Getty 45r
The section's turn. [23] answers the pommel strike and then closes the sword material outright with a signed sign-off; [24]–[26] open the mounted grappling, where the weapons are the arms, and the saddle furniture becomes both lever and target.
I am the ninth [play], which I make against the counter that stands before me. For when he gives the turn to his sword, at once I set my handle (mantenir) [against it], as you see depicted, so that he cannot strike me in the face with the pommel. And if I raise my sword upward and take a turn with the backhand, it could well be that your sword will be taken from you. And if that fails me, so that I cannot do it, I will give you the backhand of my sword in the face, or strike you on the head with the pommel — so swift shall I make my turn. Here ends the play on horseback of sword against sword; whoever knows more of it, let him give me a good pennyworth of it (chi piu ne sa men dia una bona derada).
- You are the Long Tail man of [Mounted 12]; you have beaten his blow aside and he is answering with [Mounted 22].
- The trigger is his turn: "when he gives the turn to his sword" — the moment the pommel starts to come round, not when it arrives.
- At once set your handle (mantenir) against it — interpose your own grip so the pommel cannot reach your face. The counter to a hilt is a hilt.
- Then, if it is there: raise your sword upward and take a turn with the backhand — and "it could well be that your sword will be taken from you". The counter converts into a disarm.
- If that fails — if the taking is not available — do not reset. Two fallbacks, in order: - give him the backhand of your sword in the face, or - strike him on the head with the pommel — answering his pommel with your own.
- The condition on all three: "so swift shall I make my turn". The whole play is a race between two turning swords.
- Then the sword stops. "Here ends the play on horseback of sword against sword; whoever knows more of it, let him give me a good pennyworth of it."
The counter-to-the-counter closes the loop the guard opened: [12] beats, [22] punishes the beat, [23] punishes the punishment. Note the escalation ladder — take the sword; failing that, cut the face; failing that, strike with the pommel — the same "convert rather than abandon" habit the grappling section runs on ([Grappling 11], [Grappling 13]).
This is a play of grappling (abrazare), that is, a play of the arms, and it is done in this way: when someone flees from you and you come up on his left side, with your right hand you seize him by the cheek-plate (sguanze) of his bascinet — or, if he is unarmored, by the hair (cavigli), or by the right arm from behind his shoulders. In this way you will make him topple backward, so that you will make him go to the ground.
- Fiore defines the category before the play: this is a play of grappling (abrazare), "that is, a play of the arms" — the same art as [Grappling], now in the saddle.
- The situation: he is fleeing from you — the reverse of [Mounted 6], seen from the pursuer's saddle.
- Come up on his left side.
- Seize with your right hand, and branch on what he is wearing: - armored → by the cheek-plate of his bascinet (sguanze) — take the helmet, and the head follows; - unarmored → by the hair (cavigli); - or, either way → by the right arm, from behind his shoulders.
- Topple him backward — you are not pulling him sideways but rotating him over his own cantle.
- He goes to the ground.
Same branching as [Grappling 21]: the target changes with the harness, the action does not. Note that armor here helps the attacker — the cheek-plate is a handle the unarmored man does not offer.
This is the counter of the play that came before, and it works in this way: this counter is made with such a grip — that is, as soon as the other seizes him from behind, he must at once change the hand of the bridle (la man dela briglia) [take the reins in the other hand], and with the left arm he must seize him in this way.
- He has seized you from behind ([Mounted 24]).
- The trigger is the seizure itself: "as soon as the other seizes him from behind".
- Change the hand of the bridle — take the reins into your other hand. This is the play. Nothing can be done until the fighting hand is freed, and on horseback the rein is what occupies it.
- With the freed left arm, seize him in turn — the picture carries the grip; the text does not describe it.
- He goes to the ground instead of you.
The only plate in the book whose decisive action is a rein change. It is the mounted equivalent of a foot position: what the reins are doing decides what the hands can do, and Fiore counts it as a technique.
This scholar means to throw this man from his horse: that is, he seizes him by the stirrup and lifts it upward. If he does not go to the ground, he will certainly hang in the air — unless he is tied to his horse, this play cannot fail. And if he does not have his foot in the stirrup, seize him by the ankle (collo del pe) — which is worth more — lifting him upward as said before. Do what is written here before.
- Seize him by the stirrup and lift it upward. The scholar attacks the saddle furniture, not the man.
- The outcome is stated as a dilemma with no third branch: either he goes to the ground, or he hangs in the air — lifted out of his seat and stuck there.
- The one exception, named: "unless he is tied to his horse, this play cannot fail."
- If his foot is not in the stirrup: seize him by the ankle (collo del pe) instead — and Fiore says this is worth more. Lift the same way.
- The reason the ankle is better is left unstated, though it follows from the play: a stirrup is hung on a strap and will swing, while an ankle is attached to the man you are trying to move.
The section's purest lever. Everything a man on a horse has — helmet [24], rein [28], [30], stirrup, foot — is treated here as a handle, and this plate is the one that says so most plainly.
Glossological analysis
- mantenir / mantiner ([23]) — the sword's handle, as at [Mounted 19]; the counter is made by interposing it. Both the taking and the defense against the pommel are mantenir plays — the mounted sword game ends as a contest of hilts.
- abrazare ([24]) — grappling, glossed by Fiore himself on this page: "that is, a play of the arms" (zogho de brazi). The same art as the opening section of the book (Glossary); [Grappling 4] claims lance, poleaxe, sword, and dagger all draw on it, and this folio is that claim cashed out in the saddle.
- sguanze ([24]) — the cheek-plates of the bascinet; the hinged side-pieces of the helmet. A rare, concrete piece of armor-vocabulary, and here a handle: the harness that protects the head is what lets you turn it.
- bacinetto ([24]) — the bascinet, the period helmet.
- cavigli ([24]) — the hair (of the head). Note the near-collision with caviglia (ankle) in later Italian — Fiore's word for the ankle in the very next plate is different (collo del pe), which keeps the two apart.
- collo del pe ([26]) — literally the "neck of the foot", i.e. the ankle/instep. Not a "collar" and not a neck: an anatomical idiom, and the section's preferred grip when the stirrup is empty.
- staffa ([26]) — the stirrup: lever and target at once. The horse's tack is treated as part of the man's body throughout this folio.
- la man dela briglia ([25]) — "the hand of the bridle", i.e. the rein hand. The phrase names a hand by its job. Scambiare = to change/exchange, so the play is literally "he must change the bridle hand".
- chi piu ne sa men dia una bona derada ([23]) — "whoever knows more of it, let him give me a good pennyworth of it". A derada is a pennyworth, a measure of goods; the idiom is the sardonic marketplace register of bon merchato at [Grappling 2] and [Grappling 5]. Fiore signs off the sword by daring anyone who knows better to sell him some.
Manuscript comparison
- The Morgan runs with the Getty for all four plates, near-verbatim, including the sign-off ("Aqui finisse lo zogo a cavalo de spada a spada chi piu ne sa men dia una bona derada"). On this folio the two prose copies are two hands writing one text — the "Getty ≈ Morgan" relation of Manuscript comparison §6 at its tightest, right after the folio where they disagreed most.
- [23] is rhymed prose in both copies. "E s'io levo la spada in erto, e dello riverso io piglio volta / ben poria esser che la spada ti saria tolta… dello riverso dela spada ti daro in la faza / … te feriro in la testa / tanto faro mia volta presta." The Morgan carries the same rhymes down to the sign-off couplet (spada / derada). The longest and most elaborate prose paragraph in the section is also the most thoroughly versified — the prose is at its wordiest exactly where the verse kernel is thickest.
- The verse keeps only the first move of [23]. The Pisani Dossi gives the handle-block and nothing else: no disarm, no backhand to the face, no pommel, no sign-off. The Getty's escalation ladder — three answers in order of preference — is prose-only, as the counters are prose-only throughout [Grappling].
- The Paris is at its strongest on the grappling. It carries [24], [25], and [26] — and expands each: at [25] it runs to three lines, adding the moral ("yet you, wicked one, wished to attempt the very same on me"), and at [26] it adds a line the Italian lacks ("nor will there be anything to soften [the fall of] your limbs"). The Latin thins out in the sword material and thickens in the grappling: it has no [23] at all, but nothing from [24] to [28] is missing.
- A small divergence at [24]. The Getty and Morgan seize the cheek-plate of the bascinet; the Paris seizes the helmet entire (galea) and specifies the outcome as chest-down (pectore), where the Getty says only "topple backward". The Pisani Dossi names no grip at all. The prose is the precise witness here; the Latin the vivid one.
- Illustrations. [23] is shown from the Pisani Dossi (33a-b); [24] pairs the Paris (05r-b) — the second and last Paris figure in the section — with the Getty (45r-b); [25] and [26] are the Getty's (45r-c, 45r-d).
- Coverage. All four plates are in Getty, Morgan, and Pisani Dossi; the Paris has [24], [25], [26] but not [23].