Folio 4 / 5
Getty 37r
The lock, the disarm, and the visor as a handle
The section's close-quarters core: a hold into the strong lower lock [11], the half-turn disarm [12], and then two plates in which the visor stops being a defense and becomes a handle — dragged by at [13], thrown by at [14]. The verse witnesses run out halfway through the page.
[11] Hold into the strong lower lock
Pisani Dossi · 27b-d
Illustration: Pisani Dossi 27b-d · Text: Getty 37r-a · Pisani Dossi 27b-d
Getty · translation
By this hold in which I thus hold you, with my axe I will strike you on the head; and with my left arm I will put you in the strong lower lock (ligadura de sotto la forte), which more than the others is perilous unto death.
Flow of actions
- The hold is already made: "this hold in which I thus hold you" — Fiore points at the plate instead of describing the entry. The verse supplies the one detail he omits: your hand is under his arm.
- First: strike him on the head with the axe.
- Then, with the left arm, put him into the strong lower lock (ligadura de sotto la forte).
- And Fiore ranks it: it is "more than the others perilous unto death". The lower lock is the most dangerous of the three, and the axe says so as plainly as the dagger does ([Dagger 54]).
- The Pisani Dossi calls it by the other name — the strong key (chiave forte) — the same equation the armored sword makes at [SwordArmor 13].
[12] Half-turn axe disarm
Pisani Dossi · 28a-a
Illustration: Pisani Dossi 28a-a · Text: Getty 37r-b · Pisani Dossi 28a-a · Paris 10r-b
Getty · translation
With a half turn (meza volta) I will wrench this axe from your hands. And once I have taken it from you, in that very turning I will strike you on your head, as this scholar behind me does; you will fall dead, as I believe.
Flow of actions
- From the hold, make a half turn (meza volta) — the named turn of the longsword's four things ([S2H 1]), a turn made by a single step.
- The turn is the disarm: it wrenches the axe out of his hands (cavaro questa Azza dele mane).
- In that same turning — one action, not two — strike him on the head with the axe you have just taken.
- That blow is the scholar behind you ([Axe 13]).
- Outcome as claimed: "you will fall dead, as I believe."
The disarm and the blow are the same motion, and the weapon that lands is his own.
[13] The blow completed; dragging by the visor
Getty · 37r-c
Illustration: Getty 37r-c · Text: Getty 37r-c
Getty · translation
This play is of the scholar who is before me, and I perform it. What he has said I well believe: you will fall dead to the ground from the blow I have given you on the head. And if this blow does not suffice you, I can give you another of them, and then by the visor I mean to drag you to the ground, as is depicted hereafter — and that I will do to you, unless I relent.
Flow of actions
- This plate performs what [Axe 12] promised: the blow to the head, with the taken axe.
- If the blow does not suffice, give him another of them.
- Then take him by the visor and drag him to the ground — which is [Axe 14], "as is depicted hereafter".
- The escalation is explicit and open-ended: strike, strike again, then drag.
- The only limit named is the scholar's own: "unless I relent" (se non mi pento).
[14] Throw by the visor
Getty · 37r-d
Illustration: Getty 37r-d · Text: Getty 37r-d
Getty · translation
What the scholar before me says, that I do to you: by the visor I mean to throw you to the ground. And if I wished, I would do it to you with grappling, which I know how to do better than the others.
Flow of actions
- Take him by the visor and throw him to the ground — the plate [Axe 13] pointed forward to.
- The visor has now made its full turn through the section: at [Axe 10] it is what stops the point; here it is the handle by which the man is thrown.
- The alternative, offered and declined: "if I wished, I would do it to you with grappling".
- And the last claim the axe makes about itself: this man knows grappling "better than the others". The axe resolves, like every section before it, into the grappling grammar ([Grappling 4]).
Glossological analysis
- ligadura de sotto la forte ([11]) — the strong lower lock, with a ranking the other sections leave implicit: "more than the others perilous unto death". The same lock as [SwordArmor 12]–[SwordArmor 13] and [Dagger 54].
- chiave forte (PD, [11]) — the strong key: the verse family's name for the same lock. Prose and verse each supply one of the two names, on the one plate.
- meza volta ([12]) — the half turn, made by a single step forward or back to play on the other side ([S2H 1]). Here it is the disarm's entire mechanism.
- cavare ([12]) — to draw out, to wrench out: what the half turn does to the axe in his hands. The Pisani Dossi uses the same verb two plates earlier for the teeth ([Axe 10], te chavaro li denti) — one verb pulls an axe out of a grip and teeth out of a head.
- visera ([13], [14]) — the visor, now a handle: dragged by ([13]), thrown by ([14]). The piece of armor this section handles most is the one it never tries to defeat.
- se non mi pento ([13]) — "unless I relent" (lit. unless I repent): the only limit the plate puts on the escalation is the scholar's own choice to stop.
- abrazare ([14]) — grappling, named at the close of the axe's plays exactly as the Iron Gate said it would be ([Grappling 4]: grappling underlies "lance, poleaxe, sword, and dagger").
Manuscript comparison
- The witnesses run out here. [11] has the Getty and the Pisani Dossi but no Paris; [12] has all three; [13] and [14] are the Getty's alone. Both verse witnesses stop at [12] — the Pisani Dossi's axe text ends at 28a-a and the Paris's at 10r-b — so from this plate on, the section is the Getty's.
- The lock's two names, on one plate. At [11] the Getty writes ligadura de sotto la forte and the Pisani Dossi writes la forte chiave — the prose family's "lower lock" and the verse family's "strong key", for one action, on one plate. Elsewhere the equation has to be carried across sections; here the two witnesses supply one term each.
- The verse keeps the disarm — and here the prose agrees. At [12] the Getty leads with the disarm and the Pisani Dossi concurs ("you will lose your axe, and mine will strike you on the head"). Set against [SwordArmor 19] and [SwordArmor 24], where the verse insists on a disarm the prose does not mention, this is the exception that shows the rule: the verse family's imagination is a disarming one, and the one time the prose is disarming too, the families agree exactly.
- The Paris hedges with the Fates. Its [12] ends "if only the fates will that the strong survive" (modo fata velint superesse potenti) — a qualification on the outcome that neither Italian witness has, and the third piece of classical machinery in the Latin axe, after Jupiter at [1] and the consecrated poleaxe at [10].
- Illustrations. [11] and [12] are the Pisani Dossi's (27b-d, 28a-a); [13] and [14] are Getty figures (37r-c, 37r-d) — once more, the plates nobody else has are the plates the Getty must illustrate.