The Steel Marginalia

Witnesses: Pisani Dossi 2a–2b · Illustrations shown: Pisani Dossi

Illustration: Pisani Dossi 2a · Text: Pisani Dossi 2a–2b

The verse manuscript's own front matter — two prologues, one Latin and one Italian, carried by the Pisani Dossi alone.

What the page carries (digest — full text at Preface translation):

The Latin Preface opens the book of duelling and fighting: "Incipit liber duellandi et dimicandi et vocatur Flos duellatorum in armis sine armis equester et pedester" — "Here begins the book of duelling and fighting, and it is called the Flower of Battle, in arms and without arms, mounted and on foot." This is where the manuscript's title (Flos Duellatorum) comes from.
The Second Italian Preface (Alter prologus) carries the treatise's date: it was begun "on the 10th day of February 1409" (De mille quatrocento e nove a'di X delo mese de febraro) by Fiore the Friulian. This is the single most important dating datum in the whole corpus — the reason the Pisani Dossi is assigned to 1409 and the others only to "the 1400s".

Glossological analysis

Flos duellatorum — the Flower of Battle / of duellists: the verse manuscript's own title for the work, echoed by the Getty tradition's Fior di Battaglia.
duellandi et dimicandi — "of duelling and of fighting": the Latin pairs the formal duel with combat generally, matching the Italian preface's in sbarra / ad oltrança distinction.
equester et pedester — mounted and on foot: the curriculum's two great divisions, announced in the title itself.
in armis sine armis — "in arms, without arms": here meaning armed and unarmed, the grappling-to-weapons span.
Alter prologus — "another prologue": the manuscript's own label, acknowledging that it is giving a second, Italian preface after the Latin one.

Unique to the verse family. These two prologues have no counterpart in the Getty or Morgan. The prose family's front matter is autobiography; the verse family's is titular and dedicatory. The two traditions announce the same book in entirely different registers.
The Pisani Dossi alone dates the work. The 1409 date sits here and nowhere else. Every statement that "Fiore wrote in 1409" descends from this page.
The Paris has no prose or Latin prologue at all. Its entire preface consists of the Segno page (below) — see Manuscript comparison.
Latin in an Italian manuscript. Note that the verse manuscript carries a Latin prologue before its Italian one — a reminder that the Latin of the Paris/Florius is not an alien intrusion into the tradition but continuous with it.