Getty 35v
The axe opens as the sword in armor did — with guards that speak, and with the ordinary guard-names borrowed unchanged: Short Guard the Serpentine, True Cross, Woman's Guard, Middle Iron Gate. The page is not a list but a pair of matchups: [3] names the Boar's Tooth as her opponent, and [4] answers her by name.
I am the Short Guard, the Serpentine (posta breve la serpentina), for I hold myself better than the others. To whomever I give my thrust, the mark will show well on him. This thrust is strong enough to pierce breastplates (coraze) and mail coats (panceroni); defend yourself, for I mean to make the trial.
- Take the Short Guard, the Serpentine — the same name and the same claim as the armored sword's guard ([SwordArmor 2]), now with an axe in the hands.
- The claim is again a ranking: "I hold myself better than the others."
- What it offers is the thrust: "to whomever I give my thrust, the mark will show well on him."
- What the axe's version adds, and the sword's does not say: this thrust is strong enough to pierce breastplates (coraze) and mail coats (panceroni).
- And it is put as a test rather than a boast: "defend yourself, for I mean to make the trial" (far la prova).
One sentence separates this guard from [SwordArmor 2] — and that sentence is the axe's whole claim on the armored game: it names the armor its point goes through.
I am the guard of the True Cross (posta di vera crose), because with a cross I defend myself. And the whole art of fencing (scarmir, marked [!] in the transcription) and of armored fighting defends itself with the covers of the crossing (incrosare). Strike away, for I await you well: for what the first scholar of the Remedy Master of the sword in armor does — with that method and with that pass — such a thrust I can give you with my axe (compare [Sword in Armor 9]).
- Stand in the True Cross with the axe and wait: "strike away, for I await you well."
- The name is the explanation — "with a cross I defend myself": the guard's structure is its cover.
- Fiore then generalizes far past the axe: the whole art, fencing (scarmir) and armored fighting alike, "defends itself with the covers of the crossing" (incrosare).
- The play itself is not described. It is cited: what the first scholar of the sword-in-armor's Remedy Master does ([SwordArmor 9]) — "with that method and with that pass" — is what this guard does with the axe.
- Unpacked from the citation, that is: as he thrusts, go low with the body, pass out of the way traversing his weapon, point high to the face or the chest, grip low. With an axe instead of a sword.
The strongest single statement of the one-art claim in the armored sections: the axe does not appoint its own Remedy Master — it borrows the sword's, by reference (Tactical grouping §11).
I am the Woman's Guard (posta de donna), against the Boar's Tooth (dente zengiaro). If he waits for me, I mean to give him a great blow: that is, I will pass the left foot, stepping out of the way, and I will enter with the descending blow (fendente) to the head. And if he comes with force under my axe with his own, then if I cannot strike his head, I do not fail to strike him either on the arms or on the hands.
- Stand in the Woman's Guard, the axe drawn back — and the guard names its opponent at once: the Boar's Tooth ([Axe 4]).
- If he waits for you — which is what that low guard does — attack.
- Pass the left foot, stepping out of the way (acressando fora de strada): off the line even while initiating.
- Enter with the descending blow (fendente) to the head.
- If he comes up under your axe with his own, forcing the head-blow away:
- do not withdraw — strike the arms or the hands instead. The blow is not abandoned; its target is downgraded.
The same conditional habit as the armored sword's [SwordArmor 10]: name the best target, name what stops it, name the next target down.
If the Woman's Guard is contrary to me, the Middle Iron Gate (porta di ferro mezana), I know her play and mine, and many and many a time we have been at battle, both with sword and with axe. And I say that what she claims to be able to do, I can do more of it to her than she can do to me. I say further that if I had a sword and not an axe, I would put a thrust in her face: that is, in the strike that the Woman's Guard makes with the descending blow, while I am in the Middle Iron Gate with the two-handed sword, immediately upon her coming I step and pass out of the way; under her axe I enter by force, and at once with my left hand I grip my sword at the middle and put the point in her face. So that between us, apart from cunning (malicia), there is little comparison.
- This guard answers [Axe 3], and it carries two names: the verse witnesses call it the Boar's Tooth, the Getty's text calls it the Middle Iron Gate and never says otherwise.
- Its opening claim is familiarity, not technique: "I know her play and mine, and many and many a time we have been at battle, both with sword and with axe."
- The wager: whatever she claims to be able to do, "I can do more of it to her than she can do to me".
- Then the plate leaves the axe entirely. "If I had a sword and not an axe, I would put a thrust in her face" — and what follows is a sword play:
- as the Woman's Guard comes with the descending blow, and you stand in the Middle Iron Gate with the two-handed sword,
- advance and pass out of the way at her coming;
- enter by force under her axe;
- grip your sword at the middle with the left hand — the half-sword;
- put the point in her face.
- Fiore's own verdict on the matchup: "between us, apart from cunning (malicia), there is little comparison."
The guard that is supposed to be holding an axe spends its plate explaining what it would do with a sword — and in doing so gives the only description of the half-sword in the whole axe section.
Glossological analysis
- azza / aça ([1]–[4]) — the poleaxe: a hafted two-handed weapon with a head and a thrusting point (punta), not a hatchet. The Paris needs three Latin words for it — jaculum ("dart", [Axe 1]), tricuspis ("three-pointed", [Axe 2], [Axe 7]), and bipennis ("two-bladed axe", used of it at [SwordArmor 1] and [SwordArmor 25]). Grappling already named it among the four weapons its art underlies ([Grappling 4]).
- posta breve la serpentina ([1]) — the Short Guard, the Serpentine: the armored sword's guard-name ([SwordArmor 2]), doing the same job — the thrust — with a different weapon. The axe renames nothing.
- coraze / panceroni ([1]) — breastplates / mail coats: the two armors the axe's thrust claims to pierce. Pancerone returns at [SwordArmor 23] as one of the two things that fail against the pommel.
- scarmir ([2], marked [!] in the transcription) — fencing, skirmishing; paired with armizare as the two halves of the art. The pairing is Fiore's usual way of saying "armored and unarmored alike".
- incrosare ([2]) — the crossing; and here it is given the widest scope it has anywhere in the book: "the whole art… defends itself with the covers of the crossing".
- fendente ([3]–[6]) — the descending blow, the cut that comes down ([S2H 8]); the axe's principal blow, and the one every guard on 35v–36r either throws or answers.
- dente zengiaro / porta di ferro mezana ([3], [4]) — the Boar's Tooth and the Middle Iron Gate, used here for one and the same low guard: the rubric and the verse give the first name, the Getty's prose the second.
- malicia ([4]) — cunning, guile — craft rather than wickedness; Fiore's word for what decides between two otherwise equal guards. Its plural returns at [Axe 16], where the powder is one of the book's malicie.
Manuscript comparison
- The axe has no Morgan. The Morgan carries no axe material at all — the manuscript lacks the section entirely, as it lacks grappling, baton and dagger. For this whole section the witnesses are three: Getty prose, Pisani Dossi verse, Paris verse (Manuscript comparison §4C).
- Two names for one guard at [4]. The Getty's text calls the guard the Middle Iron Gate and never says "Boar's Tooth"; both verse witnesses call it the Boar's Tooth and never say Iron Gate — "I am the Boar's Tooth, full of daring" (PD), "I am the Boar's Tooth, strong and bristling and bold" (Paris). The Getty itself makes the two interchangeable one plate earlier, at [Axe 3], where the Woman's Guard says she stands "against the Boar's Tooth" and the plate that answers her is the Middle Iron Gate. The families are not describing different guards; they are naming one guard differently.
- [4] is prose the verse could not have carried. Nine-tenths of the Getty's plate is a digression into what the sword would do against the descending blow. The couplets keep only the boast — "blows of the axe can do nothing to me". The half-sword instruction (left hand to the middle of the blade, point to the face) therefore exists in this section only in the Getty.
- The Paris classicizes from the first line. Its [1] ends "may Jupiter be with me" (meo Jupiter adsit); the Pisani Dossi's couplet has no god in it, only "if the point does not fail me, I will play you a trick". The Latin also calls the axe a jaculum (a dart) here and a tricuspis at [2]. The Latin verse is reaching for classical vocabulary and classical machinery that the Italian never has — compare the Fates at [Axe 12] and at [SwordArmor 15].
- Illustrations and coverage. All four plates are the Pisani Dossi's (27a-a…d); the Getty's own 35v figures are not shown. All three surviving witnesses carry all four plates.