Getty 37v
The last three plates leave the fight: a man dragged with a rope, an axe pierced and filled with a caustic powder, and the recipe for the powder. The Pisani Dossi carries all three as pictures with no text, and files them thirty folios away from its axe; the Paris has none of them.
This play is easy to understand, for it is plainly seen that I can throw him to the ground. And when he is on the ground, I mean to drag him behind me; and when the rope (corda) holds him no longer, he will have plenty of my wounds.
- Fiore declines to explain: "this play is easy to understand, for it is plainly seen". The plate is the instruction.
- Throw him to the ground.
- Drag him behind you. The text names a rope (corda) and says nothing else about it — where it is attached, how it got there, and what holds the other end are all absent.
- When the rope no longer holds him — it breaks, or he comes free —
- "he will have plenty of my wounds": the dragging is not the finish, it is what precedes the finish.
The most under-described plate in either armored section: an outcome, a prop, and a referral to a picture.
This axe of mine was full of powder, and the said axe is pierced with holes all around. And this powder is so strongly corrosive that as soon as it touches the eye, the man can by no means open it, and perhaps will never see again.
I am the axe, ponderous, cruel, and mortal; I deal greater blows than any other handheld weapon. And if I miss the first blow that I come to make, the axe is a loss to me and is worth nothing more; and if I land the first blow that I make, I clear all the other handheld weapons out of my way. And if I am well accompanied with good armor, for my defense I take the pulsing guards (guardie pulsative) of the sword. Most noble Lord, my lord Marquis: there are many things in this book, such malices, that you would not employ; but for the sake of greater knowledge, may it please you to see them.
- Not a play: a description of a weapon. The axe is pierced with holes all around (busada intorno intorno) and was full of powder.
- The powder is "so strongly corrosive that as soon as it touches the eye, the man can by no means open it, and perhaps will never see again".
- How the powder leaves the axe, the text does not say. It says that the axe is holed and that it was full. The mechanism a reader would want — swing it and the powder flies — is not in the manuscript; only the holes and the effect are.
- The plate then changes speaker: the axe itself talks, and makes four claims — that it deals greater blows than any other handheld weapon; that if it misses the first blow, "the axe is a loss to me and is worth nothing more"; that if it lands the first blow, it clears every other handheld weapon out of its way; and that, well armored, it takes for its defense the pulsing guards (guardie pulsative) — of the sword.
- Finally Fiore addresses his patron directly: there are many things in this book, "such malices" (tale malicie), that the Marquis would not use — but he should see them, "for the sake of greater knowledge".
The axe's verdict on itself is the section's plainest sentence: it is a one-blow weapon. Land the first blow and it clears the field; miss it, and Fiore says the thing in your hands is a liability. Compare the grappling section's gambarola ([Grappling 15]), the other place the book openly prices a technique's failure.
This is the powder that goes in the axe depicted above. Take the milk of the spurge (titimallo), and dry it in the sun, or in a hot oven, and make powder of it; and take two ounces of this powder and one ounce of powder of "flower of stone" (fior de preda), and mix them together. And this powder is to be put into the axe above — though it can be done with any caustic (rutorio) that is fine, and you will indeed find fine ones in this book.
- Not a play: a recipe, for the powder in the axe above.
- Take the milk of the spurge (titimallo) — the plant's latex.
- Dry it, in the sun or in a hot oven.
- Make powder of it.
- Take two ounces of that powder, and one ounce of powder of "flower of stone" (fior de preda).
- Mix them together.
- Put the mixture into the axe above.
- Then Fiore generalizes away from his own formula: the recipe is not required — "it can be done with any caustic (rutorio) that is fine, and you will indeed find fine ones in this book". The particular mixture is one instance of a class.
Titimallo is tithymal, a spurge (Euphorbia), whose latex is genuinely caustic; what fior de preda was is not known. See the Note in Axe in Armor translation.
titimallo is tithymal, a spurge (Euphorbia), whose latex is caustic; fior de preda ("flower of stone") is an unidentified mineral preparation. Translated as written.
Glossological analysis
- corda ([15]) — a rope; named once and never explained. The only rope in either armored section.
- busada intorno intorno ([16]) — "pierced with holes all around": the axe's head is perforated. This phrase is the entire mechanism the text supplies.
- corrosiva ([16]) — corrosive. The powder attacks the eye, not the harness — the section's only weapon aimed at a target no plate can cover.
- ponderosa ([16]) — ponderous, weighty: the axe's first word about itself, and the premise of the one-blow economics that follow it.
- guardie pulsative ([16]) — the pulsing (beating) guards: the class that initiates rather than awaits ([S2H 12], [S2H 14], [S2H 22]). The axe does not define the class — it takes the longsword's classification by name, one borrowing more.
- malicie ([16]) — malices, cunning tricks; the plural of the malicia that [Axe 4] used for guile between two guards. Here it is Fiore's own word for the powder, handed to the Marquis with the caveat that he would not use such things.
- titimallo ([17]) — tithymal, a spurge (Euphorbia); its milky latex is caustic. A plant, not a mineral.
- fior de preda ([17]) — "flower of stone": an unidentified mineral preparation. Translated literally because nothing else is secure.
- rutorio ([17]) — a caustic / escharotic: the medical term for a substance that burns tissue. Fiore uses it as a category ("any caustic that is fine"), which shows the recipe to be an instance of common knowledge, not a secret.
Manuscript comparison
- The Pisani Dossi has the pictures and none of the words. [15], [16] and [17] appear in the Pisani Dossi as illustrations only — the transcription records "[No text]" at each. The Paris has none of the three at all. So the poisoned axe and its recipe survive as text in one manuscript and as images in another.
- And the Pisani Dossi files them elsewhere. Its axe section proper runs 27a–28a; these three figures sit at 36a, near the end of that manuscript, some thirty folios away. Whatever the Pisani Dossi took them for, it did not take them for part of the axe section.
- [16] is two texts on one plate, and the apparatus shows a seam. The first paragraph describes the powder; the second is the axe's own speech plus the address to the Marquis. The Getty transcription carries both under the single marker 37v-b, and the page's markers then run -a, -b, -d — there is no -c. The likeliest account is that the axe's speech is the page's -c, and the two paragraphs have been run together. That is a gap in the apparatus rather than a claim about the manuscript — but the paragraphs are plainly doing different jobs: the speech is ordinary guard-and-blow doctrine of the kind that opens a section, while the powder paragraph belongs nowhere else in the book.
- The recipe has no verse counterpart, and could not have one. It is a procedure with quantities, and two ounces to one ounce does not compress into a couplet. The same is true of the sword specifications that close the previous section ([SwordArmor 29]–[SwordArmor 30]): in both armored sections the technical appendix is prose-only, and in both it is the Getty's alone.
- Illustrations. [15] and [17] are the Pisani Dossi's (36a-d, 36a-b); [16] is the Getty's (37v-b). The Pisani Dossi's 36a-b is cited as the source for both [16] and [17], and Wiktenauer uses it as the figure for [17] while showing the Getty's own at [16] — so the two witnesses' renderings of the powder-axe stand on facing plates.