the length of the forearm plus sabre. In the first edition of his sabre treatise, Masiello allowed some use of wrist extension in executing the molinelli as well as ulnar and radial deviation, but from the 2nd edition onward this was changed to allow only deviation.¹⁰ Unhelpfully for our purposes, Luigi Barbasetti gives no clear indication of how or even if the molinello motion can be reduced, so he may or may not be in a similar camp as later Masiello.¹¹

Molinello to the head from the left, from Sestini (1903).

None of this is to say that some Radaellian authors allowed smaller cutting motions while others did not; these differences mainly come down to how they all defined the molinello specifically. Both Masiello and Barbasetti make extensive use of direct cuts in their methods, consisting of just a small bending of the forearm prior to extension along a linear path, and they also have the coupé. Rossi, Bruno, and Vannucchi, on the other hand, do not explicitly define their own version of a direct cut (although, as discussed previously, that does not mean they never used them), thus their interpretations of how a molinello can be performed may have been intended to help fill this terminological gap, which would also explain why the first two authors also give a broader definition of the coupé to allow cuts to other targets aside from just the head.

Even after explaining all this, a common refrain from critics of Radaellian fencing is that no matter how tight one performs an elbow molinello, it always exposes the forearm to a stop cut. While this is true in a technical sense, it is very much overstated. This danger posed to an attacker using a molinello was not lost on the Radaellians; after all, how else would they have achieved the competitive success they did without knowing how to effectively compensate? The most important factor in avoiding stop hits, as in most techniques, is ensuring that one is not beginning the action too close to the opponent. One method the Radaellians used to ensure that their students were not advancing the body too early, thereby exposing the arm, was to give stop cuts to their arm or body as they lunged.¹² If the molinello is correctly timed, the blow to the arm should simply land on the student's hilt. Giordano Rossi expanded on this and also advocates attempting a sforzo on the student's blade to prompt the molinello; if the sforzo lands, then it shows the student that the beginning of their molinello was too slow.¹³

Correct decision-making is also something that the master must develop in their students. In a pure fencing sense, the molinelli are merely one way to move the blade from one position to another while avoiding all obstacles. They make the most tactical sense when beginning from an extended position with the blades engaged or with the arm in any position after completing a parry. The molinello allows a fencer to free their blade from or avoid entirely the opponent's blade and, in the same continuous motion, touch an exposed target. If nothing is in the way between one's blade and the desired target, then a direct cut or thrust will most often be the correct response.

The cult of Radaellianism has distinct principles that sets it apart from other sabre systems, but these principles should not be confused with religious dogma. Advocates of wrist-focused sabre systems can be quick to dismiss these principles, but doing so is a rather uncharitable way to engage with a tradition which saw widespread success at home and abroad for many decades.

* * *

1 Settimo Del Frate, Istruzione per maneggio e scherma della sciabola (Florence: Tipografia, lit. e calc. la Venezia, 1868), 8.^↩
2 Giordano Rossi, Manuale teorico-pratico per la scherma di spada e sciabola con cenni storici sulle armi e sulla scherma e principali norme pel duello (Milan: Fratelli Dumolard Editori, 1885), 157.^↩
3 Giordano Rossi, Considerazioni e proposte per l'unificazione dei vari sistemi di scherma in Italia (Milan: Tipografia degli Operai, 1890), 12.^↩
4 For an exploration of this process, see my series The Parise-Pecoraro Method. The Radaellian cavalry method reintroduced in 1912 is found in Ministero della Guerra, Regolamento di esercizi per la cavalleria, vol. 1 (Rome: Voghera Enrico, 1912).^↩
5 Nicolò Bruno, Risorgimento della vera scherma di sciabola italiana basata sull'oscillazione del pendolo (Novara: Tipografia Novarese, 1891), 59–60.^↩
6 Bruno, 294.^↩
7 Salvatore Arista, Del progresso della scherma in Italian; considerazioni sull'impianto della nuova Scuola Magistrale per l'esercito fondata in Roma nel 1884 (Bologna: Società Tipografica già Compositori, 1884), 22.^↩
8 Poggio Vannucchi, I fondamenti della scherma italiana (Bologna: Coop. Tipografica Azzoguidi, 1915), 44.^↩
9 Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, La Scherma di Sciabola: Trattato Teorico-Pratico (Viterbo: Tipografia G. Agnesotti, 1912), 53.^↩
10 Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: Stabilimento Tipografico G. Civelli, 1887). Note, however, that there is a curious contradiction in these latter editions. While in the section 'method of wielding the sabre' both flexion and extension are excluded, later on when defining the molinelli extension is instead permitted. It seems likely that the latter inclusion was an oversight in the editing process. Cf. Masiello La scherma di sciabola (Florence: R. Bemporad, 1902), 25, 55–6.^↩
11 Luigi Barbasetti, Das Säbelfechten (Vienna: Verlag der Allgemeinen Sport-Zeitung, 1899).^↩
12 Stated in the handwritten notes of the personal textbooks of Luigi Barbasetti and Giovanni Lombardi under the heading 'Molinelli con spaccata'. The first manuscript is found in the KU Leuven Libraries Special Collections, R4A552b, and the latter is in Museo Silvio Longhi at the Agorà della Scherma in Busto Arsizio, Italy. See here for transcriptions of both.^↩
13 Rossi, Manuale teorico-pratico, 176; Rossi, Considerazioni e proposte, 12–3.^↩

What are the differences between the Radaellian treatises?

A uniquely fortunate benefit of studying Radaellian sabre lies in the amount of written material available to historians, the most significant of which being the treatises published by the students who attended Radaelli's fencing school from 1868 to the early 1880s. For the purposes of this article, in this category we can define eight bodies of work written by nine former students over the course of almost 50 years. The authors and their years of publication are:

• Settimo Del Frate, 1868 and 1876
• Antonio Tinti, c. 1880
• Giordano Rossi, 1885
• Ferdinando Masiello, 1887 (2nd edition in 1893, 3rd in 1902)
• Nicolò Bruno, 1891
• Luigi Barbasetti, 1899
• Salvatore Pecoraro & Carlo Pessina, 1910 (revised and republished in 1912)
• Poggio Vannucchi, 1915

On learning about the variety of reading material available, the question which commonly arises is: how do they differ, and what makes each of them special? This article aims to answer that question. To do this, each treatise will be dealt with individually (aside from Tinti's, for reasons that will be explained later) and I will explain the context under which it was published, provide a summary of the work's structure and technical content with regard to sabre fencing, and propose what each master's main focus was with their treatise. In order to find my answers here satisfactory, it is recommended that the reader has some degree of familiarity with at least one of the above treatises before continuing this article (translations for several are linked below and in the sidebar).

Throughout the article I will be referring to the aforementioned authors as 'the Radaellian authors'; this is not to say that they are the only people to have written about sabre fencing who would have considered themselves Radaellians, but the texts under examination here are all people who were either students of Radaelli or who attended his school before it closed in 1884. To include other authors aside from these 'first-generation' Radaellians would cause an excessive increase to the scope and length of this article. Similarly, although many of these authors also wrote about sword or foil fencing, the (significant) differences in how the Radaellians taught this weapon deserve their own treatment and will not be covered here.

Before delving into the nuances, it must first be made clear that it is hard to overstate how similar these treatises are in comparison to other works on sabre fencing published up to the late 19th century both in and outside of Italy. There is far more that the authors do agree on than what they do not; they are all Radaellians, after all. Here are the main technical aspects which the Radaellian authors all share:

1. The sabre is wielded primarily through the use of the elbow and forearm;
2. The sabre is gripped close to the hilt to bring the hand close to the sabre's centre of gravity;
3. The six exercise molinelli (cutting exercises) are the foundation of practical instruction;
4. The guard position has the sabre and point well extended towards the opponent, with guard of 2nd being the preferred bouting guard; and
5. The primary parries are 1st, 2nd, and 5th.

With the following discussion, it will hopefully be apparent how each individual author puts these points into practice in their own way, and what other emphases they bring to the table that their fellow Radaellians may not.

Settimo Del Frate

(1868) Original | Translation --- (1876/1885) Original

Written on behalf of Giuseppe Radaelli, the 1868 treatise Instruction for handling and fencing with the sabre by Settimo Del Frate is the earliest exposition of the method and theories that would eventually spread throughout the Western world, and it provides us with a baseline through which to compare the later iterations of the Radaellian method.

Rather helpfully for our mission, in the introduction the reader is treated to a detailed explanation of how, when, and why Radaelli's system came into being and what its foundations are. Del Frate explains that Radaelli developed this new system in response to what he saw as fundamental flaws in the sabre instruction taught in the Italian cavalry up to that point, as well as the lack of motivation among soldiers to practise using the weapon which they may one day need to use to defend their own lives. Del Frate defines the two main aims of sabre fencing as:

1. Strike the opponent with force to produce a serious wound.
2. Move the sabre from one position to another in the shortest time possible in order to reach the parry before the opponent's sabre touches us, or to touch the opponent before they arrive at the parry.

To this end Radaelli's system prescribes the practice of six swinging exercises called the molinelli, which involve moving the sabre through wide arcs, with the primary pivot point being the elbow instead of the wrist, accompanied by exaggerated body movements in order to build strength, confidence, and precise control of the sabre and thus produce both confident cavalry soldiers and competent fencers. These blade and body movements are then refined into practical actions, with the body movement serving to give the maximum reach to each blow.

Molinello to the head from the left (1868 edition)
(Note: step 3 incorrectly depicts the fencer as centre-weighted instead of rear-weighted as stated in the text)

In the exercise molinelli students are taught to begin from a position similar to a fully extended lunge, but without ever moving their feet from the guard position. From here they turn the edge of the sabre and draw it back in close to their body, shifting their body weight from the front leg to the back leg, and then finally they complete the swing and transfer their weight onto the front leg once more, fully extending both the arm and body. This extreme body lean is then carried over into the lunges, which can often be one of the more striking aspects of the illustrations one's first viewing.

Top: Parry of 1st against a cut to the face
Bottom: Parry of 2nd against a cut to the flank

As proper fencing actions, the size of the molinelli arcs are reduced as necessary. Aside from the direct thrust given with a pronated hand (no further elaboration on thrusts is given), the only other type of attack Del Frate describes is the coupé, which is a cut to the head or face, given in the manner of a hammer blow following a semicircular arc.

Nine different parries are described: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, low 3rd, and low 4th. The reader is told to prioritise the parries of 1st, 2nd, and 5th, as these are richer in ripostes and the blade does not have to travel far between them or from the primary bouting guard of 2nd; the latter is held with the arm and blade well-extended, the hand at chin height (although the illustrations show this as closer to shoulder height). The guards of 3rd and 4th are also utilised, but only during the exercises.

In contrast to the guard position, the parries are much more retracted, with the arm and forearm generally at around a 90° angle. These chambered positions likely had the intention of promoting good power generation in the ripostes and allowing the student to transition between parries primarily by moving the forearm alone. Two of the parries which stand out are those of low 3rd and low 4th, which are accompanied by a slipping-back of the front leg, although no explanation is given as to why this is done for only these two parries.

After also describing basic footwork and ripostes, the rest of the book is designated as material which is taught in a 'regular sabre fencing course', i.e. material which cavalry soldiers do not need to know in order to be effective as cavalry soldiers. This includes regular fencing actions such as feints and as well as basic bouting advice.

In addition to simple parries, Del Frate also mentions 'compound' parries, which are subdivided into 'yielding' and 'counter'. A yielding parry is done like a standard circular parry, while the counter parries are described as being performed through an 'opposing rotation' to the opponent's blade, in effect performing a molinello in the reverse direction, passing the blade behind the body before carrying it into the desired parry position. However, the reader is not given any more detail than this, making their practical interpretation quite difficult without consulting later sources. This is similarly the case when Del Frate describes the more complex versions of the blade expulsions (sforzi) done with the spine of the blade, known as 'change-sforzi'.

At the back of the book are two interesting novelties that would subsequently become more common in Italian fencing treatises. The first is a set of specifications for a new model of cavalry sabre (something which Del Frate was officially involved in redesigning at the time), and specifications for a fencing sabre which resembles the type that will soon be known as the 'Radaelli model'. The other novelty is a single 'synoptic table', which lists 'all the blows and parries which can be done from each attacking and parrying position', but in reality only describes simple cuts and thrusts to the body, thus omitting things like disengagements or cuts to the arm.

Although I have been using the word 'treatise' to describe both of Del Frate's short books (with the 1868 book and the sabre portion of the 1876 each having less than 60 pages of technical material), in the introductions he is insistent that they are anything but that, preferring to call them a 'recollection' of Radaelli's system, which at the time of the 1868 book's publication was still in an experimental phase and largely intended for cavalry troopers. Many of these early Radaellian features therefore make more sense in light of the original cavalry application, such as the exaggerated body lean allowing greater reach for a soldier on horseback, unable to use their own legs to enter measure, and the attention given to power generation through wide cuts so as to incapacitate the opponent on the very first blow.

Engagement in 2nd (1876 edition)

By the time of Del Frate's second publication in 1876 though, the Italian Ministry of War had requested Del Frate to provide a more up-to-date textbook, as Radaelli's method had by then become regulation for the whole army, and thus the resulting text caters more to a general fencing audience and also includes a rudimentary foil treatise. Aside from having higher-quality illustrations, the sabre section in the 1876 book is generally more concise than the 1868, now lacking Del Frate's long introduction justifying the method's development, and various concepts were clarified. The exercise molinelli now only require the fencer to shift their weight onto both legs evenly during the rearward swing, as opposed to bringing the weight fully onto the back leg, likely indicating a growing focus on the application of the system for fencing on foot. Also removed from this later book are the sabre specifications given in the 1868.

To increase its usefulness as a fencing textbook, the 1876 book elaborates more on bouting morale and influencing the opponent's mental state to one's advantage during the bout, as well as giving brief descriptions of some additional technical concepts such as counter-time. Del Frate defines counter-time as a feint performed during an opponent's action in order to interrupt or intimidate them, unlike the typical definition of a action done against the opponent's counterattack. Radaelli's method has several instances of terminology that differed from the norm, and this is one aspect of the theory that later Radaellian authors were often eager to rectify in their own works.

Although brief and at times insufficiently detailed, Del Frate's 1876 book was generally well-regarded by Radaelli's students, who primarily used it during their studies at the Milan Master's School. Much of the criticism it received, at least regarding its sabre material, was based on fundamental misunderstandings of Radaelli's system from people who never learnt it themselves. However, this could be considered a demonstration of its inadequacy if consulted by those without access to a trained Radaellian. Thankfully, such shortcomings are harder to say of the publications by Radaelli's successors, which can in turn help to enrich our understanding of Del Frate's work.

As mentioned above, an overview of Antonio Tinti's book will not be given here, as its content is largely a summary of Del Frate's 1868 text, sometimes word-for-word, with nearly identical illustrations. It is still worth reading for Radaellian enthusiasts due to some interesting remarks and subtle changes made (such as the recommendation to remove the leg slip in the parries of low 3rd and 4th in later lessons), but it is not significant in the greater body of Radaellian works. A translation is available here.

Giordano Rossi

Original | Translation

The first Radaellian treatise to be published after the death of the system's founder was not intended to be a radical reform or novel application of its precepts, instead Giordano Rossi's 1885 book Theoretical-practical manual for sword and sabre fencing should be considered more of an elaboration on Del Frate's work. It is also important to note that Rossi's treatise was published only a year after Radaelli's school had been closed and replaced with one in Rome under the direction of Neapolitan master Masaniello Parise, a rival of the Radaellian school. This was the result of a highly contentious state-sponsored fencing treatise competition, to which Rossi likely submitted his work, as the competition is explicitly mentioned in the preface. The structure of his treatise thus matches the conditions for the competition outlined by the Ministry of War, and so in the book we find a historical summary of Italian fencing, rules for the duel, and the technical material on the sword placed before the sabre material.

The sabre section of the book is structured very similarly to Del Frate's 1876 text, with the exercise molinelli being interspersed with the individual parries before progressing to proper blows with lunges, then the more advanced actions such as compound parries, sforzi, and actions in tempo. As an improvement to Del Frate's treatise, however, Rossi gives more detailed explanations of all these complex actions, most notably the enigmatic counter parries. He also expands Del Frate's single synoptic table to 48 pages worth of actions, including blows to the arm, feints, and counter-time actions, making Rossi's sabre section alone amount to over 110 pages of material. Other additions are a list of 21 conventional exercises, to be performed between students, as well as the dimensions for a training piste with marked lines to help students visualise the basic concepts of measure and the plane of engagement. Rossi does not include specifications for a fencing sabre, but he does state that the ideal point-of-balance is four fingers from the guard; that is, if the little finger is placed under the blade against the guard with the other fingers alongside it, the sabre should balance perfectly on the index finger.

As for the technical aspects, aside from Rossi's slight modification to the guard of 2nd, now held with the hand slightly lower, we see the first example of a feature which will be very common among subsequent Radaellian authors, which is the removal of the back and forth weight shifting in the exercise molinelli, keeping only a slight torso lean forwards; the full torso lean is still retained in the lunge, however. Complementing the descriptions of the molinelli are a few helpful illustrations demonstrating how the molinelli may be reduced in size as required, contrasting the wide motions of the exercise molinelli.

Most parries remain the same in name and execution aside from 3rd and 4th, which Rossi performs with a more extended arm, while low 3rd and low 4th are no longer done with the leg slip seen in Del Frate's books—this latter change is also found in all other Radaellian treatises. Like Del Frate, the cuts are only defined as being either by molinello or by coupé; however, while on the surface Rossi's definition of the coupé is very similar to Del Frate's, in his synoptic tables Rossi lists various ripostes as coupés even if they are to the flank or the abdomen, seemingly broadening the term's meaning. Rossi also gives much more attention to the use of the point, adding descriptions and exercises for the disengagement and the glide, all still done with the hand pronated.

Parry of 1st

Like the detailed descriptions of the counter parries, Rossi gives a similar treatment for the distinctive change-sforzi, which he has simplified somewhat in that they are now all done with the true edge of the blade instead of the spine (another change made by almost all other Radaellians), and adds a few more simple sforzi from other positions. Rossi's preservation of the terminology and pedagogy seen in the earlier Del Frate books, coupled with his simple writing style, make this manual the most complementary resource for early Radaellian fencing.

Ferdinando Masiello

Original | Partial Translation

The colossal treatise Italian sword and sabre fencing by Ferdinando Masiello, published in 1887, was considered by many to be the pinnacle of Radaellian fencing theory and the only true contender to Parise's government-sanctioned treatise released three years earlier. The treatise won several awards in competitions for fencing publications, and it was consistently used as the standard reference text for theoretical discussions around Radaellian fencing.

With over 200 pages of sabre material alone (out of a total of 593 pages), Masiello's book was presented as a comprehensive and 'scientific' exposition of the improved and refined Radaellian school. The opposing Neapolitan tradition often referred to the scientific proofs given by Rosaroll-Scorza and Grisetti's 1804 treatise The science of fencing as justification for their method's superiority (mainly with regard to the sword), and it was this angle that Masiello was partially trying to emulate with his own work. While most of this scientific-mechanical discussion is dedicated to sword fencing, these elements highlight Masiello's desire for a new, intellectual approach for promoting the Radaellian cause. The later editions of his treatise also add a detailed demonstration of the merits of Radaellian cutting mechanics to the sabre section in a similar manner to his proofs for sword fencing.

As opposed to Rossi's short and relatively uncontroversial historical summary, in 140 pages Masiello firmly places himself in opposition to Parise's method, maintaining this criticism throughout the sword section with a mechanical discussion at the beginning and then with footnotes throughout the rest of the text; in contrast to the sword, there is only a single fleeting mention of Parise's sabre method which is found in the introduction, where Masiello states that it is 'absolutely and frankly a return to old and fruitless theories, and thus long since abandoned,' showing that he does not even deem it worth criticising.

To start with, Masiello gives the most detailed description of his fencing sabre design out of any author, giving both the dimensions and weight for each component part. The total weight works out to be 610 g, and the ideal point of balance should be 4 cm from the hilt, which is much closer than other authors of the time recommended. The style of guard he depicts, known subsequently as the 'Masiello model', was very popular in Italy as well as abroad. Along with the illustration of the new sabre model, we are also provided with the first close-up view of one of the most characteristic and lasting influences of Radaellian sabre fencing: the grip. In the subsequent textual description, Masiello says to place the hand close to the guard and grip the handle with the fingers, resting the hypothenar eminence on top of the backstrap rather than thenar eminence as was more common. It is unclear whether Del Frate and Rossi are also describing this specific grip, but through various other writings it is apparent that the gripping method was advocated by Radaelli himself, and all Radaellian authors following Masiello describe it in similar terms.

After introducing the hand positions, he gives a unique rule-of-thumb for the guard position, saying that the distance between the legs should be 'four tenths' of a fencer's height. The blade positions in the guard are the familiar 3rd and 2nd, with the former having the edge turned slightly up and the latter with the hand at breast height, like Rossi. From here we see what will become a common departure from Del Frate and Rossi with regard to the pedagogical progression. Following the footwork Masiello describes each individual invitation, engagement, and parry position before moving on to the molinelli, thus deviating from the earlier method of interspersing the parries throughout the instruction of the molinelli. Also in contrast to the earlier authors, most of these blade positions are to be performed with the arm fully extended (noting that the arm should be more bent the closer the opponent is), and Masiello advises to move between them predominantly through shoulder movement with assistance from the elbow.

Parry of 1st against a cut to the chest

This preference for the shoulder also carries over into how Masiello prescribes disengagements to be performed. In a significant departure from any of the methods Masiello had been trained in, his most unique change is his advocacy for disengagements to be done entirely with the shoulder. The main justification of this is explained by visualising the movement of the sword in the disengagement as a cone. If the apex of the cone is at the wrist, then the radius of the cone's base will be larger than if the apex were at the shoulder, thus with the shorter distance travelled in the latter case the disengagement should theoretically be faster. This focus on shoulder movement was contentious even among the Radaellians, and it was not universally adopted by them despite their high regard for Masiello's treatise overall.

Molinello to the flank from the left

Masiello's exercise molinelli are a slightly simplified version of those seen in Del Frate and Rossi in that they no longer contain an intermediate position that resembles a parry; instead, each molinello involves bringing the sabre behind the body in one tempo, and then forward to finish the movement in the second tempo. The back-and-forth weight shifting is also removed, retaining only a slight torso lean like Rossi. The molinelli are therefore less of an all-encompassing exercise, and more focused on the blade action. The full lean is still retained in his lunge, but the prescribed distance of this lunge is only half that given by Del Frate and Rossi.

One addition to the Radaellian syllabus from Masiello is the inclusion of direct cuts, separate from the cuts by molinello and coupé. However, this should not necessarily be taken to mean that direct cuts were not being done before that point, merely that Masiello saw fit to define them. Furthermore, his direct cuts involved a slight preparatory bending of the arm before the cut, which is contrasted with today's common definition that say the movement should have no rearward component in order to be considered 'direct'.

All techniques treated by Masiello have more in-depth mechanical explanations than Del Frate and often also Rossi. Most are then accompanied by specific exercises to show how the technique can be done from each position, and all these are further supplemented by 90 pages of elaborate synoptic tables, but no conventional exercises. This is not to say Masiello did not omit any techniques; Masiello is the only Radaelli to not include parry of 7th (or an equivalent), nor are any of the Radaellian 'counter parries' described, while the techniques given under that name are what Del Frate and Rossi call 'yielding' parries and today commonly called 'circular' parries. Furthermore, with respect to terminology, Masiello departs from these two authors by relying on more traditional terms and definitions, as seen in his terminology for engagements and invitations and his definition of counter-time actions. 

The great popularity of Masiello's work inspired various fencing publications across the western world. Although he never quite achieved the same level of international fame as Barbasetti, Masiello's method was adapted and translated to English, German, Dutch, and Spanish within his lifetime. His method was at various points adopted by the militaries of several nations, most famously the British through the publication of the 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise.

The sabre treatise was republished twice in Italy, in separate volumes from the sword material, first in 1893 and again in 1902, and Masiello also released a cavalry adaptation of his method in 1891. A comprehensive comparison of all three editions can be found here, but for the purposes of this article only a few of the major changes will be noted. The first is Masiello's reintroduction of the back-and-forth weight shifting to the exercise molinelli, making them more closely resemble those originally described by Del Frate in 1868. Secondly, the meticulous specifications for the fencing sabre were removed entirely and the new illustrations depict a new and more protective guard than that seen in the first edition. The last and most significant change of note is the addition of dozens more pages, some of which were copied from his sword treatise, but also some material entirely new to the later editions, such as his mechanical justifications for percussive cuts and an expanded explanation of the lunge and recovery. Many of these revised and expanded explanations were in direct response to some of the criticism he received from his peers following the publication of the first edition, demonstrating how deeply committed Masiello was to ensuring that his theories were properly understood and, above all, 'scientifically' justified.

Nicolò Bruno

Original

Masiello's imposing tome is a hard act to follow, but Nicolò Bruno's 1891 Sabre fencing: Revival of true Italian sabre fencing based on the oscillation of the pendulum was certainly not originally intended to be competing with the other Radaellians. This is hinted at first by the preface, in which Bruno outlines the issues he has with Radaelli's method as he originally learnt it and maligns the fact that nobody 'more versed in the material' had yet come forward to improve on it. In fact, a few years later Bruno would respond to a critic's reaction to this exact remark by claiming that he wrote down his method before 1885, i.e. before the publication of Rossi and Masiello's treatises. Even with this in mind though, Bruno's treatise does stand well on its own merits, and presents a take on the Radaellian method unlike any of the authors discussed here.

Bruno explains that his main issue with Radaelli's original method is how it was taught; he believes that the exaggerated and tiring movements of the exercise molinelli were introduced to students too early in their training, and students should instead learn how to manoeuvre the sabre through a more gradual progression, focusing purely on the 'pendulum' motion of the arm and sabre initially and only later adding in moderated body movement to the attacks. To this aim, Bruno prescribes some new exercises in the early stages of instruction.

Left: Flexion exercise in parry of 2nd
Right: Flexion exercise in parry of 5th

The most basic of these exercises is known as 'forearm flexions', involving repetitive arm bending motions while holding the sabre which accustom the student to using the elbow as the main pivot point in both cuts and parries. The flexions for cuts are essentially repeated, relaxed coupés in various planes, while the parry flexions have the student carry the sabre between two different parries by bringing the hand in towards the chest before moving to the parry. Very similar exercises would later be found in Italo-Hungarian sabre texts starting with Károly Leszák's in 1906, and similar cutting exercises would be popularised in Italy through Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise (see below), but it is Bruno who can rightfully lay claim to describing them first.

Bruno's focus on breaking down techniques into their component motions means that readers are able to get a very accurate idea of how he wants each technique to be performed. One of the most valuable descriptions he provides is his distinction between the different types of molinelli that can be performed, categorising the motion as either a 'maximum', 'regular' or 'minimum' circle. One of the illustrations he provides to demonstrate this distinction is extremely similar to those first seen in Rossi's treatise, which gives modern practitioners useful corroboration for a concept that Rossi barely mentions in the text. In keeping with Bruno's desire to isolate the movements in the early stages, he is the first Radaellian author to recommend doing these molinelli initially from an upright position with the legs extended, instead of in the guard position. The upper body remains 'firm' but not stiff, which keeps the student's focus on perfecting the blade actions alone, and only after that point are the molinelli done in the guard position, still with only slight torso lean and never shifting the body weight back and forth.

Following the introduction of the molinelli, Bruno's unique method continues to show itself in how he then integrates these blows with forearm flexions and the Radaellian counter parries. This early introduction and application of the counter parries is quite unique in Radaellian literature, and through these exercises students are given a clear demonstration of how the exercise molinelli contain other useful movements aside from the more obvious blows.

From this point on the exercises for the 'true lesson' begin, and the molinelli become proper blows with a lunge and variable torso movement. Unlike his Radaellian colleagues, who prescribe a consistent amount of torso lean in the lunge (or none), Bruno ties the amount of lean to the specific blow being performed, ranging from no lean in a head blow to moderate lean in rising cuts, traversoni, and thrusts. Raising or lowering of the torso is also used to make feints more convincing, which is an interesting elaboration on Del Frate's repeated insistence on accompanying all blade movements with appropriate movement of the body. Bruno continues with exercises for each major technique, describing all the possible starting positions and attacks except until towards the end, where the more advanced techniques such as counterattacks are only given general descriptions. The treatise finishes with a collection of conventional exercises and 50 pages of synoptical tables, resulting in a treatise of 295 pages in total, fully dedicated to sabre fencing, which actually makes it the longest of the Radaellian treatises aside from Masiello's 1887 book (much of which is dedicated to the sword).

Bruno's terminology and technical execution generally align with what was seen in Del Frate's works, including the false edge change-sforzi, and even his definition of counter-time. Only cuts by molinello and coupé are explicitly defined; however, like Rossi, Bruno's use of the term coupé encompasses a variety of different motions, sometimes resembling Masiello's direct cuts. Aside from the aforementioned exercises at the beginning of the treatise, another useful addition to the Radaellian repertoire is Bruno's distinction between 'angled' and 'in line' parries for the positions of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th. The former are so-called because they are held with a bent arm, and are used as parries and invitations; the latter are formed with an extended arm, similar to what Masiello describes, and are used for engaging.

Parry of 3rd, showing both the in line and angled variations

Small details such as these are where Bruno's writing really shines, and when coupled with his unique drills and exercises, his treatise is a valuable resource both for modern Radaellian instructors looking for useful drills and for practitioners wishing to understand the system on a deeper level.

Luigi Barbasetti

Original (German) | Translation

Luigi Barbasetti's 1899 treatise Sabre fencing may not have been the first Radaellian treatise published outside of Italy, but it was certainly the most popular of the lot. This popularity is not owed to any extraordinary merits the treatise has in comparison to the others, but largely because of when, where, and how it was published. Unlike the other authors discussed here, Barbasetti's treatise was the only one never published in Italian. Barbasetti's original manuscript was written in Italian, but when its publication in 1899 came in the form of a German translation of said manuscript carried out by two of his students, Rudolf Brosch and Heinrich Tenner, both fencing masters in the Austrian army.

While the other treatises discussed here were intended to bring a new perspective on the Radaellian method or restate its virtues to an Italian audience, Barbasetti's treatise is unique in being written for an entirely new, non-Italian audience. By the time of its publication Barbasetti had already had great success in spreading his teachings to central Europe, so his treatise only had to put those teachings in writing. Nevertheless, Barbasetti's method does show some distinguishing features, both with regard to format and technique, which are worth looking at.

The format of the treatise is fairly typical, with multiple examples for most techniques and concepts, but not to quite the same degree as Masiello or Bruno. The book does lack synoptic tables, so some readers may not find this book as useful a reference textbook as those of Masiello, Bruno, or Pecoraro and Pessina. In the end though, most material is explained sufficiently well in the more modern terminology reminiscent of Masiello, and at a total of 170 pages it is not the shortest of the lot. The text is complemented by 30 high-quality photographs of the master himself in basic positions, the first Italian-authored fencing treatise to contain photographs.

Taking a closer look at the material, the recommended fencing sabre given at the beginning is very typical for the Italians by this point, with a blade 88 cm long and a centre of gravity 5 cm from the guard. The 1936 English translation makes an additional remark that the total weight of the sabre should be no less than 500 g; this would be an unremarkable statement to make when the treatise was originally published, but by 1936 such a weight would have been considered excessive by most competitive sabre fencers.

Left: Guard of 3rd
Right: Guard of 2nd

Only a few other distinguishing features are to be found in Barbasetti's book, and most are fairly minor. The progression of the material has been reordered slightly, with the lunge coming before the molinelli, and the parries not until after the molinelli and the other attacks are described, the only Radaellian book to do so. The most visible differences are seen in Barbasetti's body carriage, such as his recommendation to keep more weight on the rear leg in the guard position, as opposed to the typical Radaellian 50-50 split, and to give a subtle forward lean to the upper body, which is more noticeable in his guard of 2nd. The resulting body carriage bears some resemblance to that of Masaniello Parise, at whose school Barbasetti taught for roughly 6 years. The hand is held at shoulder height in Barbasetti's guard of 2nd, but he prefers a slightly lower hand for the guard of 3rd.

For the molinelli Barbasetti recommends that students initially perform them with heels together, standing upright, in order to focus better on the blade movement. We saw this same logic in Bruno, who wished to remove 'unnatural' body movement from early instruction; yet unlike Bruno, Barbasetti never introduces any torso movement into the molinelli later on, with the most being a slight lean in the lunge. Together with his guard position, on the whole Barbasetti appears to be more reserved than previous authors with respect to how much of a part the body should play in wielding the sabre.

Following on from there we see that Barbasetti categorises the cuts similarly to Masiello, with direct cuts (with a preparatory arm bend), cuts by molinello, and cuts by coupé, although the latter are included under the molinelli. Barbasetti prefers his parries more extended than Del Frate or Rossi, but less extended than Masiello. Also echoing Masiello is his advice that the shoulder joint should form 'the tip of a cone' as the arm and sabre move from one parry to another. Note that this movement does not carry over to the disengagements, for which Barbasetti prefers the traditional wrist movement.

Parry of 1st

Of the compound parries Barbasetti includes circular and yielding parries as well as two of the Radaellian counter parries, those of 1st and 5th, which are described as the most appropriate to use when parrying in the lunge position (note that in the English translation this subsection is erroneously titled 'Counter-Prime after your opponent's lunge'). The third section of the treatise provides some useful advice for both the student and instructor on concepts such as second intention, silent lessons, general bouting, and the tactical applications of various techniques. Additionally, Barbasetti provides some helpful advice on how to fence against 'naturists', i.e. those who rely primarily on raw speed and power to overcome their opponent.

Aside from the popularity the original edition gained from its large German audience as well as translations and adaptations of this work into other languages such as French, Czech, and Russian, since it was translated into English in 1936 Barbasetti's book has often been the go-to reference for Italian sabre fencing in the Anglophone world for a large portion of the 20th century.

Salvatore Pecoraro & Carlo Pessina

(1912) Original | Translation

After more than 25 years of Radaelli's method being suppressed at the Italian Military Fencing Master's School, the 1910 publication of Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina's Sabre fencing was seen by many as the great redemption of Radaellian fencing. With decades of combined experience teaching Masaniello Parise's method, the two authors aimed to not only reinstate the Radaelli method, but to update the theory and bring it in line with how they observed the method being applied in reality by most fencers, i.e. through a combination of the best features of Radaelli and Parise's methods.

However, this goal was not stated in the first edition, and so the authors received some pushback from certain elements of the Radaellian old guard, most notably from Ferdinando Masiello, and this was also not helped by some minor wording problems throughout the book. But the text eventually revised and republished in 1912, which made explicit the authors' intentions and influences, which was that their method combines the elbow-focused blade handling of Radaelli's method with the 'body carriage' of Parise's, which was supposedly common at the time.

Parry of 1st against a cut to the face

Their preferred fencing sabre is described as having a slightly curved blade 88 cm long, a width of around 12 mm near the guard, and a centre of gravity 'two fingers' (around 4–5 cm) from the guard, all typical by that time. Also typical is the evenly-weighted posture for the guard position, and the guards of 3rd and 2nd are very similar to Masiello's, with the hand perhaps slightly higher in the latter guard. The parries too are described in a similar manner to Masiello, with the arm fully extended in most of them. Unlike Masiello, they do include a parry of 7th but under the name 'yielding 6th', which is the name given to it Parise's treatise. This demonstrates one of several instances in which Pecoraro and Pessina favour Parise's or their own terminology rather than the terms used by Del Frate or Masiello. Another example of this is when they describe the Radaellian counter parries of 1st and 5th, which they call 'counter parries in the opposite direction' in order to differentiate them from their proper counter (i.e. circular) parries.

Perhaps the most prominent technical additions in Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise are the six 'preparatory exercises'. These consist of simple arm motions which are done with heels together, standing upright, and are rather reminiscent of Bruno's 'flexion' exercises. Two of these preparatory motions called the 'diagonal exercises' bear close resemblance to the molinelli fendenti in the 1904 edition of Parise's treatise, in that they combine a typical Radaellian coupé with a follow-through swing to return back to the starting position. Altogether these exercises have the same aim as Bruno's flexions in that they lay the foundation for the more demanding molinelli by divorcing each motion from a true fencing action. Arriving at last at the exercise molinelli, we see the same standard motions that we have become accustomed to. The authors prescribe no weight shifting, but they do encourage a slight upper body lean to accompany the final motion.

Molinello to the face from the right

Moving on to the application of the molinelli and blows we find the typical direct thrusts, glides, and disengagements, the cuts by molinelli, coupés (now given a more Italian term of fendente), and direct cuts. Unlike Masiello and Barbasetti, the direct cut described by Pecoraro and Pessina has no preparatory bend of the arm prior to extension, and thus is the first instance of a 'true' direct cut among the Radaellian authors. Plenty of example exercises are given for the subsequent techniques, of which there are many, including a few other firsts in Radaellian sabre literature such as passing beats and even the inquartata, the former being imported from Parise's treatise.

In the lunge, readers are told to advance the front foot by little more than one foot length, as Parise also prescribes, and to keep the body upright or with only a slight forward lean. While the photos do depict an upright body posture, the length of the lunge often seems closer to two foot lengths. Coupled with their unremarkable guard position mentioned earlier, there seems little to Pecoraro and Pessina's body carriage that can clearly be attributed to Parise. The upright lunge certainly deviates from the Radaellians of the 1870s and 80s, but the same could also be said of Bruno and Barbasetti in particular, with his forward-inclined, rear-weighted guard. Thus when taken as a whole, despite what the authors state in the introduction, the treatise has far more in common with its Radaellian predecessors with regard to technique and structure.

At almost 250 pages, 52 of which being the now familiar synoptic tables, the work is quite comprehensive technically and very useful as a reference book even for more advanced fencers, although it does not contain quite as much tactical advice as we find in Barbasetti. This treatise would serve as the sabre textbook for the Military Fencing Master's School until it closed at the outbreak of the First World War, and then again once the school was reopened in the 1920s. The book never quite reached the level of popularity among the civilian fencing crowd as Masiello's treatise did, but it was still cited often by foreign authors as the most representative work on Italian sabre fencing in the first half of the 20th century.

Poggio Vannucchi

Original | Translation

The final treatise in this article is also in my view the strangest, and the most distinctive in its tone. Published in 1915 under the title The fundamentals of Italian fencing, Poggio Vannucchi's entire book is just 65 pages long, with just over 20 of those pages being devoted to sabre. To call this a treatise is perhaps charitable on my part, but given that the structure of the work imitates a fencing treatise, it deserves at least an honorary mention among the other works summarised here.

After a dedication to Giuseppe Radaelli, the 'master and renewer of the art of fencing', the book opens with a preface that is largely a polemic against the current state of fencing in Italy. In Vannucchi's view, Italian fencing has been in a long period of decline, and when he refers to the fencing method 'officially professed by us', Vannucchi is no doubt attributing part of this decline to the method of Pecoraro and Pessina, further reinforced through his condemnation of 'the laziness of the Neapolitan lunge', i.e. with an upright body. The only way to reassert Italian fencing superiority, Vannucchi says, is to 'exhume our old, true fencing', by which he of course means Radaellian fencing.

It should not be surprising then that this is precisely what follows in the rest of the book. Vannucchi's sabre method has more similarities with the treatises published 20 years earlier than it has with Pecoraro and Pessina's. This work is by no means a detailed textbook, but as the title suggests, a summary of techniques and foundational principles that Vannucchi believes embody 'true' fencing. One recurring theme throughout is his insistence on ensuring 'precedence of the blade' over that of the body; that is, always starting actions with the blade first so as to not expose the body. This is reinforced in other ways throughout the book: firstly, in his philosophy in assigning touches in a bout, where the first person to touch is in the right regardless of how the touches happened; secondly, by the fact that Vannucchi's target area includes the legs, but which only have a third the value of the rest of the body.

Vannucchi's technique reintroduces an emphasis on upper body movement that harkens back to Del Frate and Masiello. Back-and-forth leaning and weight-shifting similar to Del Frate's exercise molinelli are given as isolated preparatory exercises, which is then applied to Vannucchi's molinelli, and the full forward lean also accompanies the lunge. While the familiar thrusts of direct, glide, and by disengagement are mentioned, only cuts by molinello and coupé receive their own descriptions, with no mention of direct cuts.

For thrusts by disengagement, Vannucchi recommends that the movement be done with the elbow or shoulder, but also that the blade should follow a wide path around the opponent's arm, specifically because there is less chance of encountering the opponent's blade along the way. This is in contrast to Masiello's reasoning for using the shoulder, which is so that the point travels in as tight a motion as possible. The typical nine Radaellian parries mostly resemble those seen in Rossi with a semi-extended arm, but with an added variation for parry of 1st known as '1st in line', whose description matches the extended version seen in Masiello and others.

Aside from the target area mentioned above, two other small outliers present in Vannucchi's work are worth mentioning here. The first is that the illustration of the fencing sabre at the beginning of the sabre section shows a straight blade 92 cm long, giving a total sabre length of 110 cm, which is well above the typical lengths of Italian sabres at the time, which never exceeded 88 cm for the blade and around 105 cm for the whole sabre. The second outlier is the numbering of the hand positions. Vannucchi chose to deviate from the predominant traditional Italian/Neapolitan numbered positions of 1st (edge up), 2nd (edge to the right), 3rd (edge down), and 4th (edge to the left), instead giving each parrying position its own corresponding hand position, i.e. parry of 1st has the hand in what he calls '1st' and parry of 6th has the hand in '6th'. While Del Frate and Rossi also did not follow the traditional numbering of hand positions, Vannucchi's choice to deviate from this could be seen as another act of rebellion against Neapolitan influence on Radaellian fencing.

Being quite a short book, Vannucchi's treatise is of limited use as a fencing textbook, but through its reactionary nature it does serve as an important glimpse into the internal debates among Radaellians at the time, and Vannucchi's method may tell us more about Radaellian fencing of the late 19th century rather than how it was being practised in the first decades of the 20th.

Conclusion

Although the material has been presented here in order of publication, we should be cautious before making conclusions about how the method as a whole developed over time; to put it bluntly, just because one author's treatise was published later than another, that does not mean their method is necessarily more 'modernised' or developed than the earlier one. With this in mind, it is possible to identify various broad trends across the Radaellian corpus.

The first trend across the treatises is a gradual de-emphasis of body movement, particularly with regard to the molinelli but also in the lunge. The long, forward-leaning lunge is shortened either by reducing the distance between the legs or prescribing less torso lean (Vannucchi being a notable exception in this regard). The exercise molinelli never lose their prominence, but some authors decide to add in complementary exercises which isolate specific parts of the molinelli in order to create a more gradual progression. Parries are often performed with a more extended arm, blade actions are given more attention beyond the sforzi, and synoptic tables become a prominent feature. Lastly, much of the unique terminology introduced by Del Frate falls out of favour as the Radaellians merge their theory with pre-existing Italian traditions.

Covering a span of almost half a century, the relative uniformity of the Radaellian treatises allow the modern reader to develop a level of understanding of the foundational principles and practical application of Radaelli's fencing system that is perhaps unrivalled by any other system. Simultaneously, a close analysis of the material demonstrates that even within this uniformity it is possible for an individual author to meaningfully differentiate themselves, giving insight into how the Radaellians reacted to innovations both within their own ideological circle as well outside of it.