Getty 9r
A rubric announcing five guards, and the five guards answering it one by one. Each is asked a single question — does it work in armor, out of armor, or both — and nothing else; these are guards, not plays, and the plays do not begin until 10v. The whole page survives in the Getty alone.
These five figures are the guards of the dagger. One is good in armor, and one is good without armor; one is good in armor and without armor; and one is good in armor and not without armor. And all of these we shall declare.
- Not a technique: a rubric, announcing what the page is and promising to declare it.
- Five figures are named as the guards of the dagger.
- One test only is applied to them — armor. The rubric sorts them into cases: good in armor; good without armor; good in armor and without; good in armor and not without.
- The promise "all of these we shall declare" governs [Dagger 2]–[Dagger 6], each of which answers the armor question in its own voice.
Four cases for five figures, and the arithmetic does not come out — see the comparison. Note also what is not asked here: the longsword sorts its guards as pulsative, stable, or unstable ([S2H 12]–[S2H 25]); the dagger's guards are sorted only by whether you are wearing harness.
The Getty text is slightly garbled here (a doubled "senza" and repeated clauses); the enumeration of which guard suits which case is best-effort.
I am the Full Iron Gate (tutta porta di ferro) and I am single (sempia). And I am good in armor and without, because I can beat aside (rebatter) and work with a grip (presa) and without. And I can play with a dagger and without, and make my covers.
- Take the Full Iron Gate (tutta porta di ferro) — the low forward guard — in its single (sempia) form.
- It is good armored and unarmored, and the reason it gives is breadth of function, not strength.
- From it you can beat the incoming dagger aside (rebatter).
- You can work with a grip (presa) or without one.
- You can hold it with a dagger or without one — the guard does not depend on being armed.
- And you can make your covers.
The only guard on the page that claims the beat. Its one play is [Dagger 24] — which the Getty then calls "little used in the art of the dagger".
I am the Full Iron Gate and I am doubled (dopia). And I am good in armor and without, yet I am better in armor than without. And with this guard I cannot use a dagger.
- Take the same Full Iron Gate, now doubled (dopia).
- It works armored and unarmored — but it grades itself rather than claiming both equally: it is better in armor.
- One flat restriction, and it is the only one on the page: you cannot use a dagger from this guard.
- No reason is given, and no play is named as issuing from it.
The only guard in the section that disqualifies its own weapon. Compare [Dagger 4], which is also doubled and holds a dagger — whatever "doubled" changes, the Getty never says.
I am the Middle Iron Gate (mezana porta de ferro) with the dagger in hand, and I am doubled, and I am the best and the strongest of all the others. And I am good in armor and without, and I can cover below and above and on every side.
- Take the Middle Iron Gate (mezana porta de ferro) — dagger in hand, doubled.
- This guard claims outright to be the best and the strongest of all the others. It is the page's only ranking.
- It is good armored and unarmored.
- Its ground for the claim is coverage, not force: it covers below, above, and on every side.
The guard the Getty rates highest is the one that keeps its dagger and closes every line. Versatility wins the page, as it did at [Dagger 2].
I am the Full Iron Gate with the arms crossed (cum li brazi incrosadi) and I am doubled. And I stand in great strength. And in armor I am good and strong; and without armor I am not sufficient, because I cannot cover at length.
- Take the Full Iron Gate with the arms crossed (cum li brazi incrosadi), doubled.
- The crossing is what it offers: it stands in great strength.
- In armor: good and strong.
- Without armor: not sufficient — and the reason given is reach, not weakness. It cannot cover at length (covrir longo); crossed arms are short arms.
The trade is stated outright: crossing buys structure and pays in distance. Armor covers the lost reach; bare flesh does not.
I am the Middle Iron Gate, and I am doubled and crossed. And I am good in armor and not without, because I cannot make a long cover; and I can cover above and below, forehand and backhand (de man dritta e de man riversa), with dagger and without.
- Take the Middle Iron Gate, doubled and crossed.
- Good in armor and not without — for the same stated reason as [Dagger 5]: no long cover.
- Within its reach it closes everything: above and below, forehand and backhand (de man dritta e de man riversa), with a dagger or without.
- So the only thing the crossing costs is distance; the lines are all still covered.
The first place the book names the forehand/backhand pair that will organize the rest of the section — the Second Master plays both ([Dagger 41]), the Third Master takes the backhand alone ([Dagger 47]).
Glossological analysis
- porta di ferro — tutta / mezana — the Iron Gate, full and middle. Both are longsword guards under the same names ([S2H 12], [S2H 16]) and the Iron Gate is a grappling guard too ([Grappling 4]). The dagger does not invent a guard-vocabulary; it inherits one.
- sempia / dopia ([2]–[6]) — single / doubled. Never defined, and the page's own evidence pulls both ways: the single Full Iron Gate can hold a dagger ([2]) and the doubled one cannot ([3]) — but the doubled Middle Iron Gate holds one ([4]). Whatever dopia changes, the Getty does not say, and no other witness carries these plates to check against.
- incrosadi ([5], [6]) — crossed, of the arms (not of blades, as in the sword's incrosar). Crossing is a structural choice with a stated price: strength up, reach down. The same crossing later anchors two Masters ([Dagger 41], [Dagger 90]).
- rebatter ([2]) — to beat aside: knocking the incoming weapon out of line. Not "to rebate/blunt". The sword's word for the same act ([S2H 3]).
- covrir longo ([5], [6]) — to cover at length, i.e. the reach of a cover. The operative variable of the whole folio: the two crossed guards fail unarmored only because they cannot cover long.
- presa ([2]) — hold, grip. Here it means working with a grip on the opponent as against working free — the sense the section runs on ([Dagger 8], [Dagger 51]).
- de man dritta e de man riversa ([6]) — forehand and backhand, literally "of the right hand and of the reversed hand". Riversa is the backhand side, not "reverse" in any modern sense.
- "in arme e senza arme" — in armor and without armor, not "with weapons and without". Arme here is harness; the section's other word for the same distinction is armado e disarmado ([Dagger 54], [Dagger 55]). Contrast [Dagger 7], where arme and armadure stand side by side and arme does mean weapons.
Manuscript comparison
- One witness, and one only. Neither verse witness carries any of [Dagger 1]–[Dagger 6]: the Pisani Dossi and the Paris both open the dagger at [Dagger 13], with the four Master figures. And Morgan has no dagger at all — the manuscript is missing the whole opening of the art (no grappling, no dagger, no baton, no axe; Manuscript comparison §4C), so it is absent from every folio in this file and will not be mentioned again except in the coverage lines. The dagger's guards therefore survive in a single copy, with nothing to collate against.
- Which matters, because the folio is visibly corrupt. Three defects in six short blocks: the rubric [1] doubles a word ("e tale e bona senza senza arme"); [3] opens with a stray C[!] where the sentence needs E or Io; and [5] reads "in forte forteça", "in strong strength". Two of the three are word-doublings. No second witness can correct any of them, and the Note at [1] in Dagger translation marks the rubric's enumeration as best-effort for exactly this reason.
- The rubric does not fit its own guards. [1] promises four cases — good in armor; good without armor; good in armor and without; good in armor and not without. The five guards divide three and two: [2], [3], [4] are good both ways, [5] and [6] are good in armor and not without. No guard on the page claims to be good without armor, so the rubric's second case has no figure to fill it. Five figures, four cases, one of them empty.
- The page's lettering skips a slot. The Getty's sigla here run 9r-a, b, c, e, f — there is no 9r-d in the text or in the illustration column; the folio is ruled for six and fills five. Our plate numbers follow Wiktenauer's sequence rather than the page's letters, so [4], [5] and [6] are physically 9r-e, 9r-f and 9r-c.
- Illustrations. All five are the Getty's own (09r-a, b, e, f, c) — necessarily, since no other manuscript depicts these guards. Coverage: Getty five, Pisani Dossi none, Paris none, Morgan none.