Getty 23r
The book's blow-taxonomy: four plates that between them enumerate every way a sword can strike. [8]–[10] give the three cutting families by their path — down, up, across — and [11] gives the thrusts by their line. The blows speak in the first person plural throughout; not one of these is a play.
We are the descending blows (colpi fendenti), and in the art our quarrel is to cleave the teeth and come down to the knee with reason. And every guard that is made low — from one such guard into the other we go without trouble. And we break the guards with cunning, and with our blows we leave a mark of blood. We descending blows are not slow to strike, and we return into guard from stride to stride (di vargo in vargo).
- The descending blows (colpi fendenti) name themselves by their path: down.
- The path in full: from the teeth to the knee — the cut cleaves the head and runs on down the body's centre.
- Their office against low guards: from one such guard into the other "we go without trouble" — the descending line passes through them.
- They break the guards with cunning (inzegno) — the claim is that they get past a guard by wit, not by force.
- They are fast: "not slow to strike".
- And they recover: back into guard "from stride to stride" (di vargo in vargo) — a guard re-formed on each step, not a pause to reset.
The most-quoted plate in the section: this text stands almost verbatim in both families, the Pisani Dossi's couplets embedded whole inside the Getty's prose (Manuscript comparison §3).
We are the rising blows (colpi sottani), and we begin at the knee and go up through the middle of the forehead, along the path that the descending blows take. And in the same way that we ascend by that path, we return back down it; or else we remain in the Long Guard (posta longa).
- The rising blows (colpi sottani) begin at the knee and go up through the middle of the forehead.
- Their path is the fendenti's path, reversed — and Fiore says so explicitly: "along the path that the descending blows take". The system has one line, travelled two ways.
- Having arrived at the top, there are two exits: - return back down the same path — that is, become a fendente; or - remain in the Long Guard (posta longa), the point-in-line guard of [S2H 17].
The Getty says nothing about targets here. The verse adds the one thing a fencer would want to know: the sottani "always seek to strike the hands".
We are called the middle blows (colpi mezani) because we go through the middle, between the high blows and the rising blows. And we go with the true edge (dritto taglo) from the forehand side, and from the backhand side we go with the false edge (falso taglio). And our path is from the knee to the head.
- The middle blows (colpi mezani) are named for their position in the system, not for their path: they go between the high blows and the rising blows.
- Their path is given anyway: from the knee to the head — horizontal, crossing that vertical line.
- Edge is assigned by side, and this is the only blow-family for which Fiore does it: - from the forehand side — the true edge (dritto taglo); - from the backhand side — the false edge (falso taglio).
- The verse adds two offices the prose omits: the mezani beat thrusts out of the way, and they redouble — a second blow following the first on the same line.
- And an exit: from the middle blow, enter into the descending blow.
Mechanically the richest of the three cutting families, and the only one that changes edge by side. It is also the blow the false thrust feints at [S2H 45] — the taxonomy is load-bearing, because a deception has to imitate a named blow to be legible.
We are the thrusts (punte), cruel and mortal. And our path is through the middle of the body, beginning at the groin (petenichio) and running up to the forehead. And we are thrusts of five kinds: two from above, one from one side and one from the other; and two from below likewise, one from one side and the other from the other; and one from the middle, which issues from the Middle Iron Gate (meza porta di ferro), or from the Long Guard or the Short Guard (posta lunga e breve).
- The thrusts (punte) run up the middle of the body: from the groin (petenichio) to the forehead.
- They are counted as five kinds — five lines, not five techniques: - two from above, one on each side; - two from below, one on each side; - one from the middle.
- The central thrust is the only one Fiore sources to named guards: it issues from the Middle Iron Gate (meza porta di ferro), or from the Long Guard or the Short Guard (posta lunga e breve).
- That is precisely the trio exempted from the likeness rule at [S2H 1] — the point-in-line guards. The central thrust and the point-in-line exception are one fact stated twice.
Doctrine, and the closing brick of the taxonomy: six cuts (two each of fendenti, sottani, mezani) plus the thrust make the "seven blows of the sword" that the Woman's Guard claims at [S2H 14].
Glossological analysis
- questione ([8], [11]; also PD [10], and [15], PD [32]) — a quarrel, a fight picked — not a "question". The blows "make their questione" with the teeth, with the guards, with each other; the Window Guard picks one with every guard on the field. It is Fiore's standing verb for taking someone on.
- inzegno ([8]) — cunning, ingenuity — not "engine". The fendenti break guards by wit; the same word does the same work at [Grappling 5] and at [S2H 17], where the Long Guard "with cunning often steals to the throat".
- rasone ([8], "with reason"; [11], "of five kinds") — the folio's trap. The same word, two plates apart, in two senses: cum rasone = "with reason, rightly", but punte de cinque rasone = "thrusts of five kinds". Fiore keeps the second sense running to the end of the section — "cuts of every rasone" ([S2H 47]), "covers of every rasone" ([S2H 48]).
- vargo ([8]) — a stride, a pace. "We return into guard di vargo in vargo": a guard re-formed on each step. The same word is the elephant's unbroken stride in the preface's Fortitude emblem — Glossary, forteza.
- dritto taglo / falso taglio ([10]) — true edge / false edge, the long edge and the short. Fiore assigns them by side, not by preference: forehand takes the true, backhand the false.
- petenichio ([11]) — the groin, the pubic bone — the anatomical origin of the thrust's line. Precise where it could have been vague, as the Getty's dedo poles is at [Grappling 13].
- soprani / sottani / mezani ([9], [10]) — high / rising / middle. At [10] the fendenti are simply called the high blows, so the cuts sort into one positional trio. Fiore reuses exactly that trio for the three locks and the three sword-takings ([S2H 75], [S2H 77], [S2H 78]): level is a single vocabulary across the whole art.
Manuscript comparison
- The clearest case in the book of the prose growing around the verse. The Getty's [8] contains the Pisani Dossi's [8]: the couplets — "we are the descending blows, and our quarrel is to cleave the teeth… we return into guard from stride to stride" — sit inside the Getty's prose almost word for word, with the Getty's own material ("and come down to the knee", the low guards, the mark of blood) wrapped around them. This folio is the section's best single piece of evidence for the relationship argued at Manuscript comparison §3 and §6: the verse is the kernel, the prose the expansion.
- The verse carries fencing the prose omits. At [9] the Pisani Dossi says the rising blows "always seek to strike the hands" — a target the Getty never names. At [10] the verse gives the mezani two whole offices the Getty lacks: beating the thrusts out of the way, and redoubling the blow. Here, unusually, it is the couplets that are technically fuller.
- Coverage: two witnesses only. As with 22v, the blows exist in the Getty and the Pisani Dossi alone. Neither the Morgan nor the Paris carries the taxonomy at all — the two witnesses that open at [S2H 12] inherit the twelve guards without ever having been told what a fendente is.
- The witnesses disagree about where this material lives. The Getty runs guards → blows → guards across consecutive folios 22r–24v. The Pisani Dossi carries the blows at 12b–13a, five folios away from its six guards at 17b and its twelve guards at 18a–19a. Same four plates, entirely different position in the book.
- Illustrations. Only [8] shows the Getty's figure (23r-a); [9]–[11] are illustrated from the Pisani Dossi (12b-f, 13a-a, 13a-b) — from that remote part of the manuscript, which is why the folio labels jump backwards.