Folio 3 / 13
Getty 41v
The Woman's Guard with the lance
The second lance carry: the same short-lance problem as 41r, answered from a high guard instead of a low one. The two plates are one Master shown twice — first against a lance held, then against a lance thrown.
[4] Woman's Guard on the left with the short lance
Pisani Dossi · 29b-a
Illustrations: Pisani Dossi 29b-a; Pisani Dossi 29b-b · Text: Getty 41v-b · Morgan 3v-b · Pisani Dossi 29b-b · Paris 2r-d
Getty · translation
This is another carry of lance against lance. This Master has a short lance and carries it in the Woman's Guard on the left (posta de donna la sinistra), as you see, in order to beat aside and to strike the companion.
Flow of actions
- Same premise as [Mounted 2]: your lance is the shorter.
- This time carry it high, in the Woman's Guard on the left — drawn back on the left side, as the longsword guard of the same name is drawn back over the shoulder.
- From there, beat aside and strike the companion. The text stops here: it names the guard and its intent and gives no mechanics at all.
- Read against 41r, the page is offering an alternative carry for the same problem — high or low, the short lance still wins by beating the long one off the line first.
This is a guard-plate, not a play: like the four Masters of [Grappling 2]–[Grappling 5], it states a posture and a promise, and leaves the execution to the plays.
Note
the closing Paris line (Et feriam variata tamen tua lancea praedet) is obscure Latin; rendered best-effort.
[5] Woman's Guard against the thrown lance
Pisani Dossi · 29b-c
Illustrations: Pisani Dossi 29b-c; Getty 41v-d · Text: Getty 41v-d · Morgan 3v-c · Pisani Dossi 29b-c
Getty · translation
Again, this Master carries his lance in the Woman's Guard on the left (posta de donna la sinistra) in order to beat aside the lance that the companion means to throw at him. And the beat that he means to make with the lance, he could make with a staff (bastone) or a short sword.
Flow of actions
- Same Master, same guard — the Woman's Guard on the left ([Mounted 4]).
- The threat has changed: the companion is not going to hold his lance, he is going to throw it at you.
- Beat the thrown lance aside out of that guard, exactly as you would beat a held one.
- Fiore then generalizes the tool: the same beat can be made with a staff (bastone) or a short sword. The guard is the technique; the lance is incidental to it.
- Note what the verse says the thrower is doing (see the comparison below): the throw is aimed at you or your horse, and the thrower has a sword ready for the aftermath. He is not disarming himself — he is trading his lance for an opening.
This plate and [Mounted 4] together answer a rule stated for the longsword: the second guard "against thrown weapons" ([S2H 3]). Mounted, the answer to a thrown weapon is a beat from a high guard.
Glossological analysis
- posta de donna la sinistra ([4], [5]) — the Woman's Guard on the left: the high guard drawn back on the left side, classed among the pulsative (initiating) guards for the longsword ([S2H 14], [S2H 22]; Glossary). Mounted, it is the section's high carry for both lance and sword — see [Mounted 7], where the Morgan and Paris name it explicitly.
- rebatter ([4], [5]) — to beat aside: to strike the opposing weapon out of the line. Fiore's standing term for the action, used across the whole art for both held and thrown weapons ([S2H 3]); it is the verb this entire section turns on, appearing in nearly every lance and sword plate.
- lanzare ([5]) — to throw (the lance), as distinct from ferire (to strike with it). The verb marks the lance as an expendable missile — the one place in the section where a weapon is deliberately given up.
- bastone ([5]) — the staff/baton, the weapon of [Baton]. Named here to show that the beat belongs to the guard, not to the lance.
- curta spada ([5]) — a short sword; listed with the staff as an equivalent beating tool. Note that curta has been doing structural work since [2] — the whole lance material is organized by relative length.
- guastar (PD, [5]) — to ruin, spoil, wreck; used of the horse. The verse's standing word for what is done to a mount ([Mounted 11]) — the horse is damaged, not "killed", and the rider is thereby unhorsed.
Manuscript comparison
- The Morgan gives the other man a voice, and a rebuttal. At 3v-c it adds a paragraph the Getty lacks entirely, spoken by the player: "If I throw my lance into the chest of your horse, your beat fails; and my lance once thrown, I will take my sword for my defense, and with your lance you will do me no harm." The Morgan then goes back and amends the Master's own text to concede the point: "…except that if he throws his lance into the chest of my horse, my beat will prove a failure." The Getty's Master promises a beat that works; the Morgan's Master admits it can be defeated by aiming lower. This is the section's first horse-as-target argument, and only one prose copy carries it.
- The verse sides with the Morgan. The Pisani Dossi couplet at [5] is spoken by the thrower, not the beater — "To ruin you or your horse I make this throw, and then with my sword I will come to find you" — which is the Morgan's added paragraph in two lines. The Getty is the odd witness out: it narrates the plate from the beater's side only, and the throw's actual purpose survives in the Morgan and the Pisani Dossi.
- The Paris expands [4] and drops [5]. Its Latin at [4] adds a detail no other witness has — "nor do I fear to touch the ground with yielding knees" (nec vereor terram genibus contingere lentis) — and its last line (Et feriam variata tamen tua lancea praedet) is obscure enough that our translation marks it best-effort. For [5] the Paris has nothing.
- Illustrations. [4] is shown from the Pisani Dossi (29b-a, 29b-b); [5] pairs the Pisani Dossi's rider (29b-c) with the Getty's own plate (41v-d) — the first Getty figure in the section, and a chance to see the two traditions draw the same guard.