Getty 46v
The last page of the mounted section is the last page of the Fior di Battaglia. A device — a lance tied to the saddle — then the only first-person anecdote in the plays, and then the colophon in which Fiore signs off as a poor old man. The two plates are not a technical pair; they are how the book stops.
This Master has tied a strong cord to the saddle of his horse — one end, that is — and the other end is tied to the butt (pe) of his lance. First he means to strike him, and then to throw the lance, tied in this way, over the shoulder on his enemy's left side, so as to be able to drag him down off his horse.
- Before the fight: tie a strong cord — one end to your saddle, the other end to the butt of your lance (pe). The play is prepared, not improvised; this is equipment.
- First, strike him with the lance as normally.
- Then throw the lance — still tied — over his left shoulder, past his neck.
- Ride on. The cord runs from his neck to your saddle, and your horse does the rest: drag him down off his horse and along the ground.
- Fiore attaches no counter and no condition. The verse supplies the only comment anyone makes on it: the lance so tied is "so cruel and treacherous" (si crudele e fella).
The one plate in the section that wins by preparation rather than by action, and the closest thing in it to a stratagem. The verse's judgement is unusual — Fiore's couplets normally boast rather than appraise, and here the appraisal is not admiring.
This scoundrel (ribaldo) was fleeing from me toward a fortress. I rode so hard that I caught up with him near the fortress, riding always at full rein. And with my sword I struck him under the armpit (lasena), just there where a man can ill be armored. And for fear of his friends, I mean to turn back.
(The Getty then closes the book at 46v-d:) Here ends the book that the scholar Fiore has made: what he knows of this art — that is, of armed fighting in all its forms (armizare) — he has set it down here; and in this book is the flower: "Flower of Battle" (Fior di Bataglia) is it called by name. May he for whom it was made be prized forever, for in nobility and virtue his equal is not to be found. Fiore the Friulian (Fior Furlan), a poor old man, commends himself to you.
- This plate is narrative, not technique — the only one in the plays told as a thing that happened, in the past tense, with an "I" who is Fiore or his patron rather than a Master in a guard.
- The scoundrel (ribaldo) is fleeing toward a fortress — the situation of [Mounted 6], seen from the pursuer's side and played out to its end.
- Ride him down, "always at full rein" — the chase is the technique; the horse closes the measure.
- Catch him near the fortress — the pursuit is won at the last possible moment, under the walls.
- Strike with the sword under the armpit (lasena) — and Fiore gives the reason, which is the only doctrine on the page: "just there where a man can ill be armored". The armpit is a gap; the whole armored curriculum ([SwordArmor], [Axe]) is the search for gaps, and the book's last blow lands in one.
- Then turn back — for fear of his friends. The pursuit stops at the enemy's walls. The final tactical judgement in the Fior di Battaglia is a decision not to press an advantage.
- The book then ends. Fiore names what he has done (set down what he knows of armizare), names the book (Fior di Bataglia), commends his patron, and signs: Fiore the Friulian, a poor old man.
(The Getty then closes the book at 46v-d:) Here ends the book that the scholar Fiore has made: what he knows of this art — that is, of armed fighting in all its forms (armizare) — he has set it down here; and in this book is the flower: "Flower of Battle" (Fior di Bataglia) is it called by name. May he for whom it was made be prized forever, for in nobility and virtue his equal is not to be found. Fiore the Friulian (Fior Furlan), a poor old man, commends himself to you.
A fitting close for the section and the book: the last plate has no counter, no guard, and no play — only a rider who knows where the armor isn't, and when to go home.
in the Getty this number covers both the pursuit anecdote (46v-c) and the closing colophon (46v-d); the Pisani Dossi and Paris texts here are their own closing colophons only. The Morgan breaks off after its play [31].
Glossological analysis
- pe dela lanza ([31]) — the butt (lit. "foot") of the lance, the end opposite the head; where the cord is tied. Cf. collo del pe at [Mounted 26] — pe names the foot of a weapon as readily as of a man.
- corda / cavo ([31]) — the cord and its ends (cavo = end/extremity of a rope, not "cable" in the modern sense). The only plate in the book whose decisive element is not a weapon or a body.
- strassinare ([31]) — to drag along the ground. The intended outcome: not unhorsing but dragging — which is why the verse calls the device cruel.
- fella (PD, [31]) — treacherous, felon; paired with crudele. A moral epithet, and rare in these couplets.
- ribaldo ([32]) — a scoundrel/rogue; a term of contempt for the man being run down, and the only time the book insults an opponent rather than simply naming him zugadore.
- a tutta brena ([32]) — "at full rein", i.e. at a gallop. Note brena is the same rein seized at [Mounted 28] and stolen at [Mounted 30]: the section's last use of the word is the horse's speed, not its steering.
- lasena ([32]) — the armpit; "just there where a man can ill be armored". The final target in the book is a gap in the harness.
- armizare (colophon) — armed fighting in all its forms, Fiore's name for the whole subject of the book (Glossary). The Getty's ç-light spelling here (armizare) beside the Pisani Dossi's armiçar is the orthographic fingerprint described at Manuscript comparison §4B.
- Fior Furlan… povero vechio (colophon) — "Fiore the Friulian, a poor old man". The book's last words are a self-description, and a claim of authority by age.
Manuscript comparison
- The Morgan stops one plate short of the end. It carries [31] (at 2v-a) and then breaks off: no pursuit, no colophon. The witness that has been our base twice in this section, and has run beside the Getty for thirty plays, is absent for the last one. (Flagged in Mounted Fencing translation.) Its 30 plays are [1]–[28] plus [30]–[31] — everything except the Getty-only counter [29] and this closing plate.
- [32] is really two things, and only the Getty has both. The Getty gives the pursuit anecdote (46v-c) and the colophon (46v-d) under one number. The Pisani Dossi (36b-a) and the Paris (44r-c) give only their own colophons — neither has the pursuit at all. So the last technical plate in the Fior di Battaglia is a Getty singleton, and the book's most-quoted image (the sword under the armpit at the gallop) rests on one manuscript.
- Three colophons, three self-presentations. The Getty: a poor old man commending himself, with the patron praised at length ("in nobility and virtue his equal is not to be found"). The Pisani Dossi: a signature with a patronymic — "Fiore the Friulian, [son] of Messer Benedetto" — and an appeal to personal acquaintance ("whoever has known him may well believe his word"). The Paris: the author Latinized into "Florius", praised in the third person ("that once most skilled author"), his origin kept (Furlana gente) and his humility dropped. The Italian witnesses have Fiore speak; the Latin has someone speak about him.
- The corded lance is placed differently in every witness. Getty 46v-a (with the last plate), Morgan 2v-a (the first plate of its mounted material), Pisani Dossi 34b-a (two folios before its colophon at 36b). The same play stands at the end, at the beginning, and in the middle. Fiore evidently had nowhere obvious to put a lance with a rope on it.
- The Getty's closing prose rhymes, colophon included. "…lo feri sotto la lasena / … corando a tutta brena… E per paura de soii amisi voglio retornare"; and the colophon closes "…non se trova Lo parechio / Fior Furlan a voii si recomanda povero vechio". The book ends in the same versified prose it has been writing since [Mounted 20] — the verse kernel audible in the last line the Getty scribe wrote.
- Illustrations. All five figures on this spread are the Getty's own (46v-a, 46v-b, 46v-c, and 47r-a, 47r-b) — the section closes, as it did not open, entirely in our base manuscript's hand.