Getty 7v
The folio of special cases: a rear-grab escape, a technique Fiore openly disparages, a "strange hold", and a knee to the groin.
You seized me from behind to throw me to the ground, and in this way I have turned myself: if I do not throw you to the ground, you will have got a good bargain (bon merchado). This play is a set piece (partido): it will be done so quickly that the counter will have failed.
- He has seized you from behind, intending to throw you.
- Turn yourself inside his grip — the whole play is that turn.
- Throw him down.
- Fiore's proviso: this is a partido, a set piece, and its safety lies entirely in speed — done fast enough, the counter never arrives.
This is a play of the leg-sweep (gambarola), which is not a very sure thing in grappling. And if someone nonetheless does want to make the leg-sweep, let him do it with strength and swiftly.
- Sweep his leg from under him.
- That is the whole technique — and Fiore's point is the warning attached to it: it is unreliable.
- If you use it anyway: strongly and fast, or not at all.
One of the very few plays in the book the author actively talks you out of.
This is a set piece (partido), and it is a strange hold (strania presa) for holding a man in such a way that he cannot defend himself. The counter is this: let him who is held go, as quickly as he can, close to a wall or other woodwork, and turn himself in such a way that he makes the one holding him break his head and his back against the said wall or timber.
- Take the "strange hold" — a set piece that pins a man so he cannot defend himself at all.
- The counter is environmental, not technical: if you are the one held,
- move as fast as you can toward a wall or timber,
- turn your body so that the man holding you is driven head and back first into it.
The only counter in the section that uses the terrain rather than the body.
This man strikes his companion with the knee in the testicles (chogloni) to have more advantage in slamming him to the ground. The counter is this: as soon as the companion drives with his knee to strike him in the testicles, let him catch that leg below the knee with his right hand and slam him to the ground.
- Drive the knee into his groin — not as a finish, but to buy the advantage for the throw.
- Slam him down while his structure is broken by the pain.
- Counter: the instant the knee comes up, catch that leg below the knee with your right hand — and use his own committed leg to slam him down.
Glossological analysis
- partido ([14], [16]) — a set piece / agreed play: a self-contained trick whose success depends on conditions (here, speed at [14]; a prior agreement or specific entry at [16]) rather than on the general grammar of the art. The Pisani Dossi's "by agreement" (per partido) at [16] confirms the sense.
- gambarola ([15]) — the leg-sweep / trip. The term survives in Italian for a trip-up, and the verse's contempt ("out of five, not one comes off") shows it was already proverbially unreliable.
- strania presa ([16]) — the strange hold: strania = strange/foreign/unusual, marking it as outside the ordinary repertoire.
- chogloni ([17]) — the testicles; plain, non-euphemistic. The Getty's register here is blunt and clinical, as it is about the eyes at [21].
- bon merchado ([14]) — again the ironic "good bargain" (cf. 6r); its recurrence marks it as Fiore's stock sardonic phrase.
Manuscript comparison
- The prose owns the counters. Three of these four plates ([15]'s caveat, [16]'s wall-counter, [17]'s leg-catch) carry their counter or their warning only in the Getty. The Pisani Dossi and Paris couplets give the boast and stop. If you read only the verse witnesses, the strania presa looks unanswerable and the gambarola merely bad — the prose supplies both the escape and the reasoning.
- Agreement on the gambarola's unreliability, with different force. Getty: "not a very sure thing". Paris: "not sound, for it often deceives those who use it". Pisani Dossi is the harshest and most concrete: "out of five, not a single one comes off". All three witnesses independently disparage it — a rare case where the families agree on a judgement, not just an action.
- partido across the families. The Getty calls both [14] and [16] a partido; the Pisani Dossi preserves the term only at [16] ("by agreement"). The Paris renders it as "conceived by agreeing minds" — the Latin translator understood partido as a mutually-agreed set piece, which supports that reading over "a play that is divided/apportioned".
- Illustrations. All four plates from the Pisani Dossi (5a-c…f); no Getty figures on this folio.
- Coverage. Getty, Pisani Dossi, Paris carry all four; Morgan none.