Getty 39v
The forehand trio closes itself on one page: the third Master ([4]), the single strike all three finish in ([5]), and the counter that answers all three at once ([6]). It is Fiore's Remedy → scholar → Counter chain compressed into three plates, with three Masters sharing one scholar.
I am the noble Window Guard on the right (posta di finestra destra), always quick to beat aside and to strike; and of the long spear I take little care. Even with the sword I would await the long spear standing in this guard, which beats aside every thrust and so delays it. And I can make the exchange of thrusts (scambiar de punta). And the beat toward the ground cannot fail. In the play that comes after, we mean to finish.
- Take the Window Guard on the right (posta di finestra destra) — high, point over the hand; again a longsword guard ([S2H 15]).
- This Master's boast is aimed at reach specifically: "of the long spear I take little care." Being the shorter, he does not mind being the shorter.
- Beat and strike — the trio's shared habit, and this guard is "always quick" at it.
- Two options the plate names that its two companions do not both carry: - the exchange of thrusts (scambiar de punta), and - the beat toward the ground (rebatter a terra) — the downward beat, which "cannot fail".
- The guard is credited with a tempo effect, not just a displacement: it "beats aside every thrust and so delays it" (e si la intarda).
- Where it finishes: the next plate ([Spear 5]) — "in the play that comes after, we mean to finish."
The Master's aside — "even with the sword I would await the long spear standing in this guard" — makes good on what [Spear 2] announced. What is borrowed is the guard, and the guard does its work whatever is in the hand (Technical grouping §9).
In this play finish the three guards that came before — that is, the Full Iron Gate, the Middle Iron Gate, and the high Window Guard on the right. In this play they finish their plays and their art, as I strike this man on their behalf.
- This is not a fourth Master but the strike the first three all arrive at: the Full Iron Gate ([Spear 2]), the Middle Iron Gate ([Spear 3]), and the high Window Guard on the right ([Spear 4]) "finish their plays and their art" here.
- The speaker strikes on their behalf (per lor parte) — one scholar deputizing for three Masters at once.
- Where the thrust lands, the Getty does not say. The Pisani Dossi does — "in the face or the chest" — and the Morgan says "in the face".
Structurally this is the section's economy laid bare: three Remedy Masters, one play. The whole spear art runs to six Masters, two plays, and one counter.
This is the counter to the three Masters of the spear, who finish in the play that stands before me, and I want to tell the method. When the masters believe they are driving my spear away from their body, I give my spear a turn (volta) and strike with the butt (pedale); and I have as good an iron on the butt as on the point. The plays of these masters avail little against me.
- The three forehand Masters have beaten your spear and are driving it away from their bodies ([Spear 5]).
- Wait for the moment they believe your spear is gone — the counter is timed to their confidence, not to their contact.
- Do not fight the beat. Give your spear a turn (do volta ala mia lanza) — let their beat spin the shaft and swap its ends.
- Strike with the butt (pedale), which is now the near end and already moving.
- Why it works, stated as a fact about the weapon rather than the technique: "I have as good an iron on the butt as on the point." The spear is shod at the heel; it has two points.
- Fiore's verdict: against this, "the plays of these masters avail little".
The same trick answers the mounted swordsman at [Mounted 22] — beaten aside, he gives a turn to his sword and strikes with the pommel. Turn the weapon, use the other end: one counter, two weapons.
The Paris couplet is compressed ("pulsatis dentibus", "your teeth having been struck"); the translation is best-effort. The Pisani Dossi has no verse for this counter.
Glossological analysis
- posta di finestra destra ([4]) — the Window Guard on the right, the longsword's high guard ([S2H 15]), doing the same job with a shaft: it "beats aside every thrust and so delays it".
- intarda ([4]) — "delays it". The beat is credited not merely with displacing the thrust but with costing the thruster time — Fiore's tempo reasoning surfacing in a single verb, on the one plate where he pauses to explain a guard.
- rebatter a terra ([4]) — the beat toward the ground, the downward beat. Cf. the longsword's romper di punta ([S2H 39]), which likewise puts the incoming point into the earth.
- scambiar de punta ([4]) — the exchange of thrusts, named in the prose here (and in the verse back at [2]); the same action the longsword defines at [S2H 37], carried over unaltered.
- per lor parte ([5]) — "on their behalf, for their part". The speaker of [5] holds the scholar's office — acting in the Masters' place — the same relation in suo scambio names at [Grappling 7] and [Spear-Other 13].
- volta ([6]) — the turn given to the spear: an axial spin of the shaft that exchanges its ends. Not the body-turn of [S2H 1] or the throwing turn of [Grappling 6] — the same word covering a different mechanism.
- pedale ([6]) — the butt / heel of the spear (lit. "foot"). The Getty is emphatic that it carries an iron as good as the point's: the butt is a second weapon, not a handle.
- ferro ([6]) — the iron, i.e. the head. Fiore counts a shafted weapon's ends by their irons, so a spear with two irons is a spear with two points — the premise the whole counter rests on.
Manuscript comparison
- The counter's coverage is this folio's real story. [6] is carried by the Getty (as its own plate), by the Paris (7v-d), and by the Morgan — but the Morgan gives it no heading of its own: at 9r-d it runs straight on from its [5] in a single unbroken block, so the strike and its counter are one continuous speech. The Pisani Dossi has no verse for [6] at all. The forehand trio's one counter is the one thing the Italian verse witness does not record.
- A Getty scribal slip at [5]. The Getty lists the three guards as "tutta porta di ferro, e porta di ferro la mezana, e porta[!] de fenestra la soprana destra" — writing porta (gate) for posta (guard), plainly contaminated by the two porta di ferro names it has just written. The Morgan has "posta di fenestra dextra la soprana" correctly. Translated to the sense.
- Where the strike lands, three witnesses answer and the base text does not. The Getty's [5] says only "I strike this man". The Morgan adds in lo volto, in the face; the Pisani Dossi has "in the face or the chest"; the Paris expands to three lines and names both in order — "through the man's chest… or first through his face and countenance, with sorrowful blood". The Getty is the only witness that leaves the target unnamed.
- Prose and verse are not on the same moment at [4]. The Getty explains the guard — what it beats, what it delays, what it can exchange, what it would do with a sword instead. The Pisani Dossi and Paris both describe the strike — the beat during the step, the point driven into the chest (incassar / prorumpam… vulnere grandi). Neither verse mentions the guard's name. The prose gives the posture and the reasoning; the verse gives the wound.
- Illustrations, three manuscripts on one folio. [4] is the Getty's (39v-a, 39v-b); [5] is the Pisani Dossi's (15b-d) even though the Getty has a 39v-c figure; [6] sets the Paris illustration (MS Latin 11269, 07v-c) beside the Getty's (39v-d). [6] is the only plate in the section — and one of few anywhere — that puts a Latin-manuscript figure next to an Italian one.
- The Paris stops here. Its spear text ends at [6]; it has nothing for the backhand trio. The Paris's five plays ([2]–[6]) are exactly the forehand half of the section plus its counter (Manuscript comparison §2) — it copied one trio and quit.