Sword in Armor
Harness fencing: the six armored Masters, half-swording, thrusts to the gaps — and the prose/verse contradiction over the Middle Iron Gate.
Folios
Folio summary — Sword in Armor
| Getty folio | Plates | Content | Getty images | Verse witnesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32v | [1]–[5] | Six-Master rubric; four guards | — | PD 25a · Paris 18r–19v |
| 33r | [6]–[9] | Two guards; the Remedy's cover; first scholar | [8] | PD 25b · Paris 18r–19v |
| 33v | [10]–[13] | Visor, elbow, hold, strong key | [10]–[13] | Paris 17v (at [12] only) |
| 34r | [14], [16]–[18] | The throw; crossguard and pommel | [16]–[18] | PD 26a · Paris 18v (at [14] only) |
| 34v | [15], [19], [20], [26] | Thrust off the cover; three grappling entries | [20], [26] | PD 26a · Paris 16r (at [15], [19]) |
| (Morgan 11r) | [21] | Edge under the hand; pommel to the face | — | PD 26a · Paris 16v |
| (Morgan 11v) | [22]–[25] | The pommel run; the counter | — | PD 26b · Paris 16v–17v |
| 35r | [27]–[30] | Counter Master; his scholar; the two swords | [27]–[30] | — |
Eight pages, 30 plates, 30 illustrations — only [1] is unillustrated, and [6] carries two. Fourteen of the figures are the Getty's, thirteen the Pisani Dossi's, two the Paris's, one the Morgan's.
The pattern is a split inheritance. On the two guard folios (32v–33r) all four witnesses run together and the only difference is form: prose expands, verse compresses. From 33v the corpus divides, and divides cleanly — the Getty alone carries the connective, explanatory plays (the visor, the elbow, the lock, the edge-point-crossguard-pommel ladder, the Counter Master, the sword specifications), and the Morgan alone carries [21]–[25]. Neither prose copy contains the other; between them they hold two non-overlapping halves of one section, and the two halves even build from the same components to opposite ends — an advanced right foot and the sword's grip throw a man at [18] and strike his ear at [22]. Where the verse witnesses speak at all they consistently want a different destination from the prose: the disarm where the Getty takes the lock ([19]) or the throw ([24]), and twice a different play altogether ([22], [25]). And on the very first folio the two families produce the corpus's flattest contradiction — the Middle Iron Gate's thrusts are forte in both prose copies and vana / inanis in both verse ones ([5]). For this section more than any other, no single manuscript is the text.