The 1881 Naples Gymnastics Congress (Part 1)

The annual congresses of the Italian Gymnastics Federation were important events in the rise of Radaellian fencing during the 1870s. It was at these congresses that the first public fencing competitions of modern Italy took place, and where the cream of the first-generation Radaellians like Giuseppe Ronga, Salvatore Pecoraro, Ferdinando Masiello had their first victories on the piste. By defeating fencers of more traditional and established schools, they helped spread the notoriety of Radaelli's school beyond the Italian military and into the public sphere. Additionally, the repeated successes of the military masters at these congresses served as a significant counterpoint to Radaelli's critics, who mainly had to appeal to theoretical arguments and cherry-picked anecdotes to demonstrate the flaws in his fencing system.

But these victories were not enough, at least not by 1881. At the 9th Italian Gymnastics Congress in Naples a graduate of Radaelli's school secured the top prize in the sabre pool, and yet the reputation of the Radaellians emerged from the congress in worse shape than ever. Less than three years later the Milan Fencing Master's School would be closed and the Radaellians left dismayed and leaderless. This short series of articles will explore not only what transpired at the 1881 congress, but also how these events were perceived by the fencing-literate public and how this perception was quickly capitalised on by the supporters of the Neapolitan school of fencing.

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While the Naples Congress of 1881 is a significant event in Radaellian history, the year also marked the end of Italian fencing's reliance on the gymnastics congresses. Two primary causes for this can be observed. The first is a sudden loss of momentum in the congresses. After the 8th gymnastics congress in 1877, the next had to be delayed several times due in part to poor organisation within the national federation.¹ Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the Milan International Fencing Tournament held in the summer of 1881 was widely considered a rousing success (despite some controversy), proving that competitive fencing could attract enough attention on its own without relying on the much larger and more mature gymnastics scene. Fencing and gymnastics competitions were occasionally featured alongside each other after 1881, but the most anticipated events for the former were, from this point on, dedicated tournaments.

Despite repeated deferrals, the 9th Italian Gymnastics Congress did eventually go ahead in the autumn of 1881, starting on 25 September and concluding on 2 October. In addition to fencing, the Naples congress featured competitions in gymnastics, target shooting, and rowing. While all these were taking place, a 'didactic exhibition' was on display in one of the venue's halls, showing off new gymnastics apparatuses as well as published and unpublished writings on topics relating to gymnastics and physical education. Dozens of prizes donated by the government, sporting clubs and wealthy individuals were allocated for the winners of all the competitions and for the best works of the didactic exhibition. A total of 945 registrations were reported for the congress, with 402 of those for the various competitions, noting that this included some overlap between competitions. The fencing tournament received 75 registrations for foil and 55 for sabre.²

At midday on 25 September the 9th Italian Gymnastics Congress was officially inaugurated in the Palazzo Spinelli di Tarsia, which was then the site of both the Royal Technical Institute (a secondary school) and the Royal Institute of Encouragement, a scientific institute. After several long speeches on the state of physical education in Italy, the congress attendees voted on the composition of the various juries which would be overseeing the competitions. The resulting fencing jury was composed of the following people:

Mario Del Tufo (President)	Luigi Cosenz (Secretary)
Cesare Parrini (Speaker)	Guglielmo De Sauget
Cesare Guarrasci	Giacomo Massei
Gioacchino Granito, Prince of Belmonte	Benedetto Emanuele di San Giuseppe
Ottavio Anzani	Emilio Conti
Domenico Cariolato	Achille Parise
Giuseppe Perez	Achille Angelini
Vittorio Février	Ernesto Dias
Leopoldo Notarbartolo Sciara	Eugenio Michelozzi-Giacomini
Cesare Gaeta	Cesare Enrichetti

Juries had been generator of controversy in previous fencing competitions, and they would continue to be so for many years to come. The Naples Congress was no different in this respect, and the location of the event should give no surprise as to why that is. The composition of this particular jury would have likely been very intimidating for the Radaellian attendees, as it was positively bursting with characters who were known to be particularly hostile towards the Milan Master's School. Achille Angelini and Giuseppe Perez were both very publicly opposed to Radaelli's teachings, while the Prince of Belmonte and Domenico Cariolato had very recently co-authored the report on the 1881 Milan International Tournament, which was similarly disparaging towards the Radaellians and their method. Enrichettian competitors may have take some comfort in the presence of their revered master on the jury, but the Neapolitan camp could be extra confident with the formidable local masters Mario Del Tufo, Giacomo Massei, and Achille Parise on the bench alongside Enrichetti.

The needle swings even further in favour of the Neapolitans when the other, less recognisable members of the jury are scrutinised. Ernesto Dias and Vittorio Février (/Févrié) are notable for having escalated the main controversy at the 1881 Milan Tournament. Dias and Février were the first members of the jury to resign in protest after the vote to decide who would receive the prize for 'best fencer of the tournament' came out in favour of the Radaellian master Salvatore Arista, rather than the Neapolitan favourite Ottavio Anzani. Fellow jurors Cariolato, Belmonte, and Emilio Conti then resigned in solidarity with Dias and Février, forcing the Radaellian camp to make a compromise and award a 'best fencer' prize to both Arista and Anzani.³

Emilio Conti of Milan had once been a fencer of the mixed school, but in the late-1870s he became a fervent advocate for the Neapolitan school and a valuable northern ally in the anti-Radaellian camp.⁴ Ottavio Anzani, Luigi Cosenz, and Benedetto di San Giuseppe were all well-known amateur fencers of the Neapolitan school, and had studied under the likes of Massei, Del Tufo, and the Parises.⁵ As secretary of the entire congress, Cosenz was also responsible for compiling the official report, which will be referenced liberally throughout this series of articles. He was hardly an impartial observer of everything that took place here, and we will see him taking full advantage of his position to advance the views of the Neapolitan camp in the report's concluding remarks.

Finally, Eugenio Michelozzi-Giacomini had authored an article, published in the prominent Florentine newspaper Gazzetta d'Italia, on the 1881 Milan Tournament which took a similar position as Cariolato and Belmonte's report. He took no issue with the jury giving equal praise to Arista and Anzani, but was dismayed to see that 'the majority of masters who swarm like mushrooms from regimental schools are very far from resembling them' in elegance and correctness. Michelozzi felt that the tournament reflected poorly on the state of fencing in Italy, where 'the art of good fencing still exists ... but unfortunately in few masters.' The mixed school of foil, such as the system taught by Radaelli, with all its ill-suited French importations, had to be totally abandoned in favour of the traditional Italian school so as to preserve Italy's fencing primacy.⁶

Returning now to Naples, I shall leave the topic of the 1881 congress' fencing competitions to the second part of this series. Here I will instead focus on another of the events which took place during the congress: the general assembly. As is typical of congresses, the Naples Gymnastics Congress was also an opportunity for attendees to witness formal discussions on various topics relating to physical education in Italy. Most of these discussions were concerned with gymnastics and the organisation of the National Gymnastics Federation, but at the second general assembly of the congress, held on 27 September, the discussion was immediately dominated by the anti-Radaellian elements of the presiding bench, with predictable results.

The assembly was opened at 9 pm by the mayor of Naples and the congress' president, Girolamo Giusso, joined at the bench by Mario Del Tufo, Eugenio Michelozzi-Giacomini, Antonio Paternostro, Giuseppe Perez, Benedetto di San Giuseppe, Cesare Parrini, Achille Angelini, and Luigi Cosenz. The secretary began by reading several letters of blessing and encouragement for the congress, one of which was from Ferdinando Masiello, who was

Very sad to be unable to attend the fencing-gymnastics congress in person, like always, since I am gravely ill, my thoughts will be with you. I send my heartfelt greetings to the presidency and all attendees, rising from the end of my bed, crying long live the King, long live Italy, house of Savoy!⁷

After the letter readings, the evening's discussion at last commenced with a proposal from the fencing jury. Below is the full translation of the official minutes for the discussion, which lasted for two hours.

President: Takes his leave, asking Cav. Parrini to assume the presidency.

Parrini: Assumes the presidency. He then reads a formulation by the jury regarding fencing methods, which he submits for the appreciation of the congress attendees, to adopt a national method, asking them to declare a method which they consider the best and to also make a decision as to if changes should be made to it, and that they above all adhere to what is truly Italian.

He adds: from this 9th congress, which is based in a city which has truly Italian traditions, it is desired that nothing be imported from other methods, and that the government take to heart and give encouragement to this Italian art of defence.

He talks about a booklet by General Angelini, on the handling of the sabre, in opposition to the Radaelli method.⁸

Angelini: Regarding the booklet which I took the liberty of submitting to the consideration of the congress, it is certainly painful for me to recall having seen our Minister of War, without plausible or justifiable reasons, substitute the glorious Italian School with a system which I know was not adopted in any civilian or military school of other nations, and which we here have condemned by public opinion, as shown by the booklets and many newspapers which I am ready to place on the bench of the presidency.

The orator also mentions the criticisms made of the same system by the colonels Gnecco and Doux, as well as by Professor Perez; these distinguished gentlemen renounced the efficacy of the Radaelli school with irrefutable arguments.

He concludes by voting that the system in question be abolished and the classical Italian school be adopted; that the Fencing Master's School be organised differently, it being impossible to provide the army—from men who have already been trained and who lack time—with good sword fencers and much less so masters in the instruction which requires, aside from natural dispositions, years and not months.

Draghicchio: Makes a point of order, while noting that the matter at hand is interesting for connoisseurs of fencing, he wishes for the discussion to only be had by qualified people, so that unqualified individuals are not counted in the vote.

President: Points out that separate assemblies cannot be formed. He believes that, by establishing principles, everyone can vote. He asks Prof. Draghicchio to desist from his point of order and let the discussion continue. He adds, for greater clarity, that the discussion could not be limited to fencers, because it would make a tournament with parties, which would certainly be missing in a general vote.

Draghicchio: Notes that by limiting the discussion to experts the votes would be genuine.

President: We are not looking for a vote, but a broad discussion which may inform government leaders, so that this forgotten art may grow.

Draghicchio: Withdraws his motion.

President: Thanks Prof. Draghicchio, also on behalf of the assembly. He then reads out a few chapters of General Angelini's booklet.

Perez: Talks broadly about the sabre, percussive blows, the various movements of the hand, and elasticity of the body.

Campanella (captain): Does not oppose what Perez said, but points out that the Radaelli system, with regard to the sabre, does indeed avoid percussive blows. Regarding Angelini’s booklet, he would like to read it in order to discuss it.

He adds: since it is a very important vote, he does not want it to be done by surprise, but that all congress attendees have an understanding.

President: Had not wanted to read the booklet so as to not distract the assembly; he now asks to attentively follow the reading of it which the secretary will give.

Cosenz: (Reads a few pages from Angelini's booklet)

Michelozzi: Supports Angelini’s opinion regarding the Master's School to be founded in Italy, having a single method and abolishing the many which exist.

He adds: the Italian school is the first to have had supremacy everywhere; I have seen with pain that the old Italian art has been abandoned, something which does not allow many, who do not know its rules, to imagine it.

He proposes that the art of fencing abandons the new systems and that a single fencing school be established.

In this regard, he talks about the old fencing and its fundamental movements, the stability of the guard, the hand, etc.

The old traditions are now abandoned and the new systems make masters in a few months; this is impossible, no matter how much aptitude they may have. He adds that they are taught with false methods, and urges the assembly to heed this, voting so that the government leaders take action.

Belmonte: Presents the following order of the day:

'Given the advantages which can come to the Italian youth from the union of all gymnastics societies;

'Given the harm which the Radaelli system causes to fencing:

'The assembly fully rejects the Radaelli system and votes so that, together with all the Italian gymnastic forces united, they are united and combined with all fencing societies in which the old system of Italian fencing is kept pure, in order to form a grand federation which unites all the willing Italian youth into a single group.'

President: Notes that Belmonte's order of the day, although it differs in form from the present discussion, also adheres in substance to the matter at hand. He puts it to a vote.

Cariolato: Presents the following order of the day:

'Having considered the conditions in which the teaching of fencing in the army finds itself;

'Considering that Maestro Radaelli's system does not correspond to the true needs of the army and arms enthusiasts;

'Considering that the distinct personal qualities of the army's masters would have been such foundations as to make the most formidable fencers out of them, if they had been given scientific and not empirical instruction:

'The assembly votes, for the good of the art and the fatherland, that the government substitute the empirical teaching of the Master's School with scientific teaching, and proceeds to the order of the day.'

Ettari: Asks for clarification about the seat of the Fencing Federation.

President: Notes that with the order of the day not having been voted on, the seat of the Federation cannot be defined.

Ettari: Wants this to be discussed after the order the day, if it is approved.

President: Adds that everything will be done.

Ettari: Wishes fencing and gymnastics to be united in the federation.

President: For his part, it is hoped that, in time, this proposal be accepted by the assembly.

Campanella: Wishes that the methods for the army be indicated in Cariolato's order of the day.

President: Notes that ministers do not pay attention to the votes of the congress; that they know how to evaluate everything; that any subjectivity must be removed; that the rest will come by itself.

Having then engaged in the discussion regarding the Prince of Belmonte's order of the day, he wished to declare that he, by attacking the Radaelli system, intends to allude to the written system, and not to those distinguished fencers who, although they call themselves Radaellians—because they came from the Master's School—do not put into practice the precepts of that system.

Campanella: Is convinced that the Radaelli sabre system has been good for the army, because today all soldiers and non-commissioned officers fence, unlike several years ago. He wishes that, in the same way in which the Radaelli system has been opposed, the sabre method intended to replace it is indicated, because he knows the existence of a sword method, i.e. the Italian, but he has not yet heard sabre being spoken about.

President: Does not wish for methods to be either mentioned or proposed.

Michelozzi: Demonstrates, with various arguments, that when the sword method is established, the sabre method will easily emerge.

Cariolato: Talks at length about the Radaelli school and the Cavalli school and gives the history of their foundation; demonstrates that before Radaelli there existed a sabre system with excellent masters and that there is no need to create one, because it already exists. Talks about the foundation of the Master's School, the direction of which was entrusted to Radaelli. He commends him for having brought development to fencing.

President: Shares, with the whole presidency, the praise bestowed on Radaelli, who has sought to throw greater light on an existing method; and that if he was wrong, he meant well and not to cause harm to the art. However, with this in mind, it is necessary to see if the light comes with a better method.

Perez: Wishes that fencing teachers be provided with licences, like all masters.

Belmonte: Asks that Cariolato's order of the day be put to a vote, because he withdraws his, saving it for another session.

President: Strongly recommends the Prince of Belmonte to not abandon the idea expressed in his order of the day.

Then Cariolato's order of the day is put to a vote, voting that this be combined with the federative concept expressed by Belmonte.

The Assembly approves by a majority vote.

The session is adjourned at 11 pm.

President                                    Secretary

  C. PARRINI                              L. COSENZ⁹

Just as they did in their report for the 1881 Milan tournament, Belmonte and Cariolato seize upon the opportunity to condemn the Radaelli school and declare the indisputable superiority of 'Italian' fencing. Many similarities are emerge when comparing the orders of the day they put forward in the Naples congress with their opinions regarding the Milan tournament, which can be summarised as follows:

1. The Milan tournament proved that the Neapolitan school and the Italian foil are indisputably superior to other methods;
2. The Radaelli sabre school can be considered acceptable after some minor changes;
3. The talents of young students at the Milan Fencing Master's School are being wasted on a flawed (foil) method;
4. Many leave the army soon after graduating and spread this flawed method throughout Italy;
5. The fencing societies of Milan and Turin call for the unification of Italian fencing;
6. Civilians are also besmirching the title of fencing master by claiming to be one without having had the proper training.¹⁰

Now in Naples, Cariolato and Belmonte are again claiming to speak on behalf of the collective, and indeed with such a friendly crowd they do seem to be in the majority. The term 'Italian' is once again weaponised to cast the Radaelli school as an un-Italian, corrupting influence on the nation's fencers. The Radaelli method is 'empirical', while the true, classical Italian school is 'scientific'. When Campanella rightly points out their equivocating around fencing methods, he objects that appealing to the 'Italian school' ignores sabre fencing and that no alternative sabre method had been proposed. Cariolato's vague reference to a pre-existing sabre school associated with Neapolitan master Licurgo Cavalli seems to have been enough to quell any further discussion on this point.

Stepping out into the public sphere, we see that press coverage on the gymnastics congress further illustrates how factional Italian fencing had become by this point, with several journalists voicing their outright approval for drastic fencing reform in the military. As we will see in part two of this series, in the days following this assembly the performance of the Radaellian contingent at the congress was often quite poorly perceived, which further reinforced the negative opinion of Radaelli's school expressed by the assembly.

The correspondents of the French newspaper L'Événement had no hesitation in displaying their anti-Radaellian bias before the congress had even begun. Writing on the evening before the congress' inauguration, the correspondent 'Fioretto' told readers that they had met Radaelli twice when visiting his hall in Milan, and that the master 'has never fenced'.¹¹ In this colourful diatribe, Radaelli is painted as some kind of charlatan who 'pretends to have invented a new system of fencing' and does not teach his students how to parry, so their only defence is to retreat. This particular criticism suggests the journalist's awareness of Achille Angelini's 1877 booklet, in which the author makes a very similar claim which was later repeated by others, such as the members of the 1883 fencing treatise commission.¹²

Even Radaelli's treatise is dismissed as a 'revolt against common sense', being composed by Del Frate due to the fact that Radaelli 'can neither speak nor write'. The journalist hoped that the new Minister of War, Emilio Ferrero, would heed the cries of Neapolitan fencers and strip Radaelli of his authority. In L'Événement's subsequent coverage of the congress, the correspondent 'Frantz' rejoiced at the assembly's order of the day, which they hoped would finally push the Minister of War into action. The Radaellian competitors, however, should not be criticised too harshly for their poor performance, as the current two-year fencing master's course was far too short and '[i]t is not their fault if the government forces them to study with Redaelli, who knows fencing as well as I do the Qur'an.'¹³

In stark contrast to this coverage, the (evidently bored) correspondent of Rome's Fanfulla was quite dismissive of the debate at the assembly on 27 September despite their apparent sympathy for the Neapolitan school:

Utility of congresses. Assembly. Order of the day: the best Italian fencing school. General Angelini favours Neapolitan; congress attendees idem. Me too. A member asks that it clearly state in the order of the day which sabre system the congress prefers. Is there an Italian system? So many masters, so many systems. The Radaelli system is discussed. What standard should the ministry of war have for military schools? Memorable response from the federal secretary Parrini: 'The ministry will pay not attention to our order of the day'. They should hold a congress of congresses to deliberate the utility of congresses.¹⁴

Nicola Lazzaro in Milan's Illustrazione Italiana is also sympathetic towards the Neapolitan school while simultaneously dismissive about the usefulness of the congresses. Indeed he even goes so far as calling the Naples congress harmful, as the orders of the day expressed by the assemblies 'create dualism and antagonism which was necessary to avoid in the interest of everyone', even if the substance of their conclusions were worthy of consideration. This was typified for Lazzaro by the discussion regarding the Radaelli school. While this school's flaws could not be ignored, the 'so-called Italian or more truly the southern' school also cannot not be passed off as infallible, even if it were superior to the former.

So there are flaws in our school and there are flaws in the Radaelli school; instead of pointing the finger at them, wouldn't it have been better to try and take what little good they have?¹⁵

Yet not all reporting on the congress shared the jury's anti-Radaellian inclination. In its short remark on the assembly discussion, L'Indipendente of Trieste observed that the Radaelli system was 'fiercely contested and bravely supported by two parties'.¹⁶ The typically pro-Radaellian newspaper Il Secolo of Milan was much more explicit, quoting the assembly's order of the day in full and then dismissing it outright:

To this vote we must add two observations. It was issued by a congress being held in the central city of the school opposing Redaelli's; and the Redaellians did not want to go to this congress because they already know that matters were predisposed to issue a vote opposed to the Milanese school.
As for changing the army's teachings, we must recall that it is not at all likely, because the Redaelli school was chosen after long experience and debate.
The consequence is obvious: the Neapolitans and the Milanese will continue to teach fencing according to their respective systems and to have champions in both.¹⁷

Antagonism between the two camps remained strong over the next decade and a half, showing much truth behind this prediction. What the journalist in Il Secolo may not have predicted, however, is the reversal of fortunes between the two camps that would take place in the coming years.

In part two we will see how the results of the fencing competitions bolstered the Neapolitan narrative of a rogue school in Milan harming the reputation of true Italian fencing through its lax standards and defective teachings. Yet even amongst this sea of damning judgements, the Radaellians still managed to emerge with at least one victory.

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1 Luigi Cosenz, Il IX congresso ginnastico italiano in Napoli (Naples: Francesco Giannini, 1881), 3–16.^↩
2 Cosenz, Il IX congresso ginnastico, 17–8.^↩
3 Domenico Cariolato and Gioacchino Granito, Relazione del torneo internazionale di scherma tenuto in Milano nel giugno 1881 (Naples: Tipi Ferrante, 1881), 133–5.^↩
4 "Emilio Conti," Lo Sport Italico, 13 May 1894.^↩
5 "Il barone Ottavio Anzani," Lo Sport Italico, 13 May 1894; "Maestri e dilettanti," Lo Sport Italico, 12 July 1894; "Benedetto Emanuele Barone di San Giuseppe," Lo Sport Italico, 6 May 1894.^↩
6 Eugenio Michelozzi Giacomini, "Sport," Gazzetta d'Italia, 11 June 1881, 3.^↩
7 Cosenz, Il IX congresso ginnastico, 44.^↩
8 Translator's Note: The booklet in question is Achille Angelini, Osservazioni sul maneggio della sciabola secondo il metodo Redaelli (Florence: Tipi dell'Arte della Stampa, 1877). A full translation of this booklet can be found here.^↩
9 Cosenz, Il IX congresso ginnastico, 46–51.^↩
10 Cariolato & Granito, Relazione del torneo internazionale di scherma, 147–8.^↩
11 Fioretto, "Lettres de Naples," L'Événement, 27 September 1881, 2.^↩
12 Angelini, Osservazioni sul maneggio, 35–7; Paulo Fambri, "Relazione" in 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), xxiii.^↩
13 Frantz, "Le grand congrès d'escrime de Naples," L'Événement, 6 October 1881, 2.^↩
14 Picche, "Il congresso ginnastico," Fanfulla, 2 October 18881, 1–2.^↩
15 Nicola Lazzaro, "Il congresso ginnastico," L'Illustrazione Italiana, 23 October 1881, 263–4.^↩
16 "IX congresso ginnastico," L'Indipendente, 2 October 1881, 3.^↩
17 "La scuola milanese di scherma," Il Secolo, 1 October 1881, 3.^↩

Review - La scherma: Trattato di fioretto, sciabola e spada by Domenico Conte

Since the majority of my readership is located outside of Italy, I feel it is necessary to amplify a recent and significant publication from the Accademia Nazionale di Scherma in Naples. The work in question, titled La scherma: Trattato di fioretto, sciabola e spada, is the first publication of manuscript fencing treatise written by Domenico Conte, a well-regarded fencing master active in the middle of the 20th century. The manuscript was discovered at an antique fair and edited for publication by Bernardo Leonardi, the current vice-president of the Accademia Nazionale di Scherma. Based on annotations throughout the manuscript, Leonardi places the compilation of this manuscript between 1950 and 1958. While I have good reason to suspect that at least some parts of the manuscript should be dated much later than this, the work is nevertheless extremely valuable for understanding the development of Italian fencing theory during a period in which relatively few fencing treatises were being published in Italy.

The book's introductory material provides welcome background on the both the author and the material, beginning with a preface by Pasquale La Ragione, president of the Accademia Nazionale di Scherma and a star pupil of Conte himself. Readers are treated to a very personal appreciation of the master and his teaching methodology, giving greater context to the material that follows. This is complemented with a short technical appreciation of Conte's work by Emilio Basile, the teaching vice president at the Accademia Nazionale, who considers the treatise as a continuation and respectfully modern development of the Neapolitan school. Finally, in two short sections Leonardi provides a detailed physical description of the manuscript as well as a biographical summary on Conte's career, highlighting his many years of teaching at the Circolo Nautico Posillipo and the Accademia Nazionale in Naples, among others places.

The fencing treatise itself, which comprises the rest of the book, is 228 pages long, 105 of those pages devoted to foil, 63 to sabre, and 60 to épée. The foil material is broadly based on the foundations laid out by Masaniello Parise. This is unsurprising, given that Conte was a graduate of the Military Fencing Master's School during its reopening in the 1920s and early 1930s, at which time it was still using Parise's treatise as the reference text for foil. While Conte follows Parise in assuming the use of a traditional Italian grip foil, it cannot be said that Conte's theory was stuck in the 19th century. He introduces many necessary modernisations (such as the fleche) and gives sound tactical advice useful for both coaches and competitors, emphasising that the former must adapt their lessons to each student's individual style and temperament.

Of particular relevance to this blog is Conte's sabre style, which is unmistakably Radaellian in foundation. In it we find the familiar six elbow-centric exercise molinelli, with slight torso movement accompanying the swing, as well as four preliminary exercises equivalent to Pecoraro and Pessina's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and diagonal exercises. From a guard position with an extended arm, direct cuts are performed with a slight preparatory bending of the arm prior to execution of the cut (similar to Masiello and Barbasetti), which is very rare in treatises written this late in the 20th century. Conte shows himself to be a firm supporter of what was by then considered quintessentially Italian sabre fencing.

Conte's épée method also shows some conservative tendencies, choosing to only describe the Greco-style Italian model épée, which had fallen out of favour among Italy's top épéeists by the 1950s. In keeping with this style of grip, Conte advocates an in-line method somewhat resembling that favoured by Agesilao Greco.¹

As I alluded to at the beginning, in addition to bringing this work to the attention of my readers, I also wish to highlight some evidence in the text which to me strongly call into question the 1950s dating proposed by Leonardi. This evidence is the fact that there are many instances throughout Conte's text which show an unmistakable resemblance to the foil and sabre treatises compiled by Giorgio Pessina and Ugo Pignotti, which were respectively published in 1969 and 1972.² Here are two side-by-side comparisons of their respective foil texts:

Pessina & Pignotti (1969)	Conte
Lo sviluppo delle singole azioni di offesa è direttamente subordinato all'atteggiamento nel quale viene a trovarsi l'avversario al momento iniziale dell'azione stessa, dato che questa deve adattarsi alle condizioni che offre la posizione dell'arma avversa per avere libertà e possibilità di attuazione. (p. 19)	Lo sviluppo delle singole azioni di offesa è direttamente subordinato all'atteggiamento nel quale viene a trovarsi l'avversario al momento iniziale dell'azione stessa, poiché questa deve adattarsi alle condizioni che offre l'arma avversa per avere libertà e possibilità di sviluppare determinate azioni di offesa, l'atteggiamento viene definito "invito". (p. 39)
Come la botta dritta è il colpo fondamentale di offesa è applicabile in contrapposizione agli inviti, così la cavazione è il colpo fondamentale di offesa applicabile in contrapposizione ai legamenti e si esegue anch'essa in un solo tempo, come è spiegato qui appresso. Sempre a misura di allungo, con movimento articolare delle dita lievemente sussidiate dal polso, si libera la propria lama dal legamento avversario, facendo descrivere alla punta una spirale allungata in seguito alla progressiva distensione del braccio per risolversi sulla linea del bersaglio scoperto, riducendo al minimo possibile il restante tratto rettilineo nell'esecuzione dell'affondo, evitando la discontinuità del movimento. (p. 30)	Come la botta dritta è il colpo fondamentale di offesa applicabile in opposto agli inviti, così la cavazione è il colpo fondamentale di offesa applicabile in opposto ai legamenti. Si esegue ugualmente in un sol tempo, incorporando in sé il colpo dritto. Dalla posizione di guardia, a giusta misura, con movimento articolare delle dita, appena sussidiate dal polso, si svincolerà la propria lama dallo stato di possesso esercitato dal legamento avversario, girando il pugno di quarta o seconda posizione, secondo il bisogno, in modo che la punta del fioretto descrive una spirale allungata, per risolversi in breve tratto rettilineo al bersaglio scoperto, ove si vibrerà il colpo proseguendo diritto. (p. 42)

And here are two examples from the sabre texts:

Pessina & Pignotti (1972)	Conte
Pur non essendo state ancora trattate le caratteristiche delle singole posizioni con la sciabola, tuttavia riteniamo opportuno anticipare che la guardia di terza — ormai d’uso comune fra gli sciabolatori di ogni Paese — è da preferirsi alle altre, non solo perché offre alcune garanzie per il braccio che rappresenta il bersaglio più avanzato ... (p. 20)	Pur non avendo ancora trattato particolarmente le caratteristiche delle singole posizioni con la sciabola, diremo subito che la guardia di 3a od di 2a sembra doversi preferire alle altre, anche esse possibili, offrendo alcune garanzie per il braccio che nella scherma di sciabola è il bersaglio più avanzato. (p. 137)
Indi si passerà ad alternare questi vari esercizi fra loro per acquisire quel senso di equilibrata prontezza con la quale l'arma deve essere portata, senza scosse, in tutte le direzioni ove e quando occorra. Infine, si passerà a modificare l'ampiezza e la velocità dei movimenti sia nella singola esecuzione che in quella ripetuta e combinata, procedendo da un massimo ad un minimo e inversamente. Tali modificazioni, per le quali è richiesta una graduale stretta della mano sull'impugnatura dell'arma, sviluppano quel senso di sicurezza nel portamento del ferro che permette allo sciabolatore di padroneggiare ogni movimento offensivo o difensivo, e di ridurre il movimento stesso allo stretto necessario. (p. 34)	Proseguendo ancora, gli stessi esercizi si alternano fra loro per acquistare quel senso di equilibrata prontezza con la quale l’arma deve essere portata in tutte le direzioni, ove e quando occorra. Infine, è assai utile modificare l'ampiezza e la velocità dei movimenti, sia nella esecuzione singola, sia in quella ripetuta o combinata, procedendo da un massimo ad un minimo e inversamente. Dette modificazioni richiedono la graduale stretta della mano alla impugnatura e sviluppano quel senso di sicurezza che permette allo schermitore di padroneggiare ogni suo movimento offensivo o difensivo, sicché esso non vada oltre il bisogno. (p. 138)

Besides the above-demonstrated textual comparisons with Pessina and Pignotti's works, there is also an unmistakable similarity in the progression of the material. The clearest example of this are chapters 2 and 3 of Conte's sabre section, which are almost identical in progression to Pessina/Pignotti. The main distinction that can be made between the two is that Conte is more likely to break the material down in to more sections than Pessina/Pignotti.

Needless to say, the most likely reason for all these similarities is that Conte borrowed directly from Pessina and Pignotti's works. Yet there may also a possibility that all three authors had access to and borrowed from the same pre-existing reference material. One good candidate for such material is hinted at in one of Conte's annotations cited in Leonardi's preface, where Conte refers to the 'writings of M° S[alvatore] Angelillo recovered from the files of the Magistrale of Rome'.³ An intriguing lead for future research, perhaps. As for Conte's épée material, my familiarity with épée treatises in general is admittedly rather poor, so any confident declarations about the originality of this material will also need to wait for future analysis, hopefully by someone far more competent than myself.

Regardless of the questionable dating and originality of Conte's work, the publication of his manuscript is a welcome addition to the Italian fencing corpus, and I congratulate both Bernardo Leonardi and the Accademia Nazionale di Scherma for their laudable work in preserving and promoting this exciting piece of Italian fencing history.

*******

1 Agesilao Greco, La spada e la sua disciplina d'arte (Rome:  G. U. Nalato, 1912); La spada nella sua realtà (Rome: Casa Editrice Pinciana, 1930).^↩
2 Giorgio Pessina & Ugo Pignotti, Il fioretto (Rome: Scuola Centrale dello Sport, [1969]); La sciabola (Rome: Scuola Centrale dello Sport, [1972]).^↩
3 See p. 17^↩

Codice Cavalleresco by Luigi Barbasetti

Just one year before publishing the sabre treatise that would solidify his legacy in the German-speaking world, Luigi Barbasetti made his authorial debut not with treatise on fencing, but a duelling code. His code appeared in the German language in early 1898 bearing the title Ehren-Codex, having been translated from Italian and 'adapted for Austro-Hungarian use' by military officer and fencing instructor Gustav Ristow.¹ Only a few months later an Italian-language version appeared, published under the similarly generic title Codice Cavalleresco.² Scans of my own Italian copy can be viewed in the link below.

*** Click here to view ***

While the fact that the German publication was a translation would suggest that this book was simply the publication of Barbasetti's original Italian manuscript, he himself explicitly states in the introduction that this text was actually translated back to Italian from the German edition of the book, although by whom exactly we are never told. The Italian text has however been 'slightly revised', and also features a preface by the Italian jurist Costantino Castori. Due to the complicated legal status of duelling in Italy, this was clearly an effort on the publisher's part to put a legitimising stamp on what was in essence the regulation of extra-judicial violence.³

Barbasetti's ever-growing reputation as a fencing master would certainly have been helpful in providing him some authority in matters of honour, yet this by no means made his duelling code immune from criticism. Some Austrian commentators noted that Barbasetti's code was an attempt to impose Italian duelling customs on the more Germanic-oriented customs of Austria and Hungary.⁴ One such foreign custom was Barbasetti's explicit refusal to allow the thrust to be excluded in the duel as a safety measure. Another was that while Barbasetti forbade duels to death, his allowance for duels to be carried out ad oltranza, or 'to the extreme', was viewed as being both morally and legally no different, as it required combat to end 'only when one [of the combatants] falls to the ground, or is unable to continue due to receiving a very serious wound.'⁵

Barbasetti's code reflected a common view in Italy at the time that although the act of duelling was deplorable and that society should seek to irradicate it altogether, for the meantime duelling was unfortunately still necessary due to the lack of legal recourse available to those who had their honour besmirched by another. In line with this view, Barbasetti opposed duels to first blood as well as any other provisions to reduce the severity of a duel (such as excluding use of the point with sabres), believing that the best way to reduce the prevalence of duels was to ensure that they were not conducted over petty matters with little risk. In Germanic cultures, by contrast, it was common to exclude the thrust in sabre either by tacit agreement between the duellists or by blunting the points entirely.⁶ Many Italian duelling commentators like Barbasetti ridiculed this practice, as in their eyes reducing the potential lethality of a duel, thereby lowering the stakes for the duellists, only encouraged men to behave more provocatively and deploy insults more freely.⁷

One notable writer to criticise Barbasetti on this point was Gusztáv Arlow, whose 1902 sabre treatise is one of the foundational texts of the Italo-Hungarian school. In a short section at the end of his treatise discussing how to conduct sabre duels, Arlow makes a point to criticise Barbasetti (as well as his translator Ristow) in a footnote almost half a page long. Barbasetti's measures to reduce the severity of duels, even those which result from minor offences, were apparently antiquated and reckless, exasperatedly remarking: 'Human frivolity knows no bounds.'⁸ He was also critical of the fact that the code was supposedly adapted to 'Austro-Hungarian' customs, as this to him demonstrates a lack of a understanding of how different Austrian and Hungarian duelling customs could be.

Both the German and Italian versions were received positively by the sporting press, and in fact the Italian Gazzetta dello Sport reported that the first printing of the German text had completely sold out by July 1898.⁹ It remained popular enough in both languages to warrant a second Italian edition in 1905, with second and third editions of the German text appearing in 1901 and 1908 respectively.¹⁰ Despite the warm reception in Italy, Barbasetti was never able to unseat the very popular code by Jacopo Gelli, which was then already in its 8th edition and continued to be republished up until the eve of the Second World War.¹¹

*******

1 Luigi Barbasetti, Ehren-Codex, trans. Gustav Ristow (Vienna: Verlag der Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung, 1898).^↩
2 Luigi Barbasetti, Codice Cavalleresco (Milan: Alessandro Gattinoni, 1898).^↩
3 For an excellent deep-dive on Italian duelling culture at this time, see Stephen Hughes, Politics of the Sword: Dueling, Honor, and Masculinity in Modern Italy (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007).^↩
4 S. Leo, "Pacemacher des Todes," Feuilleton, Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 June 1898, 2–3; Hermann Bahr, "Barbasetti," Feuilleton, Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 21 January 1900, 1–2.^↩
5 Barbasetti, Codice Cavalleresco, 110.^↩
6 Hans Kufahl and Josef Schmied-Kowarzik, Duellbuch: Geschichte des Zweikampfes nebst einem Anhang enthaltend Duellregeln und Paukcomment (Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1896), 221.^↩
7 Hughes, Politics of the Sword, 181–2.^↩
8 Gusztáv Arlow, Sir Gusztáv Arlow's Sabre Fencing, trans. Annamária Kovács, ed. Russ Mitchell (Irving, TX: Happycrow Publishing, 2022), 234.^↩
9 "Fra le pubblicazioni," Scherma, La Gazzetta dello Sport, 4 July 1898, 1. For some full reviews, see Camillo Müller, "Über den neuen Ehrencodex," Duellwesen, Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung, 13 February 1898, 156–7; J. H. Aubry, "Un nouveau code," Journal des Sports, 23 March 1898, 1; Roderico Rizzotti, "Codice cavalleresco di Luigi Barbasetti," Scherma, La Gazzetta dello Sport, 1 August 1898, 2; "Codice cavalleresco Barbasetti," L'Indipendente (Trieste), 17 September 1898, 2.^↩
10 Luigi Barbasetti, Codice Cavalleresco (Turin: R. Streglio, 1905); Ehren-Kodex, trans. Gustav Ristow (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1901); Ehren-Kodex, trans. Bernhard Dimand (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1908).^↩
11 Jacopo Gelli, Codice Cavalleresco Italiano, 8th ed. (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1896). This duelling code had a tremendously long life, seeing an 18th edition in 1938.^↩

Radaellians Respond to Pecoraro and Pessina (Part 4)

The publication of Masiello's booklet of criticism marked the climax of the debate surrounding Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre treatise. As we already saw with Alberto Cavaciocchi's reply to Masiello, public discussion began to focus more on the people making the arguments against Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise rather than the text itself. News of the treatise's imminent approval by the Ministry of War (and a possible second edition in the works) likely made the adoption of the new system seem like a fait accompli even to those who deemed it inadequate, at least in its current state.

In line with this state of affairs, Radaellian master Poggio Vannucchi decided to take up his pen to denounce the new official system as well as the general trend of Italian fencing. Below is the full translation of an article of his published on 14 March 1911 in the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino. Note that the incident he is referring to at the beginning was a recent public dispute between Agesilao Greco and Jean Joseph Renaud following a fencing exhibition in Paris. The dispute eventually ended in a duel between the latter and Italian journalist Luigi Campolonghi.

If the recent Italo-French fencing dispute has ended in a not-too-dishonourable way for the Italian nation, and this is thanks to the intervention of those who dared drop the pen for the sword to protect our honour, we must also confess that this dispute ended deplorably for our Italian fencing; it was a true disaster.
This is not to rekindle controversies which we should instead all wish to be over and hope, unfortunately in vain, for them to be soon buried in oblivion. It is not even to criticise the chivalrous behaviour of our champions that I wish to make my voice heard here; the whole nation and the entire civil world was the judge of that behaviour.
It is only technical deficiency that I intend to speak of—our lack of preparation, the inferiority, it must be admitted, in which we find ourselves. And we can admit this, because it is not an inferiority of race or of traditions, but of systems, an inferiority which depends not on less aptitude, but of less seriousness in preparation and practice.
I will mention nothing else, because too much has already been written rightly or wrongly and even when it was better to be silent.
What the current state of our fencing is, that professed officially at the Rome Master's School, in institutes and military corps, and unfortunately even on the pistes of international tournaments, what this fencing is, I have already discussed on another occasion in the columns of this same newspaper.
I said then that one of its fundamental principles is the laziness which the lunge in the Neapolitan style teaches, more resembling a comfortable sitting-down than the sudden burst that it should be and which, according to them, allows one to return to guard more comfortably. And this laziness introduces a whole arsenal of small tricks, deceptions, games; gimmicks like rattling, somersaults, and mean ploys; intentionally provoked double touches to strike fraudulently where one cannot strike with art; parries done no longer with the blade, but with the body, if necessary turning the back or exposing another part of the body where blows are not conventionally valid.
And I also said that instead our true fencing—that with which Radaelli made the best Italian fencers in a single year—is fatiguing and gruelling, with neither economy nor respite, because only in this way can the necessary performance of the body's capacity and the harmony of movements and volition be achieved.
A few minutes, I added, of strict instruction on the piste should be enough to exhaust the keen pupil, who fully intends to gain the necessary requirements; far better than hours and hours of continuous teasing, whipping, charming jumps, and back turns. And with this exercise it is possible to implement that system which is one of our forgotten glories, which is based on the absolute precedence of the blade over the body so that those who strike in a truly sudden manner, without having warned the opponent with the body, should touch; the other cannot parry, even if they know where the other wants to strike, even if a simple and brief movement is enough to parry; they cannot parry if the opponent had a good start, simply because they had a good start.
This requirement of the blow is something very arduous to achieve; it requires effort and constancy, enthusiasm and sacrifice, but it is only this which can ensure supremacy for Italian fencing.
I would like to again recall that I twice gave an open invitation to a practical test of this fundamental principle, a test which I still propose in the same terms: to lunge from defined guard positions against a declared target, without a preceding movement or feint to deceive the opponent, at correct measure, committing myself to touching the opponent at least six times out of ten and parrying at least the same number of their blows. And perhaps this time too I will wait in vain.
But to return to our current thesis and conclude: throw into oblivion this disgrace that we call the current official Italian fencing system, that which is the cause of our defeats and our embarrassments, and exhume our old, true fencing; because when the system is serious, so too is the behaviour of those who profess it and represent the Italian name in trials of arms held before the entire civil world.

Cap. Poggio Vannucchi

Fencing master

Vannucchi does not name Pecoraro and Pessina explicitly, but it was well known by then (at least among fencing enthusiasts) that the two masters had taken over direction of the Master's School, and his reference to the 'lunge in the Neapolitan style' would be universally understood as the type with an upright torso that was typical of Neapolitan fencers. This body carriage is typical of the supposed weakness Vannucchi sees in fencing of the period, which had strayed too far from the 'fatiguing and gruelling' style of the Radaellian of his younger years in the 1870s and early 80s. For those of you who have read Vannucchi's 1915 treatise, the above article might seem rather familiar, as the majority of it is in fact repeated verbatim in his treatise's introduction.¹ One may note the removal of the reference to the Master's School, as by 1915 it had been closed as part of the country's war preparations and could no longer be blamed for any perceived degradation in the nation's fencing.

In the meantime, Masiello did eventually become aware of Alberto Cavaciocchi's article in Rivista Militare, but after reading it he did not deem the technical arguments to be of a high enough standard to warrant a full rebuttal. Nevertheless two of Cavaciocchi's personal attacks against him did justify a reply, which appeared in La Nazione on 16 April 1911. After accusing Cavaciocchi of being uncourteous by not informing him of the Rivista Militare article's publication, as Masiello assures he always does when replying to others, he first takes issue with Cavaciocchi's claim that Masaniello Parise's attempt to conciliate the opposing factions in Italy around the year 1889 only ended in vain thanks to the 'intransigence of a few'. Masiello informs him that there were in fact two such attempts, and that if anyone present at those meetings should be accused of intransigence, then it should be Parise himself. Masiello quotes a letter he had received a few days earlier from Salvatore Arista, who said that at one of these meetings, during a discussion on how the disengagement should be executed, Parise dismissively stated 'let's not go into useless details'. For Masiello, such a statement was demonstrative of how disingenuous Parise's engagement was with his critics, and how futile such attempts at conciliation were from the outset.

The second exception Masiello took with Cavaciocchi's article is when the latter brought up an exhibition which Masiello took part in at the National Academy of Fencing in Naples in 1880. Aside from the fact that Cavaciocchi misremembered the year the event actually happened (1882) and falsely called the event was 'competition' rather than simply an exhibition, he also claimed that when Masiello appeared to be losing to his clearly superior Neapolitan opponents he pulled out of the event, claiming that the pain in his knee had become too great to continue. As Masiello rightly points out, he had in fact been suffering significant knee pain at the time which was increasingly preventing him from fencing, such that in 1881 he even underwent a meniscectomy to remedy this pain, which was the first time such a procedure had been performed in Italy.² Masiello concludes his short article by assuring Cavaciocchi and all those who had been subject to his criticism that he has no intention of dethroning or defaming anyone, but simply to speak the truth as he sees it for the benefit of fencing. He also declares that he has too high an opinion of his own system for it to be adopted at the Master's School, where, with an explicit nod of approval to Vannucchi's article, they follow methods 'based on laziness'.

The final publication to directly contribute to this debate (that I am aware of at least) was a booklet titled Poche parole "Sui metodi di scherma per l'esercito" del Colonnello di fanteria E. Cavaciocchi written by a Florentine amateur named Giovanni Dumortier. Dated to May 1911, the booklet is a direct rebuttal of Cavaciocchi's article, with Dumortier emulating his witty and occasionally condescending tone. Given that the booklet was published in Florence, it is possible that Dumortier was a student or acquaintance of Masiello, and felt compelled to defend his friend. Since Cavaciocchi spent a significant portion of his article comparing Parise's system with the Radaelli and Masiello's, Dumortier's booklet is almost entirely occupied with refuting these points and defending the legacy of the Radaellians.

Those who are interested in the specifics of the argumentation should read the booklet themselves, but the most pertinent point to the overall debate regarding Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise is in Dumortier's conclusion, where he admits that he is quite certain the new system will be approved by the military. This, he claims, is not because the system is revolutionary or altogether different from what came before, but precisely because this is the exact kind of sabre fencing that had been taught at the Master's School for the past 25 years: a mixed style which disregarded the official status of Parise's method. While there is good evidence to suggest that practical instruction at the school often diverged from the official curriculum, Dumortier is probably exaggerating the true extent of this practice.

It is here that the great controversy of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise finally subsided, likely to the great relief of the embattled authors as well as the general fencing public. While the 1912 revised edition improved many of the flaws that the book was accused of possessing, it never quite reached the same semi-legendary status as Parise's treatise. A large part of this can be attributed to the fact that, unlike Parise's treatise, Pecoraro and Pessina's text did not enjoy three straight decades of use at the Master's School, as the school was closed only few years later at the outset of the First World War. However, the treatise did re-emerge in the 1920s when the school was reopened under Mussolini's fascist government, which prompted a reprinting of Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre and épée treatises (as well as Parise's foil section) exclusively for students of the school. Over the following decades various authors throughout Europe considered the book authoritative enough to cite or sometimes even plagiarise in their own works, and when Giorgio Pessina (Carlo's son) and Ugo Pignotti were tasked with writing a new sabre textbook for the Italian Fencing Federation in the 1960s, they too drew inspiration from Pecoraro and Pessina, preserving their molinelli and preliminary exercises more or less unaltered and making extensive use of their terminology throughout.³

Returning now to 1911, when the treatise's legacy was still unwritten (and indeed there is much more that can be said about said legacy), we do find at least one old-school Radaellian who saw the publication of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise in a rather positive light. Egidio Candiani was a graduate of the Milan Master's School under Radaelli and later spent some of his career as an assistant instructor at the Rome Master's School under Parise. In November 1911, as the fencing masters of the military were being called to the Master's School to learn the new Radaellian method, Candiani expressed his hope that Pecoraro and Pessina's leadership would return Italian sabre fencing onto the bright path it had once followed. I will end here and let Candiani speak for himself.

Radaelli resurgit!

It is not well established if the bones of the dead shiver under the earth, but if this is true, those of the late great master Giuseppe Radaelli should now be trembling with joy to know that his glorious sabre system has now again been adopted at the Rome Fencing Master's School.

Yes, Radaelli resurgit!, and he is resurrected thanks to the approval of the new sabre treatise compiled by the talented masters Pecoraro and Pessina, the former the director and latter vice-director of said school.

This is because, with all due respect to the valiant authors, their treatise approved by the Ministry of War as the official text is only a return to the old—or, to say it better, the revindication of the Radaellian system, unjustly condemned to ostracism by the late Masaniello Parise who was appointed supreme director of the Rome Master's School in 1884.

Parise, who was undoubtedly a profound theoretician of fencing, as well as a much appreciated fencing master, having dedicated all his intelligence and care to his preferred weapon, the sword, he was neither willing nor able to also deploy the same rare talent and ability on the sabre, which had instead found in Radaelli a marvellous and unsurpassed master.

Fencers with the enviable fortune of having fewer years under their belts—lucky them!—cannot remember the long, relentless, implacable campaign waged before and after the death of poor Radaelli in order to demolish his system, which had given Italy its best and strongest fencers. It will suffice to recall of that glorious host the names Ronca, Roggia, Cavalli, Arzani, Vezzani, Pecoraro, Guasti, Giordano Rossi, Varrone, Pessina, Sartori, Barbasetti, Gallanzi, Tagliaferri, and many others, adding to these world-famous masters a pleiad of formidable amateurs of the time such as Magrini, Burba, Scansi, Sestini, Santagalli, Baldi, Santoponte, Ceccherini, Pinelli, Giurovick, etc.

So there is something to be pleased with and rejoice over in the valorous Pecoraro and Pessina, authors of the new sabre treatise, if thanks to them the Rome Master's School is officially teaching that abhorred sabre system which, like it or not, throughout the fencing world has always been considered the best.

To learn the Radaelli sabre system, revised and corrected by Pecoraro and Pessina, all civil and military masters belonging to the various institutes and corps subordinate to the Ministry of War are now called to Rome, divided into groups for a course of 15 days.

This course has already been completed by the civil masters who all have words of high praise for the clear and rational method by which professors Pecoraro and Pessina expound their treatise theoretically and practically. The masters raise a true hymn of gratitude and esteem to the commander of the Rome Master's School—who is the distinguished artillery colonel Cav. Salonna, a passionate and talented fencer as well as a fervent apostle of the Radaelli system—for the welcome he gave on their arrival at the Master's School.

At the completion of the course there was a banquet for all the masters called to Rome and the instructors of the Master's School. As a pleasant memento, Colonel Salonna wished for a group photo of all the masters attending the fraternal symposium.

E. C.⁴

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1 Poggio Vannucchi, I fondamenti della scherma italiana (Bologna: Coop. Tipografia Azzoguidi, 1915).^↩
2 The full context of this operation has been helpfully summarised in Nunzio Spina, "La prima meniscectomia in Italia: storia di armi, di coraggio e di felici intuizioni," Giornale Italiano di Ortopedia e Traumatologia 34, no. 2 (June 2008): 90-96, https://old.giot.it/article/la-prima-meniscectomia-in-italia-storia-di-armi-di-coraggio-e-di-felici-intuizioni/.^↩
3 Giorgio Pessina and Ugo Pignotti, La sciabola (Rome: Scuola Centrale dello Sport, [1972?]. For a blatant example of plagiarism, see Federico Ynglés Sellés, Tratado teórico-prático de esgrima. Segunda Parte. Sable (Toledo: Editorial Católica Toledana, 1944).^↩
4 Egidio Candiani, "Il nuovo sistema di sciabola adottato presso la Scuola Magistrale Militare di Roma," La Stampa Sportiva, 5 November 1911, 5, https://www.byterfly.eu/islandora/object/libria:42583#page/5/mode/1up. The photo Candiani refers to at the very end was not included in the original article, but can be found in Eduardo De Simone, La Scuola Magistrale Militare di Scherma. Dalla sua fondazione in Roma a tutto l'anno 1914. Note storiche (Rome: Tipografia Editrice "Italia", 1921), 53.^↩

Radaellians Respond to Pecoraro and Pessina (Part 3)

In very early 1911, or possibly December 1910, the long critique of Pecoraro and Pessina's sabre treatise which Ferdinando Masiello had promised back in August was finally published. The length of its title, La Scherma di Sciabola: Osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina Vice-Direttori della Scuola Magistrale militare di Scherma, portends the length of the booklet itself, totalling 161 pages (well over half the length of the treatise in question).

Click here for the full scans

The introductory sections suggest that Masiello had intended his booklet to reach a slightly wider audience of readers who, understandably, may not already be aware of the debate that had raged in the public press over the course of the previous year, but still wish to remain up-to-date with the latest developments in Italian fencing. Masiello begins by addressing Pecoraro and Pessina directly, saying that although they were all were raised under the same 'father Redaelli', from the day that the Master's School came under a hybrid and defective method, they had been divided. He asserts that he had always fought 'at the breach' for his conscience, and expects that Pecoraro and Pessina will give his opinions due respect and refute them with well-reasoned arguments if they disagree. Masiello comes very close to apologising in advance for the tone of his writing, as he openly admits that the more light-hearted remarks and jokes were to keep any less enthusiastic readers sufficiently engaged and entertained.

Turning then to the reader, Masiello provides a summary of what he considers the most important events that led up to the present debate. He states that Pecoraro and Pessina's initial announcement of their treatise in the first half of 1910 contained an element of truth when they implied that sabre fencing had by then fallen into decline. Where Masiello takes issue with this statement, however, is that the treatise authors themselves should accept much of the blame for that state of affairs. Evidence of this is in all that took place in Italian fencing following the death of Giuseppe Radaelli and the appointment of Masaniello Parise at the Master's School in 1884. This, Masiello believes, is the origin of the steady decline in Italian fencing throughout the past 25 years, as the sabre method Parise then introduced was so regressive and flawed that Giovanni Monti, who had served as Radaelli's replacement at the school's final years in Milan, supposedly 'cried like a child' after seeing a demonstration of the new method he would be forced to teach.

Pecoraro and Pessina had been complicit in teaching this defective sabre method at the Master's School for two and a half decades. Meanwhile, Masiello famously published his own treatise in 1887, which was well received throughout Italy, but Pecoraro and Pessina had consistently refused to engage with Masiello's theories, even when he gave a public demonstration of them in Rome in 1890. Despite the fact that Masiello's method was then adopted by the British army, Pecoraro publicly doubled-down in his support for Parise's method in a letter sent to the magazine Scherma Italiana in 1894, which Masiello reproduces in its entirely in the booklet's introduction.

Masiello asks the new leaders of the Master's School how they can square such a declaration of commitment, and their long career teaching Parise's system, with their own treatise, which is clearly based on Radaellian theory? The timing of this sudden conversion is also conspicuous to Masiello, given how soon after Parise's death the treatise was announced. Masiello imagines that if an afterlife existed and Radaelli and Parise were looking down on the two authors from heaven, both masters would feel betrayed and disappointed in their students. Finishing on this sombre image, Masiello then provides reproductions of the most significant newspaper articles in the debate published over the previous year by himself and Pecoraro and Pessina, all of which have been either translated or summarised in the course of this current series of articles.

The remaining 134 pages consist of Masiello's observations on the treatise itself. The critique is divided into three parts, corresponding to the three parts of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, with Masiello providing commentary on almost every individual section or topic found within it. If you have read my summary in Part 1 of the critique Masiello already published in La Nazione on 19 August 1910, then you will be familiar with the main arguments presented throughout this booklet. In this expanded format Masiello's semantic arguments become even more glaringly prominent, but more substantive arguments can be found regarding the preliminary exercises, the molinelli, the lunge (a whopping 12 pages' worth), the cuts, and the inquartata.

Much of the criticism presented against these techniques in particular come from the point of view that since Masiello's own treatise presented long (sometimes overly long) mechanical explanations for why his chosen method of execution is preferable, Pecoraro and Pessina should also have to provide lengthy explanations for their own choices in order for their treatise to be considered an improvement over pre-existing theory, thus justifying its publication. The 2nd and 3rd editions of Masiello's sabre treatise goes to great lengths to explain why his fully-inclined lunge is superior to one with an upright torso, and yet in Masiello's eyes Pecoraro and Pessina have disregard all of this reasoning and advocate the latter version, providing no justification for it.

When it comes to Pecoraro and Pessina's cuts, Masiello is frequently annoyed and confused at the authors' repeated use of the term 'strettissimo' to describe how the molinello movement is refined to create a smaller, faster arc which is used to give practical cuts. Masiello asserts that since the length of the wielder's sabre and forearm never change, the arc of the molinello cannot be reduced. Those familiar with Masiello's work should find such a criticism particularly confusing, as Masiello himself uses the word 'ristrettissimo' several times when describing how to apply cuts by molinello in his own treatise.¹

Another point Masiello makes in this section and which reoccurs elsewhere throughout his critique is that the method of gripping the sabre as described by the authors does not permit many of the positions shown in the photographs. In Masiello's reading, the grip is described as static and unchangeable, unlike how Masiello allows the thumb to slide up and down the grip to put the blade more or less in line with the wielder's arm. This line of argumentation is somewhat reminiscent of Achille Angelini's reading of Del Frate's treatise back in the 1870s, in which Angelini disregards the illustrations and asserts that Radaelli wished the sabre to be always held fully perpendicular to the forearm.

If throughout his critique Masiello is constantly exasperated at how Pecoraro and Pessina have ignored the practical improvements of their predecessors, elsewhere he is suspicious that the authors have knowingly indulged in plagiarism. When Pecoraro and Pessina describe how to gain distance in an attack by bringing the rear foot up against the front foot before lunging, Masiello sees so much similarity with his own work that he places the two relevant sections side-by-side for the reader to compare. Elsewhere Masiello claims the authors plagiarised his terminology and phrasing in their descriptions of the cuts, and recalls that at a tournament in 1906 he gave a demonstration of what Pecoraro and Pessina call the tocchi di sciabola di passaggio to some fencing masters, Pecoraro among them, and that this must have been where the authors first found out about the technique, despite Masiello receiving no credit. Furthermore, their preliminary exercises were clearly stolen from the treatise of Nicolò Bruno, whose versions are superior anyway.² Despite these tenuous, or even spurious, claims, the most credible accusation is in relation to the authors' section entitled 'preparatory lesson for the bout', where Masiello rightly points out the close similarities between the first three paragraphs of their work and the 1876 treatise by Settimo Del Frate.³

Skipping to Masiello's conclusion, he lists 17 items which he considers notably absent in the treatise. Directly translated, these are:

1. Definition of fencing in general;
2. Benefits of fencing;
3. Harms of a false system;
4. Force in fencing;
5. Method of wielding the sabre;
6. The sabre considered as a lever;
7. Laws which govern the guard;
8. Laws which govern the lunge;
9. The (very important) division of the target, without which an inexperienced fencer could confuse one target with another, as happened to the authors themselves (see p. 18 of their treatise);
10. How to perform the passage from one parry to another;
11. Lunge by launching the left foot back;
12. Absence of scientific proofs to contrast certain principles of theirs with those of other authors;
13. Absence of scientific proofs to absolutely and definitively establish the pivot from which one generates the very important action (both for the sword and for the sabre) of the disengagement, which the authors prescribe sometimes to the radiocarpal joint, sometimes to the scapulohumeral joint;
14. Absence of indications regarding how the cuts should be given, i.e. whether as hammer blows or by slicing;
15. Absence of a psychological proof on the advantage the attacker has over the defender;
16. Lacking the copertini;
17. Lacking a chapter to explain some expressions used in fencing language.

If any of these seem overly specific, that is because they are all topics which Masiello himself deals with in his own treatises; clearly, he considered his own work to be far superior. He ends by noting that he had received credible reports that a commission of senior officers, appointed by the Ministry of War, had recently given a favourable verdict of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, and that it would likely be approved to replace Parise's sabre curriculum at the Master's School. It is this factor which Masiello asserts was the main motivating factor in writing such a detailed rebuttal of Pecoraro and Pessina's work, since whatever they write will effectively become gospel for the next generation of Italian fencers, thus they owe it to everyone to make their textbook as perfect as possible. He repeats that he considers both authors to be good friends, and hopes that his critique will be read in this light.

Following the booklet's publication, I have been unable to find any published response from Pecoraro and Pessina, but in all likelihood they did read it. Whether or not they gave due consideration Masiello's critique is certainly up for debate, but if we compare some of his remarks to the revised edition of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, published in 1912, we can indeed find several specific instances which strongly suggest awareness and consideration of Masiello's observations. Some are changes to particular wordings which Masiello considered confusing or misleading, such as their use of the phrase 'a piena mano' when describing the grip of the sabre. In the 1912 edition this phrase was removed and another paragraph and a half is added describing how the sabre is to be wielded in the various movements, using which parts of the upper limb.

When describing the fourth preliminary exercise in the 1910 edition, the authors make a reference to the 'cappuccio', or backstrap, of the grip. As Masiello points out, this term had not been defined anywhere in the treatise, and so it is removed in the 1912 edition, also making other improvements to the descriptions of these exercises. As for the molinelli, Pecoraro and Pessina do not do away entirely with the 'strettissimo' descriptor so despised by Masiello, but they do at least provide a better explanation of how the molinello motion can be made smaller, through a 'simple turn of the hand accompanied by a slight bending and subsequent sudden extension of the elbow.'⁴

With many of the more substantial changes found in the 1912 edition, such as the comprehensively rewritten preface, it is harder to attribute Masiello's influence with any certainty; nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to adduce that, despite all the semantic and sarcastic nit-picking, Pecoraro and Pessina's work was improved from the public hazing it received from Masiello.

Given all the negative impressions of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise we have looked at so far, we ought not assume that this was the universal impression amongst all Italian fencers. It is impossible to determine how well the method was received by most in the community, but as Masiello himself notes, the system was deemed good enough to receive at least provisional approval from the Ministry of War by early 1911. Furthermore, we can find at least one supportive voice from this time who spoke up in defence of the authors and to push back against Masiello's self-righteousness.

Colonel Alberto Cavaciocchi, the commanding officer of the 60th infantry regiment, had been an avid fencer for many decades, originally learning the old Radaellian method as part of his military training before being fortunate enough to train under Masaniello Parise himself. From this point on Cavaciocchi became convinced of the superiority of Parise's method, finding the improvements brought to the Radaellian method by Masiello and his colleagues to be insufficient. This conviction was carried over to Parise's successors, Pecoraro and Pessina, when they published their own treatise which built upon not only Radaelli's foundation, but Parise's too. Feeling that Masiello's critical articles in La Nazione could not remain unanswered, Cavaciocchi took it upon himself to respond if only in his capacity as an amateur, which he did in the form of a substantial 8000-word article published in the March issue of the Rivista Militare Italiana.⁵

While asserting that the Neapolitan foil method had always been superior to others, Cavaciocchi does recognise the merit and achievements of Radaelli's method, particularly in its later, more refined forms. His primary critique of Radaelli's system, however, is its body carriage, specifically in the guard and the lunge. He finds the slightly rear-weight guard position and upright lunge advocated by Parise to be much more logical and effective than those prescribed by Radaelli. This naturally gives Cavaciocchi a rather favourable opinion of the new system detailed by Pecoraro and Pessina, as a clear goal of their treatise was to combine the best aspects of Radaelli and Parise's theory. Masiello, on the other hand, instead managed to amplify many of the original Radaellian flaws, with his untypically wide stance in the guard and accentuated lean in the lunge.

Instead of explicitly defending Pecoraro and Pessina's system, well over half of Cavaciocchi's article is dedicated to comparing Masiello and Parise's systems, partially to redeem the latter, but also to show the continuity of the sound theoretical foundations inherited by Pecoraro and Pessina in their own work. Cavaciocchi reveals that he himself was one of the members of the commission eluded to by Masiello which had the task of assessing and approving the new treatise for use in the army, so it stands to reason why he would feel the necessity to now defend both the authors as well as his own reputation. He ends with the hope that the teaching of fencing at the Master's School continues 'holding firm to the excellent fundamental bases established by Masaniello Parise, but without renouncing that constant and progressive perfection which human nature unceasingly aims for.'

In the final part of this series, we will hear two more Radaellian judgements on the new direction being taken by Italian sabre fencing: one decidedly negative and the other refreshingly positive and hopeful.

*******

1 Examples can be found on pages 78, 79, 90, 118, 120 of Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma di sciabola (Florence: R. Bemporad, 1902).^↩
2 Cf. Nicolò Bruno, Risorgimento della vera scherma di sciabola italiana basata sull'oscillazione del pendolo (Novaraç Tipografia Novarese, 1891), 63–8.^↩
3 Cf. Settimo Del Frate, Istruzione per la scherma di sciabola e di spada del Prof. Giuseppe Radaelli scritta d'ordine del ministero della guerra (Milan: Gaetano Baroffio, 1876), 26.^↩
4 Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, La Scherma di Sciabola: Trattato Teorico-Pratico (Viterbo: G. Agnesotti, 1912), 53.^↩
5 Alberto Cavaciocchi, "Sui metodi di scherma per l'esercito," Rivista Militare Italiana 56, no. 3 (16 March 1911): 611–34.^↩

Radaellians Respond to Pecoraro and Pessina (Part 2)

In the immediate aftermath of Masiello's last article, in which Pecoraro and Pessina received an occasionally warranted harsh assessment of their sabre treatise, no response from the authors was forthcoming. In the meantime, another grizzled Radaellian veteran, Giovanni Pagliuca, took up the pen to provide their own nit-picky and often sarcastic impressions of Pecoraro and Pessina's method. Pagliuca's first appearance in the public press was in 1880, when he published a booklet criticising Radaelli's foil curriculum, which he had learnt at the Milan Master's School in 1876. Aside from that single publication, Pagliuca had shied away from the partisan debates of the 1880s and 90s, being best known as a stellar representative of the Enrichetti school of foil, but occasionally also considered among the old-school Radaellians.¹ In the twilight of his career, Pagliuca resoundingly removes any doubt over his allegiance to Radaelli's theories in his unforgiving review of Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise, which appear in La Nazione of Florence on 7 October 1910.

After my renowned friend and colleague Ferdinando Masiello reviewed the pages of the sabre pseudo-treatise by the gentlemen Pecoraro and Pessina so well, it would seem that nothing else could be said regarding this treatise, so many and innumerable indeed were the flaws found within.
Yet from a less salient but perhaps more practical point of view than that of my friend Masiello, I will try to lay bare all the harm that the theories of the two aforementioned authors would do to the art of fencing if, unfortunately, they found some followers among the innocent beginners of the practice.

First of all, a declaration: when the publication of the treatise in question—the work of Pecoraro and Pessina—was announced, I immediately thought that the theories discussed in it would have neither scientific basis nor proof.

Masiello wrongly reproaches this deficiency, because he himself and everyone knows that the aforementioned authors were unable to do so. I rather expected, along strict, simple, and perhaps primitive lines, a theoretical exposition of what they have carried out very well, indeed excellently, for about forty years: beautiful practice. But unfortunately even this they were unable to do. Overcome by the obsession of wanting to be authors at any cost, to appear original, even at the risk of bordering on ridicule, they have even forgotten essential principles which do not change, but mould to the evolution of the art, principles which they repeated—and here it must be said by ear—millions of times to their pupils at the Master's School. Thus they have defined speed as a movement, measure as an intuition, tempo (keeping in mind that tempo is almost everything in fencing) as 'the moment the fencer chooses', without reflecting that the moment chosen by the fencer cannot be the tempo: this in the 'artistic sense', as the authors say, 'is the propitious moment for the execution of an action', which is something totally different.
But in the fencing treatise the word tempo has become a myth at the complete discretion of the authors. They toss it around like a toy, to the point of writing on page 60, note 1: 'Since the direct thrust is one of the simple actions, it is necessary, in its execution, for a rapid and coordinated combination of the individual movements and such timing as to overcome, with its simplicity, the opponent's potential defence.'
Timing that overcomes with its simplicity...?! Well, I do not understand that at all. How impressed I was, indeed I was alarmed to discover on page 190 that there is 'GREAT timing'. I hope that the authors also wish to publish something else which announces and explains to the fencing world what medium and small timing are.
And now to the most interesting subject, which demonstrates how the treatise in question can actually bring the art to ruin rather than facilitate its progress.
Since a book which deals with fencing can make itself useful even in small proportions, it is necessary that in such proportions there is an advantage over preceding authors to assist the practice all the more so, facilitating it with suitable simplification. Pecoraro and Pessina's book instead aims at precisely the opposite goal, that is to get even the few connoisseurs of fencing that still exist to avoid those possible complications, those incomprehensible and, even worse, absolutely impracticable prolixities which they wish to introduce 'for artistic finesse' (sic) to the practice of sabre fencing.
Can you imagine a sabre fencer who attempts a circular feint by forced glide with a feint? Or a fencer who amuses himself by melting the air with parries in the opposite direction while his opponent dispenses a powerful descending cut to the head and a strong traversone?
Moreover, the first and indispensable quality of a fencing book which aspires to call itself a treatise is that of presenting the definitions in the clearest and simplest form and at the same time the most synthetic, the most exact, and the most rational form.
Do you want some examples of the precise definitions contained within the book in question?
'The jump back serves to gain a lot of ground' (page 24). Since when one takes a step forward, one loses ground—understood?
'When, in order to defend oneself from the opponents blows, one performs with the sabre a rapid movement aimed at avoiding them, (!) one is said in a fencing sense to have completed a parry' (page 32).
So, the parry avoids a blow; it does not oppose the blow, as every fencer in the world has repeated until now and as the same authors of the ever under-appreciated book have always performed in practice. Yes, a blow can be avoided, but not 'with a rapid movement of the sabre', but with a rapid movement of the body.
Continuing: 'Half-counter parries are those through which it is necessary for the sabre to cover half the path' (page 74). They could at least have added 'of our life'.²
Consequently, dear readers, throw a sabre into the air: when it has reached the halfway point of what it can travel, it will have performed a half-counter parry.
But interrupting ourselves on the topic of definitions—an enormous amount of space would be needed, and we would bore readers too much—I must confess with full sincerity that I did learn something new from Pecoraro and Pessina's book, and with my 63 years of age I will nevertheless try to put it into practice, as it seems to be the most practical thing in fencing and within reach of any person young or old, like me, to immediately finish off any opponent.
I learnt that one imprisons the opposing sabre (pages 105 and following).
So from today onwards I will come on guard with good custody, into which I will immediately introduce my opponent's sabre, locking it up. Except then launching at that poor wretch, who has let their sabre be imprisoned, a good number of flat hits on the meatiest parts of their body.
Finally, irony aside, it can safely be asserted that the book by the aforementioned gentlemen, more than a work of fencing, has resulted in a work of comedy, capable of giving an hour of good humour to anyone who wishes to enjoy looking through it, and nothing more.
As Giuseppe Radaelli, the creator of sabre fencing in Italy, was unable to write the treatise of his theories himself, he was obliged to turn to Captain Del Frate; but he had the frankness to declare it, explicitly publishing in the title:
'The sabre fencing of Giuseppe Radaelli written by Captain Del Frate'.
While the same frankness did not guide the two renowned masters Pecoraro and Pessina, in their defence we should not convince ourselves that everything contained in the book was developed independently of their ability to understand it.
I end with a new declaration: as an old master and old artist of arms I could not help but protest against a book which is the negation of the art of fencing.
If, in pointing out the enormous faults of this book, I was forced to implicate the authors' responsibility, I will not cease harbouring for them, as artists and executors, the greatest respect. And it is through this respect, through the sincere esteem that I have always had in their fencing ability, that I regret the vain ambition that induced them to write a treatise, an ambition which certainly throws them—in their quality as vice-directors of the Military Fencing Master's School—from the lofty pedestal which they had created for themselves with their undisputed practical ability.

Maestro GIOVANNI PAGLIUCA
Via della Croce, 34 — Rome

If we peel away Pagliuca's witty and casual writing style, it becomes apparent that many of his issues with Pecoraro and Pessina's treatise stem from their poor choice of words and unrefined definitions, something which we have seen Masiello point out already. Any criticism of the technical material itself and the overarching method is certainly lacking in Pagliuca's case, but slightly better in Masiello's. Pecoraro and Pessina seem to have had a similar reading of both Masiello and Pagliuca's articles, as is evidenced in their eventual response to their critics on 23 October in Rome's Giornale d'Italia.

Dear Mr. Director,

Since publishing the sabre fencing treatise of which we, Salvatore Pecoraro and Carlo Pessina, are the authors, if there has been no lack of praise from many quarters, especially in private and authoritative letters, from some individuals we were not spared censure. And we would not lament this if the censures had always been proportionate and had not revealed, in the fury of critique, something other than a pure love of the art. In any case, we will not let this distract us from serenely following our path; but we will limit ourselves to a few words in legitimate defence. 
It was our precise intention to collect in our treatise what the experience of a not inglorious artistic career had taught us. To this end, we freely jotted down our thoughts as they flowed from the pen, without any literary pretence and with the conviction that, above all, true fencers would have considered the substance. We were instead deceived, since our detractors—particularly Ferdinando Masiello and Giovanni Pagliuca—met to attack us primarily for literary form, stating with regard to substance only criticisms which, if they express an individual judgement of theirs, have a very relative value that is based on poor familiarity with the special weapon, to which we instead have given and will give all our activity as people and as fencers.
This being the case, while it will not be difficult for us to eliminate in a second edition of our treatise those flaws of a literary nature which our opposers have been pleased to highlight in a noble sentiment of fencing fraternity, we will have the opportunity to better illuminate the quality of our method's substance, which we are not at all disposed to compromise on, and which we are always ready to give a practical demonstration of.
We will declare, however, that any cross-examination of an artistic nature will be accepted by us with those connoisseurs who have deeply studied and taught the noble art of the sabre, achieving practical, and not just theoretical, results.
Because among those who have always studied and sought the progress of sabre fencing, dedicating to it all their physical and intellectual energy, because they considered this art truly sovereign, and those who instead, even setting themselves up as the god almighty of fencing, have defined it as the art of butchering, and, naturally, cannot boast of a single product worthy of remembering, they will serenely judge the true fencers.

SALVATORE PECORARO

CARLO PESSINA³

It is noteworthy that in this brief defence the authors are already talking of a revised second edition to correct the errors of the work's 'literary form', thus accepting at least in part the criticism that Masiello and Pagliuca have directed at them. However, their dismissal of other aspects of the criticism as well as their reference to some self-proclaimed 'god almighty of fencing', aside from being unsatisfying as a response, may have also struck Masiello as a veiled personal attack on him. Therefore on 27 October yet another letter bearing his name appeared in the pages La Nazione.⁴

In this reply Masiello is quick to assert that his own well-reasoned observations were unfairly lumped together with all the other critics, and in doing so they had overlooked all his observations of substance in order to focus on those relating to form. He admits that he did repeatedly highlight their substandard grammar, but he considers the problems with their definitions to be far more important than they are willing to acknowledge. Pecoraro and Pessina's accusation that Masiello possessed 'poor familiarity' with the sabre is one which Masiello was unable to go unanswered, as he asserts that his tireless advocacy for sabre fencing was by then indisputable. Aside from his 1887 treatise as proof of the quality of his studies, he refers to a well-received public demonstration of his sabre method that he gave in Rome in 1890, which Pecoraro and Pessina curiously did not attend, as well as the fact that he personally went to London to organise the British army's fencing programme at Aldershot in the 1890s.

As to their own practical results from their teaching at the Master's School, Masiello does not consider this enough to make somebody a good author, nor are one's competitive accomplishments sufficient to demonstrate the quality of a fencing system. Masiello is slightly comforted, however, that the two authors are already proposing a revised and corrected second edition of the treatise, for which he hopes his own observations might serve some use to them. Just as Pecoraro and Pessina had asked their detractors to withhold judgement on their treatise before reading it, Masiello now asks them to wait for his imminent publication, in which he will expand upon all his gripes and grievances regarding their method. Through this more detailed response, Masiello hopes that they might reconsider their view of him as being simply a 'detractor' and take his observations to heart for the benefit of their method, and not simply in a literary sense.

In the next post we will be focusing on this long-awaited, expansive critique from Masiello.

*******

1 For more biographical information on Pagliuca, see Sebastian Seager, "Radaelli Under Fire: Giovanni Pagliuca," Radaellian Scholar (blog), 18 April 2023, https://radaellianscholar.blogspot.com/2023/04/radaelli-under-fire-giovanni-pagliuca.html.^↩
2 Translator's Note: This tongue-in-cheek remark is a reference to the opening line of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy: 'Midway upon the journey of our life ...'.^↩
3 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), 23–4^↩
4 Ferdinando Masiello, "Polemiche schermistiche: Una lettera del M.° Masiello," La Nazione, 27 October 1910, 2.^↩

Radaellians Respond to Pecoraro and Pessina (Part 1)

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

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

Dear Colleague,

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

Sabre Fencing

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

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

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

S. Pecoraro - C. Pessina

***

Dear Colleague,

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

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

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

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

Your dear colleagues

S. Pecoraro - C. Pessina¹

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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1 Reproduced in Ferdinando Masiello, La Scherma di Sciabola: osservazioni sul Trattato dei Maestri Pecoraro e Pessina Vice-Direttori della Scuola Magistrale militare di Scherma (Florence: G. Ramella, 1910), 17–8.^↩
2 The full article was also reproduced in Masiello, op. cit., 18–20.^↩