LITMIR.BIZ

      The gladius, the sword of legionnaires and gladiators.

      In a troop of gladiators one spoke of a familia, a family, as is still the case today in organized crime or in certain Southern Italian knife schools. It should be noted, however, that this is more due to the culture of the language rather than to common fencing roots. Gladiators did not speak of a training ground or hall, but rather used the word ludus, meaning school. The knife and stick traditions from Rome to Sicily still use the word “school” today⁶. This is not only for the system, but it also describes the place where the lessons take place. Yet, in the north of Italy, in former Cisalpine Gaul, the still existing folk fencing traditions do not use this term anymore. But, all of this may still be pure coincidence.

      However, in the end, in my view, the most important indication, together with the commonality of regional distribution, is the great cultural parallel. And here I would like to quote directly from Alan Baker’s recommended book⁷:

      “[…] The training was in precise, almost scientific pathways and included the learning of a series of figures divided into individual phases. However, a gladiator had to take care not to follow the trained movements too closely, because the audience easily recognized this and would complain that his fighting was too “by the book" without showing a style of his own.”

      This strict form of instruction can still be found today, to my knowledge, mainly within the knife and stick schools of southern Italy. It testifies to a striking fencing-cultural closeness, at least with regard to didactics. Although such striking similarities are not clear evidence of a kind of multi-era spanning fencing identity, they nevertheless, together with their geographic proximity, provide clues for a certain interrelation⁸.

       1.3 The Newly Kindled Spirit

      Some souls revered antiquity and made every effort to revive or “resurrect” it. It was the birth of the Renaissance or, as it should rightly be called, the Rinascimento; a development that flourished in Florence and Rome. Many of the French expressions used today in modern fencing, as well as in colloquial language, were only introduced into the language at the beginning of the 19th century. Previously, Italian was the language of the educated, and it is still used today in musical terminology and even in the accounting field, among others.

      The immediate forerunners for the Italian schools of the knife fight, however, may originate from the 15th to the 18th century. The intellectual framework, which the fencers were once moved to rethink, perhaps had its beginning in Italy of the 15th century, wherein, as I said, the exact chronology, in the absence of documentation must remain speculative.

      The straight-ahead path, (that of the accurate thrust), was already present on the peninsula even in ancient times. One finds its traces mainly in the Roman army. For example, in the first century BC, Caesar was already demonstrably training the Legionnaires in weapons craft. Vegetius described in the 5th century AD, the training of recruits in dealing with the gladius9. Here it must be remembered that Vegetius’ Epitoma rei militarii is not a factual report. He writes it, reminiscing of the “good old days”. Whether the Legionaries were actually drilled to use only the thrust, we do not know for sure. It is rather unlikely though, because in the fray, once a formation is dissolved, the slash gains quite a tactical advantage; and the Romans were the best military tacticians and practitioners of their time. At the time of Augustus, the considerably longer spatha, the battle sword of the Romans, was introduced. This name has since continued in Italy as spada, to the present day.

       1.3.1 Art and Literature

      Rinascimento is an Italian term used by artist biographer Giorgio Vasari for the first time in 1550. The origins of the Renaissance¹⁰ probably date back to the late 14th century in Siena, northern Italy. However, Siena had to surrender to Florence after a devastating plague epidemic. The Florentines revived the Renaissance until the focal point finally moved to Rome, the Eternal City. The 15th and 16th centuries are considered to be the main phases of this era. The end of the Renaissance is largely the beginning of the 17th century. The period onward is referred to as the era of the Baroque. A whole generation of painters and sculptors were children of the Renaissance, such as: Donatello (1386-1466), Da Vinci (1452-1519), Raphael (da Urbino, 1483-1520), Titian (14(?)-1576), and in the heyday of the Renaissance, the Mannerism, Michelangelo (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 1475-1564).