Fiore dei Liberi
Stable, Striking and Mutable: Fighting from the Guards of L’Arte dell’Armizare
“I am the sword and I am lethal against any weapon; lances, axes and dagger are worthless against me. I can become extended or withdrawn; when I get near the opponent I can enter into close play, perform disarms and abrazare. My art is to turn and to bind; I am expert in defense and […]
Memory and Performance: Visual and Rhetorical Strategies of Il Fior di Battaglia
(First presented at the Renaissance Society of America’s Venice conference in 2010. Presented also as part of an academic session followed by an armoured combat demonstration, organized by Dr. Regina Pskai, at the American Association for Italian Studies conference at University of Oregon, 2013) This paper is part of a larger study on medieval and Renaissance martial arts manuscripts, […]
Wide and Close Play in Armizare, the Martial Tradition of Fiore dei Liberi
Gregory D. Mele, ©2014 [N.B: This article greatly expands and upon an earlier one “Understanding Wide and Close Play in the Martial Tradition of Fiore dei Liberi”, first presented in 2008 and later published with photo interpretations in In the Service of Mars, Proceedings from the Western Martial Arts Workshop (1999 – 2009), Vol. I. In addition to […]
The Role of Filippo Vadi in the dei Liberi Tradition, Pt. I
(c) 2010 Gregory Mele, Chicago Swordplay Guild When I teach at workshops and seminars, I am often told something along the lines of this: I’m surprised that the man who co-authored the reproduction on De arte gladiatoria dimicandi doesn’t work more with the hallmarks of Vadi. It’s a fair question, and suggests that in 2001, when I […]
Developing Tactical Skills at Longsword
Strategy differs materially from tactic; the latter belonging only to the mechanical movement of bodies, set in motion by the former.– Charles James, A New and Enlarged Military Dictionary (1810) Before hostile armies or fleets are brought into contact (a word which perhaps better than any other indicates the dividing line between tactics and strategy), […]
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