Guy Windsor
I’m here today with Dario Alberto Magnani, who is better known as Mr. Thokk, who was a longtime scholar of the Italian single combat tradition from the late medieval, early Renaissance period, and a world renowned historical martial arts instructor and gear designer. As a swordsman, he specialises in northern Italian fencing from the early 15th. to the 16th centuries, i.e., Fiore, Vadi and into the Bolognese. And he’s a successful competitor and sought after instructor. In the late 2010s he became a historical martial arts professional, between his teaching activities and the founding of Thokk Personal Armor, a business through which he designs and sells innovative historical martial arts gear, such as the Thokk gloves, which are popular enough to have attracted low quality copycat competition, but always buy the originals, of course. All right, now, I’ll just add to the former bio. The reason I’m chatting to Dario today is because I met him in Spain at the Panoplia, and we ended up spending probably five or six hours of the weekend, discussing details of Fiore stuff and other things.
Dario Magnani
I think that’s underestimating the amount of hours actually.
Guy Windsor
All right, so without further ado, Dario, welcome to the show. Thank you. Just to orient everybody, whereabouts in the world are you?
Dario Magnani
I live in Italy. Specifically, I live in Ravenna, so rather near to Bologna, which is probably more known to the HEMA crowd.
Guy Windsor
Fair enough. And I’m extremely jealous of you living in Italy, of course, and I was in Italy over Christmas. And every time I go back to Italy, my soul just expands a little bit.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, it does that. There’s many myths about Italy being the beautiful country and whatever and while they are rather true, I think that the most important part of being in Italy is living in between everything that’s been historical, always, into your everyday life. I mean, my club has a salle in Bologna, probably half a kilometre from where Marozzo was teaching. So we do truly live into where everything happened.
Guy Windsor
You walk out the door and wander around the town for a little bit. And you might as well have gone to a museum. There’s like ancient stuff everywhere. It’s fabulous. Okay, so I ask everyone this. So just give us a bit of background, how did you get into historical martial arts?
Dario Magnani
So I’ve been doing HEMA for over 15 years now. And at the very beginning, I was a reenactor. Probably the huge majority of the people that got into HEMA, over 10 years ago, and more, probably, all of us, or almost all of us had started through that hybrid thing that existed back then where you would do reenactment and some fencing and study some manuals, and just some show stuff at reenactment events. It was that sort of hybrid, but I think that in Italy we had been one of the first clubs that methodically used to study and work on manuals over the whole winter, while only going to reenactment events over the summer. So there were other clubs back then, obviously, but it wasn’t as widespread as it got later. So this is why I can say I’ve been doing HEMA for 15 years, because I’ve been into the whole thing for 17, 18 now, probably. I’m not sure now. And the very first couple ones were more reenactment and then it became much more HEMA over time.
Guy Windsor
Although in 2002, I went to Italy for a historical martial arts event and it wasn’t reenactment at all. I mean, there was FISAS, which was doing certainly fencing and somewhat historical.
Dario Magnani
That’s what I was referring to, because before it started becoming a more widespread thing, there were a few clubs which also tended to become huge, quite fast, like Sala d’Arme Achille Marozzo. And also, FISAS, probably a few others, but back then I didn’t really know them in first person, so I might be missing someone. That’s not intentional, in case. But yeah, there were like those few larger clubs that tended to be doing mostly or even just HEMA, actually my club came from a sort of a splitting from a rib of Sala d’Arme Achille Marozzo, as someone split out because they also wanted to do a reenactment. It came the other way around already in 2009.
Guy Windsor
What was the name of your club?
Dario Magnani
It’s Societa dei Vai which is established in Bologna, and also has a couple other salles around the region.
Guy Windsor
Okay, could you say that again for the non-Italian speakers?
Dario Magnani
So it’s Societa dei Vai. The name comes from a real existing Bolognese society of arms of the 13th century. So we got the name from there, and it kept that name for 15 years, almost, I think. And yeah, we are based in Bologna, fundamentally, while we have something in Modena, we’ve been in Imola and Ravenna, at different times, also.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. So you had something of a background in historical martial arts when you decided to start Thokk? But my first question around Thokk is, what does Thokk mean?
Dario Magnani
Many people think there’s a deep meaning behind that. Actually, that’s been my pseudonym for 20 plus years, because that’s been the name of my first character in Dungeons and Dragons. And then it’s been over forums over the 2000s. I’ve been dragging that name over, if you’ve ever met a Thokk, or a True Thokk, because there was someone else using that name. So that’s why it became True Thokk in a couple places, you’ve actually been running into me probably in the last 25 years.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so I thought it was probably the sound that a sword makes when it hits one of your gloves.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, many people think that it’s either a sound or an acronym of something. No, it’s just one of the names that you are allowed to pick when playing a barbarian in role playing games.
Guy Windsor
Fantastic.
Dario Magnani
I hope I don’t get sued by Wizards for that.
Guy Windsor
I think you’ll be fine. So you actually do make an income from selling these fencing gloves. And you told me the story about how you went from an idea to a crowdfunding campaign to actually creating a business. And it was to me it was fascinating. So I’m going to ask you the question, because I want to hear it again. So how did you set up? How did you come to create the gloves and turn it into an actual business?
Dario Magnani
So this started quite far behind the time because we are in 2024. And I could say that the first idea that brought me here came more than 10 years ago, because it was around 2013. And I was competing in mostly sidesword, actually, at the time. And I felt like we were missing something that allowed us to fence freely to fence without hindrance in sidesword. So originally, that was the first passage. That over time, I switched over to more and more longsword. And I realized that I actually needed my fingers for a longsword too, sorry for anyone who doesn’t think so.
Guy Windsor
I’m all about grip changes with longsword. I mean, you need, you need basically unrestricted grip mobility to fence well with a longsword.
Dario Magnani
I don’t want to offend anyone, but I’m used to saying that to people that say that you can do everything you have to do with a longsword with a mitten, everything you can do with a longsword you can do with a mitten.
Guy Windsor
What you can also do is you can take some epoxy resin, and you can just glue your fists to the handle and use a sword like that. I mean, why not?
Dario Magnani
I mean, we love gloves, and those are HEMA gloves and not sword gloves.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, okay. So you felt there was a need for better hand protection. So here’s the first question. To my mind, this is a solved problem, because we have articulated steel gauntlets from the 15th century, and I have cheap 15th century style fingered gauntlets, which work beautifully. I can literally play the trumpet while wearing them, they give me absolute freedom to move my hands however I want. If I could play the piano at all, I could play the piano probably while wearing them. So, why not just use those?
Dario Magnani
So I knew this question was coming.
Guy Windsor
We’ve had this conversation before.
Dario Magnani
My point about that is that while you are fundamentally right in terms of mobility of the hand, there’s a few other concerns for me in that. Apart from the general one, which I don’t really agree with, which is safety, because many people say that steel gauntlets are less safe than plastic or foam ones because they could hurt your partner.
Guy Windsor
Which is bullshit, you’re holding a four-foot-long steel rod. That’s the thing that’s going to hurt the partner.
Dario Magnani
Agreed. But with a caveat, I have three good answers for this apart from the weight one, because the first one that comes up is weight. I mean, a full steel glove weighs three times, probably, a pair of my gloves. But I agree with you that if you compare that weight with the mitten, the mitten makes no sense. But again, the mitten makes no sense. So we are on the same page on that. But apart from the weight problem, which as you told me is sort of mitigated by fit. I would say that the main set of reasons is the difference between the properties of synthetic material intended as a modern one, and metal steel. So that, as an example, steel scales are much more prone to damaging other people’s equipment, and to suffering damages that are not immediately making the item unusable. That happens a lot with fencing masks as an example, which take damage, don’t show it. And next time, you’re getting your face waffled if you are lucky.
Guy Windsor
Okay, hang on a second. Hang on a second. All right. I’ve been using steel gauntlets now for nearly 30 years. And I have never encountered a problem of my gauntlets damaging somebody else’s equipment without my intending to do it which I don’t tend to do. It just doesn’t happen.
Dario Magnani
What equipment are you talking about because in this case I’m thinking of fabric.
Guy Windsor
Fencing jackets, padded jackets, elbow pads, sport fencing masks, proper historical martial arts fencing masks, helmets, armour, whatever, I have never encountered damage to other people’s equipment from my gauntlets. If I’m going to hit somebody in the face with my gauntlet, it’s no different than hitting them with a pommel. And so you exercise exactly the same amount of care with gauntlet as you do with the pommel and there’s no problem.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, I’m not afraid for the fencing mask. I’m saying that every time you enter a grapple or some kind of action that involves getting very close, scratching the fabric in the arms of other people’s jackets, or scratching the fabric on their chests and stuff like that. I’ve seen that happen. I mean, it doesn’t make immediate huge damage we could say, also because that stuff is designed to be hit by swords. But if there are burrs on your finger lanes or whatever they are, they are easier to become dangerous. I think it is one of the legitimate concerns.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but that’s only true if you don’t look after your equipment properly.
Dario Magnani
Agreed, and I must say that not everyone is as good as they should be maintaining their equipment.
Guy Windsor
And the sword is going to be picking up burrs during the during the fencing match much more readily than the gauntlets because if you’re doing it right, your sword takes a lot more blade on blade or steel on steel impact than your gauntlets do.
Dario Magnani
But we can’t go around steel for swords.
Guy Windsor
Some people use plastic swords too. Where does this safety madness end? Swords are dangerous. This is a dangerous activity. We need to be careful, we need to be training properly. I totally don’t buy the steel gauntlets are somehow more dangerous than plastic.
Dario Magnani
I’m not calling them dangerous. I’m calling them more prone to causing damage to other people’s equipment, which is I think undeniable. Of course, the more you maintain them, the more you work on them, the more you keep them in shape, and the more you check them, the least this difference happens. I agree with that.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so what’s your next point of why synthetics are a good idea?
Dario Magnani
Point number three is a point of looks. I know this is solidly nonsensical from your point of view. But I think you’re aware that a lot of people in HEMA buy stuff because of how it looks, and not because of how it performs. I mean, you’ve been talking about cheap copycats before. And I can assure you that people buy those because they look like something, not because they are something. Yeah, looks, honestly, have a huge impact on people’s feeling about the product. I mean, I’ve actually been encountering that early on in the project, because my gloves look too thin and fragile. They are very light, they feel very light, very thin. And people just wouldn’t get the idea that they could work. That’s why the original bash tests got so popular. Because they broke through the previous mindset of the person.
Guy Windsor
I mean, to my mind, the only reason I can think of to get a pair of synthetic gauntlets is because if you want to enter certain tournaments, those tournaments require non-steel gauntlets for no good reason I can think of, but those are the rules. And so you have to have non-steel gauntlets to take part, which is insane.
Dario Magnani
There was another one, actually. Which is, though very specific to the way I work, which is the presence of penetration resistant materials. Because with steel gauntlets, if you get thrust in the palm, you get thrust through. If you get thrust unluckily, I mean, I’ve seen people get thrust through every kind of glove.
Guy Windsor
I’ve seen that too. What I do with my steel gauntlets, is I have proper FIE standard fencing gloves inside them. Is that as good penetration resistance as you get with yours?
Dario Magnani
That’s probably the same level, depending on which pair of gloves you get the same or lower.
Guy Windsor
I mean, you’re right, the kind of the shitty gardening gloves that normally come inside of a pair of steel gauntlets are not fit for purpose. So like step one, is you rip those out, and you glue in and stitch in a pair of really good fencing gloves. And then you get that equivalence. So yeah, I take your point. For penetration resistance in the palm, you do need a kind of modern fabric.
Dario Magnani
The truth is that you need a lot of work around your steel gauntlets to make them fit the HEMA scene as easily as something designed for that. Just that. I mean, you have to switch out the inner gloves, you have to keep the burrs down, you have to keep checking for cracks and damage. You have to keep the riveting in and out. Against something that fundamentally you take it out of the box, you put it on, you go fencing. People sometimes just appreciate being ready out of the box.
Guy Windsor
That’s fair. Okay, so this is why you decided to make them and having you decided to make them what did you do next?
Dario Magnani
Actually, that’s not when I decided to make them. But when I decided that there was the need for something like them, as many people know, the first thing I did was reaching out to an existing business and trying to design something with them, which was intended as a hybrid. So it had one finger and a three fingers mitten, because that was the smallest change from what was already available. And already doable. We did that. And it did work. I mean, not everyone liked it, but the fact that it’s been for two years the best selling product overall, I think that it means something. That was Neyman fencing,
Guy Windsor
Neyman Fencing. Are they still going?
Dario Magnani
Nope.
Guy Windsor
All right. Okay.
Dario Magnani
They went down a couple years ago, after several problems they had, which I’m not going to discuss.
Guy Windsor
That was just unfortunate business stuff. So, with Neyman Fencing you develop a kind of hybrid ninja turtle sort of thing where you’ve got the fourth finger is separate, three fingers together and then the thumb. I seem to remember seeing some of those.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, they’ve been quite popular back then. Because they were the only option to the only clamshell existing at that time, with the exception of the sparring gloves. So there were the lobsters, there’s the sparring gloves and those. It is going to be one of three.
Guy Windsor
So you help them develop that?
Dario Magnani
Yeah. I had the initial idea and sent some design ideas and some drawings. And we did a couple of iterations. And we got that out. And it worked. I mean, it sold, at least. So lets say it worked. And then I decided to move on because of how things were going within our business, I wouldn’t even call those business relationships, it wasn’t really something you could call business, I was just deciding something for someone else. And I decided to move out of that. And I started designing something with five fingers. And also, I would say, on the wave of interest around that, that had been existing for a few years at that point for the gauntlets. And so I moved on to the thinking what can happen if I can get every single finger separate? I started designing what I needed and then it took a couple years to design the materials necessary to make that possible.
Guy Windsor
Let me just hone in on this. You designed the material itself? What is this material?
Dario Magnani
So there’s actually more than one material that is custom made for us into the gloves. The main one is the foam that is inside the back of the fingers, which I registered as ‘Scutum’.
Guy Windsor
Right, like ‘shield’.
Dario Magnani
In Latin, or Roman. And that’s fundamentally a viscoelastic foam backed by a fabric so that it contemporaneously acts as a plate on impact spreading energy on a wider area, just like a rigid plate. And as an impact absorbing soft material behind that superficial plate. So that the surface becomes a plate, and the back area remains soft, and takes the pressure.
Guy Windsor
So basically, a single material is both like the shell and the padding underneath it.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, but it only becomes the shell and the impact.
Guy Windsor
It stiffens up on impact.
Dario Magnani
Yeah.
Guy Windsor
How the hell did you design something like that?
Dario Magnani
With a lot of effort.
Guy Windsor
Okay, do you have some kind of background in chemical engineering?
Dario Magnani
I’m a chemist, I studied chemistry. Actually, I was into the university for industrial chemistry back then. At a certain point, I had to decide whether to drop off of that or drop off of being Mr. Thokk. So I dropped off of that, so I never finished it actually. But yeah, I’ve been studying Industrial Chemistry and also chemistry at my high school. So I’ve been like doing 10 years of chemistry before that. And yeah, that’s one of the materials. The other ones are less complex, we could say, but like even the fabric on the palm of the gloves is custom made for us by a business that is known for making the highest quality fencing fabrics that are around and we got a custom version of it, so that we could keep the thickness of the 350 material, but having 800 Newton material with just changes of the yarns and not of the structure.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you got a fencing manufacturer making like sport fencing equipment to make 800 Newton penetration resistance fabric at the thickness normally associated with 350 Newtons of penetration resistance, so you’ve got twice as much penetration resistance in the same thickness.
Dario Magnani
Yeah.
Guy Windsor
Okay. I just wanted to highlight that because not everyone listening has sufficient background in how these things work. To understand quite what a significant thing that actually is. In case it’s not obvious, I am massively impressed by all this. I don’t particularly care about synthetic gauntlets because I’m happy with steel, but this whole process I am hugely impressed. But also I can see all sorts of products where I would absolutely want this stuff. So fencing plastrons or whatever could be this stuff. But anyway, so you develop these fabrics and found people to manufacture them for you.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, fundamentally, yes. Basically, everything in this glove has been like, I need this, this doesn’t exist, invent it and find someone that’s capable of doing that part. Consider that the parts are made in seven different countries over three different continents. So yeah, it’s a widespread thing.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but did you get to that point before you actually started producing the gloves? Let’s keep it chronological for the sake of consistency.
Dario Magnani
Yeah. Makes sense. So we were in 2015. At that point, I had been intending to make a glove that is five fingered. And I started designing it and designing the materials that were necessary for it, and designing the processes that could bring there, then when everything was more or less ready, I decided to check the interest of the community. And I expected 10, 20 pairs to go out by people very interested in seeing new stuff. And in the first couple of weeks, we broke the initial goal, the additional goal, and I think at least two more added goals that I had kept adding. So I closed the crowdfunding at that point.
Guy Windsor
So you expected 10 or 20 sales? And you’ve got about how many? A couple of hundred?
Dario Magnani
Probably, yeah, I think that’s that ended up being in excess of a couple of hundred.
Guy Windsor
So more than 10 times the amount of orders you expected.
Dario Magnani
Especially considering that he closed the sale is at a certain point, the presales, the crowdfunding, and, and took I think two weeks to think about it, and decide whether to just quit it and refund the money. Because it was impossible to make that amount of gloves in a single facility making everything.
Guy Windsor
The average listener probably doesn’t build much stuff. So let me just clarify things a little bit and tell me if I’m getting it, right. Okay. So basically, you are prepared to make 10 or 20 pairs of this of these gloves, and that could be reasonably done with the facilities that you had. But when the Crowdfunder did 10 times better than that, you realised that you’re going to have a problem of scale. And so you closed the Crowdfunder, before it was actually ended.
Dario Magnani
I paused it.
Guy Windsor
You paused it, to basically figure out whether you could actually fulfil those orders at that scale, or just give everybody their money back and go, this is too popular. I can’t handle it. I don’t want to be making gloves 24/7. I’m just going to stop. And obviously, given that you’re still producing these things, you figured out a way to actually scale from supposed to be basically making them at your kitchen table, to creating an industrial process for producing them.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, I fundamentally needed to take a couple of weeks to decide whether or not I wanted to make a side project that was intended to break even, more or less. Or if I wanted to make it become a life changing thing, something that could potentially have required me to change the direction of my life entirely. I mean, I was working in the chemical industry. I was doing completely different things. And this was just intended to be something done for the community to allow other people to have the equipment I didn’t have access to and when I realised that there was such a level of interest in that I had to decide whether or not I wanted to make this probably either my job, or my tombstone, depending.
Guy Windsor
Okay, and you decided to do it. So what did that process entail? How did you scale it?
Dario Magnani
I needed to redesign every single part of the glove to be as similar as the original intended part as possible, while being possible to produce within already existing factories. Because if you need to both produce the material and the production system of the part, nobody is going to take on that. So you either choose a new material for something that already exists as a process of production, or you devise a new process of production for a material that already exists.
Guy Windsor
And producing a new process of production is many, many millions of euros to do, generally speaking,
Dario Magnani
It depends, because actually, the scutum we were discussing about before, required both the material and the process of production. But fortunately, I managed to find a solution that required machinery that was already existent, to just be marginally modified to allow the new process of production,
Guy Windsor
Yeah, the last thing you want is for factories to have to buy in enormous great big machines to make your product.
Dario Magnani
That would put you like millions behind.
Guy Windsor
So you adjusted the design a little bit to make it mass producible, in effect?
Dario Magnani
Fundamentally, that was the point I needed to make it scalable, to make it so that making two people do this comes out in 10 pieces a month, making four people do this comes out in 20, etc. So scalable, while the first project fundamentally requires two people to make several passages, I do this then I pass you that and you do that and they pass it back to you. It was a very cottage industry process intended for two to three people as a hobby.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you found factories. It blows me away. So talk us through like the how these gloves actually now get made. How do you actually fulfil the orders?
Dario Magnani
I’ll go as in much depth as I can, because I can’t unveil everything.
Guy Windsor
Trade secrets.
Dario Magnani
A few things need to be kept as trade secrets, but not much of it. Everything starts with the production of HDPE filaments, which I’m not going to name businesses just because I don’t have accord to do that.
Guy Windsor
The people making the fencing fabric and people making the foam or whatever, that’s fine. No one’s going to be looking them up online.
Dario Magnani
there’s a business that makes HDPE yarns, which then get moved to the business I found that makes my fabric. HDPE is a kind of plastic fundamentally, it’s actually not exactly HDPE. But it is ultra high molecular weight polyethylene. So it’s a variation of an HDPE, fundamentally, to keep it as simple as possible. It’s fundamentally a plastic yarn, with an extremely high molecular weight. So it’s a molecular chain that is very, very, very long. And so they already behave as fibres as single molecules. So when you pack them up and align them one to the other, they become a very, very, very strong yarn for making fabrics.
Guy Windsor
A bit like Kevlar.
Dario Magnani
Fundamentally, it’s been replacing Kevlar which is a registered trademark, I would remind listeners. It’s been replacing that in several applications actually, because the yarn itself is not something I designed, obviously, but there’s a business making it. We got the yarn, got our business using it in place of polyester to make this elastic 800 Newton fabric that’s under two millimetres thick. And that was the main passage to obtain the outer layer of the gloves in terms of materials. Then we got the same yarn and got it woven with carbon fibre to obtain another kind of fabric, which then becomes part of the Scutum material. So it’s shipped over to either Hungary or Latvia, where the production plants are. And there they form it and work it with the viscoelastic material I chose and fine tuned for that to make the Scutum protective material. And then everything gets shit gets shipped over either to my local warehouse in Italy, or to Pakistan, where there’s a business that is making the stitch work for me. And it’s not a HEMA known business, there’s been a lot of people guessing that it was a rather known business, but no.
Guy Windsor
I know the business you mean, I’ve worked with them myself.
Dario Magnani
Because the quality of work is nowhere near, sorry. And so they do the stitch work that produces the outer part of the glove, and leaves some pockets in it. So that protectors can be placed in and then the material is shipped back to Italy, where we also receive the protectors, either from the guys making the Scutum or another business that is making the plastic parts and the fingertips so the plates, or whatever, then everything is put together here in Italy, with the inner linings. And everything is placed in its packets. And then boxed, then there’s an external warehouse that does this for me. And at that point, when I receive an order, I transmit it over to the warehouse, and then they prepare the shipment, and they ship it over. So we fundamentally work with a lot of gear in stock or the warehouse. Whenever we receive orders, we put them in a queue for being assembled, depending on the colour of the gloves, on the model.
Guy Windsor
So they are assembled to order.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, kind of, because you have to use the right outer with the right colour, right size, and right penetration protection level. And you have to put it together with the right inner with the right measurements on in case they ask for optional, we have to add them to the packet.
Guy Windsor
You could make your life a lot simpler by just having like three sizes and no colour options. But you chose not to.
Dario Magnani
Definitely. And also no model options because we offer 800 and 350. So yeah, definitely. I would, but at the same time I say this actually, with a little bit of bitterness, I would say, I decided to have six sizes, because everyone was freaking out about covering the extremes. Because nobody in HEMA makes gloves for the elephant and the mouse, they say. And then I must say that it didn’t really find the support to justify that. It’s been two years, I haven’t been even paying back the moulds for the excess size.
Guy Windsor
Dude, I hear you. I produce these workbooks which are available in right handed and left handed versions so that when you open it up the page for notes is on the correct side for writing comfortably if you’re right handed or writing comfortably if you’re left handed, right. And that costs me layout fees and setup costs and everything like that. And no, my left handed students have not bought enough of those bloody things to pay for their setup costs. But, here’s the thing. To my mind, it’s worth doing it anyway. Because it’s a statement of position. It is my position that people have very small hands or people who happen to be left handed or people who happen to be very large or whatever else, they should be catered for. And yes, I’d rather if a bunch of left handers went out and bought my workbooks so I could actually sort of financially justify it, but I justify it through it’s the right thing to do, rather than it’s the right business move.
Dario Magnani
Absolutely, and that’s why I still make the excess size. Yeah, but I must say that for excess size to have three colours and two models. I’ve been selling in the early 2000s pairs of gloves by now. Almost. I think I sold 12, 15 total excess size. So yeah, I keep doing those.
Guy Windsor
For those 12 or 15 people, that might have been a game changing, yes, I can keep doing this. And one of those people may end up being the best instructor in historical martial arts the world’s ever seen. So who knows? Who knows?
Dario Magnani
Absolutely. It’s just venting out being bummed.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it’s expensive to do the right thing. So you’ve got custom self-designed materials, and the overall design and all these plastic parts, and everything is put together and all these parts are shipped all over the world. But how much do the gloves actually cost?
Dario Magnani
The 350 model is 230 Euros plus VAT depending on where you are living. The 800 model is 270 Euros plus VAT.
Guy Windsor
Okay, that is not a lot. That’s about what I would pay for off the peg steel gauntlet.
Dario Magnani
I think it’s a rather sensible price point.
Guy Windsor
I’m just surprised you can do it at that price, given how much work went into it, and how much setup there is and how these materials need to get produced for you.
Dario Magnani
That’s the reason why we can’t really do custom, because we need to buy the parts in 1000s. I mean, I’ve been ordering fingertips, I think, I ordered like 10,000 of them the other day. So they ended up lasting six months to a year. I’ve been ordering materials in the sizes of 10s of hundreds of square meters for fabric. So that’s the only way you can have real industrial size and not cottage industry, but industrial size makers work for you. And at that point the prices drop.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, so you get massive economies of scale. Yeah, it’s like printing books, the first book costs you a fortune to print. Printing one book is some hundreds of euros, printing 1,000 books is a few. The revolution of print-on-demand changed all of that. But even now, when Penguin orders 10,000 copies of a paperback, they are paying probably somewhere around $1 a copy to get it printed. It changes a bit. But whereas the same book being printed, print-on-demand with KDP is probably three or four times that.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, yeah. That’s the real difference. I mean, the print-on-demand is still probably comparable to the cottage industry kind of pricing. If you step up into real industry size prices go really down. Obviously, you have to coordinate a lot of material and a lot of shipping. But you can really manage prices to be acceptable, I would say.
Guy Windsor
So did the crowdfunding campaign actually pay for all of this?
Dario Magnani
No. Unfortunately, I can bluntly say no. Even though it was probably the biggest crowdfunding campaign in HEMA yet, I think. I don’t know if anyone has gone over that.
Guy Windsor
What did you raise?
Dario Magnani
It was something above £30,000s plus another £20,000. On the second round of pre sales, like six months later?
Guy Windsor
It may have been the biggest of the time. My Audatia campaign raised about £53k. And I know that these days, some of Michael Chidester’s HEMA bookshelf campaigns have raised over £100k. So basically, what’s happened is the community has woken up to crowdfunding. 10 years ago, like with my Audatia campaign, like 50 grand was an amazing campaign. I think if you did it again, you’d probably get twice as much.
Dario Magnani
Possibly, but I like to think of very least, that the fact that crowdfunded HEMA material has actually started to come out for real, sort of made a difference, because I remember 2017, 2018 when people were sort of scared of getting into crowdfunding campaigns for HEMA, because he’s burned a bit, at least for gear.
Guy Windsor
For gear, yeah. I mean, I did my first campaign in about 2011, I think. And it raised like 1000 euros. And that was quite good. And then my second one, I think, was one of my books. And that did pretty well it raised about 12. But the thing is, it is so much easier to produce a book than it is to produce a gauntlet, because there are these factories that will happily they’ll take your print PDFs, which are quite easy to and cheap to produce. And they will convert them into a printed book for a few dollars apiece. It is industrialised to a point that this glove making thing just isn’t. So yeah, it’s good to see that the community is kind of getting used to the idea. And I think now, if you wanted to, you’ve got enough of a track record of actually producing the thing that you probably, if you had an idea for a similar gorget or chest protector or something you could probably raise a lot of money.
Dario Magnani
Probably yes. But at the same time, I’m not sure if I would run another crowdfunding campaign. Because it puts, at least in my field, it puts an extreme level of pressure on you compared to just selling the item. If you don’t need the money beforehand.
Guy Windsor
Don’t do a campaign.
Dario Magnani
At this point, with a business running and going rather well. I hope I won’t need money beforehand to launch jackets and stuff like that. Because on our side, it’s very hard to be disappointing anyone, if you run long on something, or whatever. And on the other side, if there’s no other way to get something out, and you really think that the thing has to go out a crowdfunding campaign is the only solution you have. Back then it really was the only way to do that, to justify getting in.
Guy Windsor
With books. I did a few books on crowdfunding. I crowdfunded because I needed to know that people would actually buy them. And also I needed to figure out how to actually produce these books and who I needed to hire and how much it was going to cost, all that sort of thing. And these days, I don’t bother with crowdfunding for books, because it’s just not worth the stress. The last time I crowdfunded something, was when I was producing the audiobook version of George Silver’s Paradoxes of Defence, where I got an actor to read it in modern English. And I also got, like the most famous actor doing original pronunciation Shakespeare, a guy called Ben Crystal. I got him to do it in original 16th century pronunciation. And it’s so geeky, it is so niche. And honestly, Ben is very, very good. And he charges accordingly. So there’s no way I can just put out that kind of money just in the hopes that people might buy this. I needed to know that people enough people would buy it. And they did. And I got the product out there. And it made back all of its costs. It has still not paid me for the time I put into it. But I don’t care because I wanted to produce this thing for my own artistic satisfaction. And I got to do that, because the crowdfunding supporters bought it enough that yes. But yeah, that wasn’t a money making proposition. But that was a, I want to do this, I can’t afford to do it. Hopefully, if other people want me to do it, then they’ll pay for it. And if sometime it pays for itself, I don’t mind.
Dario Magnani
That fundamentally was the original idea behind the gloves. And then that’s the two weeks of stock I took. I had to repurpose the project, decide whether or not I had to change from that to this.
Guy Windsor
I’m amazed you managed to do it in two weeks.
Dario Magnani
Well, I am a person that if I had to take a decision, I waited and take it. I never need a long time to decide something. Because if I am undecided on that, I just won’t do it.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.
Dario Magnani
Exactly. So I took a couple days off to just think about it and approach it with a fresh mind. And then at the end of the week, I was already decided, then I took another week to ponder some maths, checking out how to do that. Not if to do that. And then went on doing it.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Now, I think we should probably restart the conversation that began at the Panoplia when you came up to me and asked me something about the Three Voltas of the Sword in Il Fior di Battaglia. The thing that sort of really struck me is the way you approached it. It was like you were expecting me to shout at you.
Dario Magnani
Well, I wasn’t expecting you to shout at me, also, because we had already talked a bit over it, like, five years ago, I think. And so I already knew you were not going to shout at me, but at the same time, I didn’t want to seem attacking, because I can sometimes be rather decided in my way to approach people. And sometimes people feel attacked because of that. So I went with absolutely padded talking. I approached you, basically, as soon as I saw you, I think.
Guy Windsor
It was before things really started on the first day.
Dario Magnani
It was the introductory workshop running.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. And as I recall, you said something along the lines of, would it be okay for me to ask you about the three turns of the sword at some point during the weekend, and my response was something along the lines of, well, if we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it. And then we carried on talking for the next two hours.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, it was even blunter than that. Because you replied, why not now? Because if we come to decide we’ll do it later, then we won’t do it. So it was even blunter than that. I was like expecting you to say yeah, maybe later. Why not now? Okay.
Guy Windsor
So I think it’s probably a good idea if we provide the listener with the source text. So we’re going to talk about the three turns of the sword. Do you want to read the Italian and I’ll read my English translation? Your Italian accent is a little bit better than mine, I will admit.
Dario Magnani
Possibly. Your English accent is probably a little bit better than mine. So we are even. I would say that I could read a part and then you read its translation, more than reading the whole thing?
Guy Windsor
This is from folio 22r in the Getty manuscript, for those following along in the book.
Dario Magnani
So it’s right above the drawings of the posta di donna, the first drawings of it. And it says:
Noy semo doi guardie, una si fatta che l’altra, e una e contraria de l’altra. E zaschuna altra guardia in l’arte una simile de l’altra sie contrario, salvo le guardie che stano in punta, zoe, posta lunga e breve e meza porta di ferro che punta per punta la piu lunga fa offesa inanci.
Guy Windsor
So my translation of that is: “We are two guards, one made like the other and one is counter to the other. And with every other guard in the art, one like the other is the counter, except for the guards that stand with the point [in the centre].” In other words, you’re threatening with the point. “Thus long guard and short and middle iron door that thrust against thrust, the longer will strike first.”
Dario Magnani
Then goes on saying E zoe che po far una po far l’altra. E zaschuna guardia po fare volta stabile e meza volta. Volta stabile sie che stando fermo po zugar denanci e di dredo de una parte. Meza volta si e quando uno fa un passo o inanzi o indredo, e chossi po zugare de l’altra parte de inanzi e di dredo. Tutta volta sie quando uno va intorno uno pe cum l’altro pe, l’uno staga fermo e l’altro lo circundi.
Guy Windsor
So it continues, “And thus what one can, do the other can do. And every guard can do the stable turn and the half turn. The stable turn is when standing still, you can play in front and behind on one side. The half turn is when one makes a pass forwards or backwards and thus can play on the other side, in front and behind. The whole turn is when one goes around one foot with the other foot, the one staying still and the other going around.”
Dario Magnani
Then we have the last part of the paragraph where it goes: E perzo digo che la spada si ha tre movimenti, zoe volta stabile, meza volta, e tutta volta. E queste guardie sono chiamate l’una e l’altra posta di donna. Anchora sono iv cose in l’arte, zoe passare, tornare, acressere, e discressere.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so it continues. “And so I say that the sword also has three movements, thus stable turn, half turn and full turn. And these guards are called one and the other the woman’s guard. Also, there are four things in the art thus pass, return, advance and retreat.” Okay, so let me just give some background. Pretty much everyone I know in the Anglosphere, who’s interpreting Fiore, would look at this and say, the volta stabile: stable turn. Mezza volta: half turn, and tutta volta: full turn, are footwork actions. And at the end of describing these footwork actions, Fiore says, “And so I would also say the sword has three movements,” but then doesn’t define them. And that was sort of my unexamined position until you came and examined it with a fucking pickaxe. So, what do you think’s going on?
Dario Magnani
So I would rather entirely disagree with this interpretation, as you know. And as I told you back then, the reason why I approached you so suddenly, at the very beginning of the event, when I saw you were not busy at that moment, was because I’ve been using this interpretation of this passage for, like, 10 years now. And whenever teaching it you were like the final boss of that, because everywhere I was teaching that to, they would say, “but Guy Windsor says this.”
Guy Windsor
Okay. So you have a different position. And when you were teaching your position, people will come along and say, but you’re disagreeing with Guy.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, definitely. So I saved the occasion since we had sort of started this discussion five years ago, and then it never went anywhere, because we just stopped discussing for some reason.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I have to confess, I don’t actually remember that at all. I don’t disbelieve you. It’s just, I don’t recall it. And I think maybe the fact that it was probably 2019 and then we had 2020, that probably has something to do with it.
Dario Magnani
There’s a good chance that actually that is what stopped it because at the end of 2019, I got pneumonia and I was out for a bit.
Guy Windsor
And then everyone got pneumonia. Special pneumonia. So what do you think is going on? In other words, what is the volta stabile? Like what is the mezza volta, what is the tutta volta?
Dario Magnani
If we go to the passage, and I’d be using my English translation. This paragraph is starting more or less telling us that he’s showing us two guards which are both guard of the lady. And he’s showing them though to be one as a very loaded version of it with the arms high above and the point of the sword fundamentally facing down, so a very loaded version ready to throw a great blow and the other one is rather more ready guard with the sword on the shoulder, the arms low, the point high and fundamentally appearing to be ready to cross somehow.
Guy Windsor
In what you’re calling the more ready version, the weight is on the front foot and in the loaded version the weight is on the back foot.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, I’m not using the feet here as the difference between the two as much as the body position but yeah, the loaded one is also on the back foot and the unloaded one is also on the front foot, fundamentally. The passage more or less goes like we are two guards and look like each one like the other one, we are one against the other. We are one of the counter of the other and every other guard one to the other are counters with exceptions and he basically goes on with a first introductory part of the paragraph where in my opinion, he’s telling you that when the opponent presents a threat, you have to answer it. And if you don’t have another answer at hand, we could say, the same guard is an answer. So one is the counter of the other if they are similar, and then he makes the exception, if they are on the point don’t do that, because you will skewer each other. And then he goes on, basically out of nowhere, telling us and there’s the voltas. He starts off by saying each guard can do a stable turn, or I don’t use the turn word actually, I call them voltas.
Guy Windsor
Let’s just use volta stabile and mezza volta and just avoid the translation because we’re going to get into nuances of what it could mean later. So, just use the Italian for now, it’s fine.
Dario Magnani
Okay, so he tells you that each guard can do volta stabile, and mezza volta. Full stop. Which deliberately excludes tutta volta.
Guy Windsor
So not every guard can do a tutta volta, apparently.
Dario Magnani
That’s my take on that. He tells you volta stabile is that without moving, one can play back and forth on one side. Yeah, this is rather different from the way you translate it.
Guy Windsor
Stando fermo means standing still.
Dario Magnani
Yes, but at the same time it is also without moving.
Guy Windsor
Motionless.
Dario Magnani
Yes, not exactly a translation of stando fermo to me, because I think the overall meaning can be also passed by standing still, I translate it as without moving, because I think it is referring to moving on the line and moving yourself in the fight and not of moving anything in your body.
Guy Windsor
The reason I would say standing still is because it doesn’t preclude moving your arms. It just doesn’t want you to move your feet.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, but I don’t think that stable turn prevents you from moving your feet.
Guy Windsor
Why not?
Dario Magnani
Because that is an explanation of what a stable turn is. But then when the paragraph goes on, it moves on to showing an aggressor and the discrescere. So if I am passing, I am moving in the fight. If I am doing an aggressor, I have not really been moving. I have been sort of shifting.
Guy Windsor
Hang on a second. Before we go into that. The way I would translate accrescere, or the way I would explain accrescere is a step forward, where you step your front foot forward. Sometimes you bring up the back foot behind it, sometimes you’ll do something else with your back foot, but basically the front foot moves forward. Discrescere, is when you move one foot or the other back.
Dario Magnani
Not any motion that brings back one of the feet is an aggressor.
Guy Windsor
No, sure. But if you’re standing still, and you take a step backwards, so your left foot’s forward and you take a step backwards and the end of that step you’re still left foot forwards. That, to my mind, is a discrescere.
Dario Magnani
I’ll try to explain this with an example. If you think about the way he describes posta di dente di cinghiale. So the Boar’s Tooth, he’s telling you that from there, you can thrust without moving and then come back. Please, go check in the book.
Guy Windsor
I’m just grabbing my translation From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice, the Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi, because it is my translation of this stuff, and it’s got the transcription with it. So I can go immediately to find that as you go, because I do know exactly what you mean. But it’s this is one of those conversations where the exact phrasing is really important.
Dario Magnani
Okay, it’s page 24 recto.
Guy Windsor
And it’s page 174 in From Medieval Manuscript. So yeah, Okay, so in quello zitar di punta, in that throwing of the thrust, ello acresse lo pe ch’e dinanzi subito, it increases, or acresceres, the foot that is in front immediately and returns with a fendente to the head and to the arms. And returns in her guard.
Dario Magnani
So in this in this occasion, he’s showing us, in my opinion, but it this is getting messy though. But this occasion shows us a case where he tells you that without moving, you can throw that thrust and come back with a fendente or with an acrescere.
Guy Windsor
Where does he say without moving? So non si move di passo. And you don’t make a pass.
Dario Magnani
The way I see this, in that occasion, when he is just increasing a foot and that coming back with it, he hasn’t been moving in terms of having moved, of passing, so of having changed his position.
Guy Windsor
Because if you pass from one side to the other, the guard tends to change. Yeah, but if you just step forwards or backwards, the guard remains the same.
Dario Magnani
You don’t really need to change the guard.
Guy Windsor
You can do but you don’t have to.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, exactly. So in this specific reading, I think that an acrescrere or an aggressor do not constitute moving. I don’t think they break the idea of standing still the way you put it. So that’s why you don’t use standing still, I agree with your concern. I’m not saying that’s a sure thing. And it doesn’t really matter for my interpretation of the voltas. But I changed that tiny bit of translation. Because in the overall reading of this paragraph, in my opinion, it fits better, but the meaning between standing still and not moving isn’t really that far apart.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I will not be changing my translation on that. Not least because stando fermo is a much more direct translation. Stando is standing and fermo is still.
Dario Magnani
It is a literal translation. I’m not contesting that.
Guy Windsor
So what is the stable turn?
Dario Magnani
So it tells you that a stable turn is that without moving or standing still, however you prefer, one can play back and forth on one side. So as in any kind of action that can bring you playing back and forth on one side without taking a passing step is a stable turn.
Guy Windsor
Okay…
Dario Magnani
So that thrust he shows you in the Boar’s Tooth, moving fundamentally from the Boar’s Tooth to the long guard. And then that returning, coming back to the Boar’s Tooth on the same side playing forward and backwards or back and forth on the same side is a stable turn. A volta stabile. I keep using ‘stable turn’ because I’ve been reading your book. I’ve got it in my ears. And this is something that I always say to people that have not been studying with me before. When you read Fiore, Fiore is not Johannes Liechtenauer. Not every single word means a strictly specific action with that exact angle, that exact motion, that exact footwork.
Guy Windsor
I don’t think it does in Liechtenauer either.
Dario Magnani
Okay, fair enough. I don’t know that the German tradition enough but I would say that least the German tradition has a lot more categorizing than Fiore’s fendente, which is basically any blow going in one direction. Without differences between you would at least get a an Oberhau and a Zornhau, okay, there’s more categorization in Liechtenauer’s work than in Fiore’s. That’s the joke. So, I would say that by this passage, a stable turn identifies any action that doesn’t make you change the side of your body where you are fighting.
Guy Windsor
Okay. As he says “on one side”, so yeah, the sword does not go from one side to the other. I would agree with that completely.
Dario Magnani
I don’t think it’s a footwork motion that lets you fight on your front and on your back or whatever. But I think that it’s any action that is generated by footwork that does not invert the side of your body.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so I think this might be a good place to have a look at voltare, to turn, because the thing is you’ve got girare, which is very much like to turn around. And you’ve got tornare, which is basically to return. Yeah, right. And you’ve got voltare, which I actually had this discussion with my Italian teacher when I was in Italy over Christmas. And of course, I got a couple of Italian lessons. And of course, we’d had this conversation in December, so I was like, okay, tell me about voltare and in his head, voltare absolutely implies a turning motion.
Dario Magnani
But for a human, it requires a turning motion. Because the straight-out difference between voltare and girare to me is that girare identifies the action of turning your body. While voltare identifies the action of turning, we could say, your direction of sight, so that you giri lo sguardo you turn your sight, but you don’t volti lo sguardo. You volti yourself. Okay, so voltare already brings the meaning of direction.
Guy Windsor
So let’s simplify this slightly. How would you, because obviously your English is really good. Much better than my Italian. How would you translate Volta into English?
Dario Magnani
This is a terrible question.
Guy Windsor
It’s a great question. And it’s a necessary question and you knew it was coming.
Dario Magnani
Because not every single word has a straight out translation.
Guy Windsor
Sure. I mean, volta is turn, in the same way that it is my turn in a card game, that would be a volta.
Dario Magnani
Yes.
Guy Windsor
But it doesn’t have to mean only that. So you can say that there are multiple possible translations, but for the sake of the stable volta, what would be in your mind the proper, most useful translation of the term?
Dario Magnani
Probably, if I was to choose a single English word, I would use motion over turn.
Guy Windsor
Motion. Okay. So a stable motion or half motion.
Dario Magnani
Move, maybe, more than motion.
Guy Windsor
Motion is better. Because if you think about if you think about Viggiani…
Dario Magnani
I don’t really study Viggiani.
Guy Windsor
Definitely read Viggiani. Because he is talking about tempo as basically a movement from guard to guard. And a whole tempo is when you go from a guard, like this held up above your head with the point back, and you swing it all the way down. So the point is close to the ground, that is a whole tempo. And a half tempo is when it stops in the middle. So he’s actually discussing motions of the sword and analysing them and whatever. If I was a translator you had hired to get the English translation of your to express your interpretation correctly, my feeling would be go with motion. So a stable motion is when you don’t change sides, you might step forwards or backwards, but you are doing a motion but because your one foot isn’t past in the other, you are more stable. The foot is off the ground for a much shorter period of time. There’s much less opportunity to be thrown.
Dario Magnani
To a degree. I could probably consider, in terms of purely shades of meaning, ‘swing’ as to be another close call for translation. A swinging motion has a lot of volta. It’s not really a straight motion, but it’s not really a rounding motion.
Guy Windsor
If I’m in dente di cinghiaro and I thrust you in the face with posta longa the motion is a swinging of my sword arm forwards. Okay, stable swing. I like it.
Dario Magnani
I think swing is better than motion, probably. They both carry other meanings.
Guy Windsor
Sure. Okay, translation is always a compromise. Okay, so the stable swing. That’s going to take a long time to get used to.
Dario Magnani
So we want to call that the stable swing. And that’s the reason why I’m still using volta because it’s hard to find another word.
Guy Windsor
Honestly, whatever the physical execution turns out to be when I’m teaching it in class, I will be using the Italian term because it cuts out all this problem like we use mandritto fendente, we don’t say forehand descending blow, for the same reason. It just eliminates the problem of coming up with a selection of definitions from the Venn diagram.
Dario Magnani
I like being able to find words in in the person’s languages because a lot of people consider the original terms to be a lot of jargon, useless if thrown at them for no reason. I know many people that see it that way, to be blasted with 10 Italian terms out of 15 words. So I need to find an in-between solution, but for this one, I couldn’t find one until a minute ago, where swing isn’t really bad.
Guy Windsor
On the getting people to use Italian terms in an Anglophone class, what I do is I get them to do the motions. And then I give them a name for it, but I don’t emphasise, you have to learn this name. It’s just they pick it up slowly over time. It can turn into kind of a word salad if you’re not careful. And then when they when they’ve done something cool, like striking from posta di donna with a mandritto fendente, posta longa into dente di cinghiaro and the whole thing was done with a passo. They’re like, oh my God, that’s a lot of Italian. You just swing the sword from your shoulder down to the ground while you’re stepping forward. I mean, duh.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, everyone has to find their best balance. And I try to translate the words that are safest to translate, and I avoid translating the words that could cause a mess.
Guy Windsor
When I’m publishing a translation, I have to translate every word. I can footnote words if I need to. But to my mind, if you leave Italian words untranslated, when you’re selling somebody a translation, you are being unfair to the completely Anglophonic purchaser.
Dario Magnani
I would be doing the opposite, meaning that I would probably be leaving everything untranslated when coming to specific technical terms. And then footnote the translation.
Guy Windsor
I wouldn’t do that because I’ve seen translations produced that way. And I’ve seen an awful lot of very upset people who thought they were buying a translation and what they got was a mixture of English and Italian and they were not happy at all.
Dario Magnani
I can understand that. That’s one of the reasons why you can’t find an English Fiore by me around. So this is the basis of my reading of this passage, the stable turn is this. So what’s a half turn or mezza volta? Let’s go back to that.
Guy Windsor
Half swing. Okay, so it’s when one makes a turn forwards or backwards and thus can play on the other side.
Dario Magnani
I have the passage on the computer, just a second. Here we are, okay, so to me the translation is mezza volta is when one takes a step forward or backwards. This way they can play back and forth on the other side. So my take on this is that any action that is generated by a footwork that brings your body to the other side and so you’re playing to the other side is a mezza volta. So if I was swinging a fendente from the right to the left with a full step, with a passing step of my right leg. It could be one of the 1000s of possible mezza volta actions.
Guy Windsor
I would agree 100%.
Dario Magnani
Okay. So a mezza volta is any action that allows you to go doing volta stabile actions on the other side, fundamentally.
Guy Windsor
It’s an action that brings your sword from one side of the body to the other with a pass. I would say, Yeah,
Dario Magnani
More than seeing the sword, I wouldn’t say the sword to the other side of your body, because there’s a couple occasions in which this wouldn’t be true. Namely, with some of the central guards, and some of the guards, the lady or window, you could have the sword on the other side entirely, because it’s on the back of your head. So I don’t really like seeing the sword on the other side, I would say that the range of motion of your sword to the other side of your body.
Guy Windsor
If I’m holding the sword on my right shoulder, and I turn my body towards you so my left shoulder is towards you, and the sword is actually pointing towards you from behind my head. Mechanically that is chambered on the right side of my body.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.
Guy Windsor
So you’re chambered on one side, and you release that chamber and you swing through and you actually go to the other side.
Dario Magnani
That’s why I’m saying the range of motion of your sword is on the other side more than the sword itself.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Okay.
Dario Magnani
Because otherwise swapping from a slightly loaded guard of the lady, just turning your body and getting into a very loaded one would be a mezza volta because it now goes on the other side.
Guy Windsor
Because it requires a pass. It’s only a mezza volta if it has a pass.
Dario Magnani
Okay, good. I prefer to expose it as the chambering of the blow is also a good way to put it. I would say the range of motion of the weapon. Because, as an example, if you are standing in the short guard, then you posta breve and you are left foot forward, you step back, you get to be…
Guy Windsor
That’s not a mezza volta, because you’re not playing on the other side.
Dario Magnani
It would absolutely be a mezza volta to me. Because it allows you to play on the other side. That action to me would absolutely be a mezza volta because you would have an action with a passing step is bringing you to be able to play for forward and backwards or back and forth on the other side. Because it’s not telling you it is mezza volta, Meza volta si e quando uno fa un passo o inanzi o indredo, e chossi po zugare de l’altra parte de inanzi e di dredo. So you can play and this way you can play. So it is a passing step that allows you to go playing on the other side of body.
Guy Windsor
Okay, maybe.
Dario Magnani
So to my reading of that, that is a mezza volta. And so really any action that involves a passing step that makes you able to play on the other side is a mezza volta.
Guy Windsor
I would agree, generally speaking.
Dario Magnani
And then we have fundamentally covered every single possible action because every action that is generated by footwork that doesn’t change the side of your body is volta stabile. Every action generated by footwork that does change the side of your body is a mezza volta and what’s the need for the tutta volta?
Guy Windsor
That’s a good question.
Dario Magnani
And Fiore tells us tutta volta is any action, this is a paraphrasing more than translating, okay, I am going by memory at this moment. It tells you that it’s any action that involves one foot standing still and the other circling it.
Guy Windsor
Incidentally, it is probably that one sentence where he’s just talking about the feet that gives us the impression that volta stabile and mezza volta are fundamentally footwork actions.
Dario Magnani
Yeah. So let’s take an example. Okay. We are getting close. I am with my left foot forward, and I am on your right side of the body. I’ve just been throwing a reverso fendente, maybe, and I want to put my sword at your throat from behind you. So what am I doing? I am keeping my right foot still. And I am throwing my left foot behind you and getting at your throat. So this is not a volta stabile, this is not a mezza volta. I would say that this is a tutta volta.
Guy Windsor
The description of what your body does, is absolutely a tutta volta.
Dario Magnani
He is trying to categorize those few rarer, and I would say that mostly generated by close combat, by close play, by wrestling, grappling, stuff like this, that wouldn’t fit any of the other two descriptions because he’s trying to lay out the system. And so he’s telling you, hey man, look, it can sometimes happen that you have to turn around your foot to something. That would be a tutta volta.
Guy Windsor
I agree. And the way I would think of it is exactly like you’re doing an armbar or something and you sweep one leg around to kind of get that motion in to crank the arm. In terms of what the feet are doing, it is completely unexceptional. The question is, with this one, it’s all about the feet. With the other two it’s not all about the feet.
Dario Magnani
It’s not all about the feet. It is the actions generated by that.
Guy Windsor
Let me finish. Because if you strike a mandritto fendente, so your left foot is chambered on the right and you swing a forehand descending flow as a right hander so it’s forehand and you’re turning with it and you’re really turning your hips into it to hit really hard. One foot is staying still and the other one is turning around it. That is still a mezza volta, because you’re only going halfway. So what about that motion, he doesn’t specify forwards or backwards, like the motion of the foot. Now, the tutta voltas that I tend to do, when I think of them as a tutta volta, are almost invariably backwards so that my right foot is going clockwise or my left foot is going anti clockwise. But that’s not specified in the text, the direction is not specified. And neither is the duration of the turn, how far around the circle you get. We should probably highlight something. The kind of conclusion that we’re heading towards is that this sentence, “And so I say that the sword also has three movements that are stable turn, half turn, a full turn,” you would say that is a summary of terms that have come before all of this is referring to sword actions, and they are not specifically footwork actions.
Dario Magnani
Yes, because there is no “also” there.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, “And so I say…”
Dario Magnani
“And so I say that also the sword” but there’s no “also”. You’ve been saying that by memory probably as a mistake.
Guy Windsor
Oh, hang on. Wait a second. Wait a second. Let me check. I have a horrible suspicion that also snuck in where it don’t fucking belong. One second. Let me just go to the actual published translation. Right at the beginning. Okay. Yeah, hang on. Let me just read out the Italian: E perzo digo che la spada si ha tre movimenti, zoe volta stabile, meza volta, e tutta volta. “And so I say that the sword si ha…, has three turns. The “also” shouldn’t be there. Yeah. Right. Okay, so I need to do a second edition of my book, thanks to one fucking word. Thank you, Dario. Very helpful.
Dario Magnani
You’re welcome.
Guy Windsor
Okay, right. So yes, you’re absolutely right. That is a classic example of interpretation getting in the way of translation. Now I have Tom Leoni’s published translation here, Flowers of Battle Volume One, which is an absolutely fucking belter of a book. It’s fantastic. Every Fiore scholar should have a copy. Not least because the introduction is really thorough and interesting. And if I remember rightly, think, dear Tom. Yeah, Tom has “the sword also has three movements, volta stabile, mezza volta, tutta volta.” So Tom puts an “also” in there too, so it’s not just me.
Dario Magnani
Glad to help.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so yeah, so let me just say categorically, that ‘also’ does not belong. And if anyone who is listening along with my From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice book open in front of them, take a pen and strike out the “also”. I’m in the process of doing the rest of the manuscript, treating it the same way. So a volume for wrestling, that’s coming out in a couple of weeks. A volume on the dagger, the sword volume’s already done, then armoured combat on foot, and then the mounted combat. So when I’ve done all that, there’ll be editing of all of the translations and then I’ll produce this gigantic mega finished, thank fuck, I never have to do that again, definitive translation: The World According to Guy. So, okay, and the “also” will not be there when we get these new editions out. All right. “So I say that the sword has three movements.” Without the also that does imply that what he’s been talking about all along is sword motions. Fuck you, Dario, Fuck you. Have you any idea how many videos I have to reshoot? Any idea?
Dario Magnani
I’m undecided whether this is giving me some kind of guilty pleasure or…
Guy Windsor
You should be enjoying yourself today, you really should.
Dario Magnani
So just to close out on the previous topic. I would say that in extremely streamlined and simple modern terms, we could say that a volta stabile is any action generated by no stepping or advancing or retreating, minor steps. Mezza volta is any action generated by a full step. A tutta volta is any action generated by a pivoting step. I think that’s a decent sum up in modern terms.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I think that’s a very clear statement of your position. And I am coming swiftly around to it, but I’m not quite there yet. He then says these guards are called one and the other the woman’s guard. Posta di donna. Okay. I think that’s unremarkable. We can just take that as read.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, he is basically telling you, you can sort of balance forward and backward, that those are stable turns. Those are volta stabile.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. For those who are not Fiore scholars and who have not been following my Fiore stuff, if I’m forward weighted, and I turn my body so my weight goes from my front foot to my back foot, I would call that the volta stabile. And I would think of it as a footwork action, although the feet aren’t actually moving while they’re turning in place, but like you’re stepping out cigarettes, but they’re not actually moving. So you would also call that a stable turn, would you?
Dario Magnani
I would consider that to be one of the hundreds of possible stable turns from that position.
Guy Windsor
All right. That helps.
Dario Magnani
But I really didn’t really focus that on the foot motion. I know many people that have that opinion on the stable turn, the point is the motion of the feet, turning one direction or the other. I would definitely not consider that to be the core part of it being a volta stabile.
Guy Windsor
No, it’s the in front or behind that is the core part. Yeah, I would agree.
Dario Magnani
And here comes one of the most interesting parts of this paragraph, at least to me, which is the ending of it.
Guy Windsor
“Anchora sono iv cose in l’arte, zoe passare, tornare, acressere, e discressere.” Also there are four things in the art.
Dario Magnani
Out of nowhere Fiore comes up with footwork. Why? Because has been telling you about the voltas. And the voltas are generated by this footwork. So if he doesn’t talk to you about the footwork here, the structure of his manual would be failing, because the structure is iterative. Anytime you will be needing something from here on, he’s going to tell you. And so here, he’s been preparing the sword in two hands. And I wouldn’t say that as much as he is preparing the weapons of war section of his manual. And for that it seems they are relevant to the side of your body, because a longsword functions in the same way a poleaxe functions in terms of body side, you need to start understanding the terms, the voltas. And once I’ve been telling you about the voltas, I need to show you, at least to mention in this case, because he probably thought those were rather basic actions you wouldn’t forget, it’s just like the blows, he doesn’t really explain them. You need to remember that the five principles that regulate this art are the voltas and the actions that produce them. And so, it goes on telling you, you will have passing, you will have recovering, you will have increasing, you have decreasing.
Guy Windsor
Now, a pass is anytime one foot passes the other forwards or backwards. Tornare, the one place in the manuscript where I find the tornare clearly used, and it’s definitely not passing backwards. It’s where you’re defending with a dagger against the sword thrust. And what happens is you’re in a rear weighted guard with your right foot forward, and as the thrust comes towards you, you pull your right foot back to meet your left foot, make parry with the dagger and then you pass in with the left foot. So the feet do pass each other eventually but the thing that you’re doing with the front foot is you’re just bringing it back to the backfoot and that is in the text. It’s a tornare.
Dario Magnani
Give me again the page, sorry.
Guy Windsor
Sure.
Dario Magnani
Because I want to give it a check because among my quotes for tornare I didn’t use that one, because I have others too
Guy Windsor
Nineteen recto, where the sword and the dagger begin to play. “Lo pe dritto cum rebatter in dredo lu faro tornare”. The right foot with the parry, backwards, I make it tornare, turn. 19r.
Dario Magnani
it’s the first one you said,
Guy Windsor
The first play, first paragraph, which begins Qui cominza Spada e daga a zugare ‘Here begin the sword and the dagger to play.’
Dario Magnani
I think I’m bringing the wrong one.
Guy Windsor
We may be using different pagination standards. It is between the dagger section and the sword in one hand. So right after the ninth Master of the dagger ends.
Dario Magnani
That’s exactly where I am.
Guy Windsor
That first paragraph.
Dario Magnani
Oh, the very first one. I’m sorry, I was reading the one after that.
Guy Windsor
Because when it when you do that in practice, you can’t pass it all the way back behind you, or you end up out of measure and you can’t get into do the murderous stab that comes afterwards. So, to my mind it is absolutely clearly not a standard pass backwards, it is a withdrawing of the front foot, and you get this lovely turn. And in fact, because I have it on video, I’ll put a link in the show notes to this as well. guywindsor.net/dvsthrust. Where are we? Okay, so this is from page 45 of Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice. And I’ve video is linked on page 47. And as if you think dagger versus sword that’s DVS. So the whole link is guywindsor.net/dvsthrust. So dagger versus sword thrust. So if people type that into their phones, that will take them to a video of me doing the action. So you can see that kind of turning thing. And I’ll put that link in the show no tes. So people can just go to the show notes and find it there. Well, you can see me so I’ll just show you what I mean. There, I’ve got the dagger here and I do that. Because that takes me out of reach of the thrust. And I’m close enough to get my left hand on the sword wrist, as you see. So that to me is a tornare. That’s how you do the tornare. Well, that is an example of the tornare.
Dario Magnani
Okay, I have to check this one out. Because while it makes sense, there’s a problem with the tornare which is that Fiore uses that word a lot without ever providing an indication whether or not that use is the one he intends for the action quoted here. So as an example, I have a rather different reading of tornare, which comes mainly from page 24 recto. And page 26 recto. So 24 recto is, again, the Boar’s tooth description, where he tells you that with the throwing of thrust, you immediately increase the front foot, come back with the fendente for your head and for the arms and the cover to your guard. So consider that I translate that tornare as recover and not as returning.
Guy Windsor
Whereas I would say, in fencing terms, they are pretty damn similar. “E torna com lo fendente zo per gli brazzi.” I return with a fendente, for example to the arms.
Dario Magnani
I use ‘recover’, simply because it allows me to discriminate between the use of tornare as not this action, and the use of tornare as this action. So I would use a return when I don’t think he’s referring to this action and recover when I think he’s referring to the action in this paragraph. So in this case, I would use recover instead of return when talking about the foot.
Guy Windsor
So hang on. So we’re talking about recovering from a lunge, like in modern fencing, when recovering from the lunges, you have lunged and you return to your guard and that is literally called the recovery.
Dario Magnani
This is what we just saw, fundamentally. Throw a thrust with a increase of the front foot and recover it.
Guy Windsor
And recover with a cut. That’s fair.
Dario Magnani
He used to say it in the same way in page 26 recto. When someone goes for your leg, increase the front foot, then recover it back and throw a fendente. So in this case,
Guy Windsor
It’s a forwards action.
Dario Magnani
Oh yes. Because it comes after a decrease.
Guy Windsor
“Quando una te tra per la gamba, discresse lo pe ch’e denanzi.” So where one throws for your leg, or attacks at your leg. Withdraw the foot that is in front. I’ve got the wrong glasses on for this. Let me check my transcription. Yeah, I’m just reading from the from the correct sized facsimile I produced.
Dario Magnani
Oh, not this one. I’m reading it from the facsimile by Michael Chidester.
Guy Windsor
I have that. But the one I produced is like, one 1/10 of the price. So you can literally throw it in a fencing bag or whatever. Michael takes the top end and makes these beautiful, beautiful books, which I have a stack of over there. And yeah, I do the cheap, chuck in your fencing bag, end of the market, which is great. Okay, so “O tu lo torna in dredo.” Okay, so, “or you can pass it back.”
Dario Magnani
Yeah, I use recover because it tells you when someone goes for your leg, decrease the front foot then recover it back and throw a fendente.
Guy Windsor
No, not ‘then’. It’s ‘or’. “O tu lo torna in dredo.Quando una te tra per la gamba, discresse lo pe ch’e denanzi. O tu lo torna in dredo.” So discrescere, or you return it backwards. Look carefully. It’s not e, it’s o. So in this case, I would say it absolutely is a pass back, it is not a return to your previous position. It’s an alternative to doing a discrescere. I have a magnifying glass here, but I can’t lend it to you. Because you’re in Italy.
Dario Magnani
So I understand what you’re saying. There’s a full stop in between. I see what’s your meaning. I’ve been using that full stop differently than you did. And now I understand what you’re saying. So you either decrease the front foot, or you return it back and throw the fendente, I get what you’re saying.
Guy Windsor
So you have an alternative, you can either just pull the front for back or you can pass it all the way back to avoid it being hit, and smack him in the head. I’m paying you back for that ‘also’.
Dario Magnani
It makes sense.
Guy Windsor
Good. Good. Good, good.
Dario Magnani
That makes sense. Yeah, this is the problem with the tornare. As I was saying, Fiore’s using that word solidly indiscriminately.
Guy Windsor
This is a key thing about dealing with any of these manuscripts. Most of the time, what we interpret as technical terms are not. They’re just like general, ordinary Italian used to describe ordinary Italian things like smacking people in the face.
Dario Magnani
I would generally agree with this. But in this specific case, he is intentionally identifying tornare as a technical term, he is literally naming it amongst the five things of the art.
Guy Windsor
The four things of the art.
Dario Magnani
I would say that five, because he tells you that there’s four more, so I am including the Voltas.
Guy Windsor
In which case there’s seven because it’s three voltas.
Dario Magnani
I would say the voltas and the footwork actions but yeah, whatever.
Guy Windsor
Seven’s a better number. So, all right. Now, here’s a thought. “So I say that the sword has three movements, thus stable turn, half turn and full turn.” Okay. movimenti is movements. That’s totally uncontroversial. It’s even a true friend in terms of translation because movement, movimenti, they’re cognate. So the stable movement, the half movement and the full movement if you like, or motion or swing. And anchora, also, too, as well, whether that’s being like really specific or whether that’s being more sort of pleonastic, it’s hard to sell. I mean, he uses anchora, a lot like most Italians do.
Dario Magnani
His use of anchora, he tends to not to mean, again, which in Italian, anchora would mean again. And I translate that as there are four more things in the art.
Guy Windsor
Okay. I say, also, there are four things in the art. I don’t see any more there. So you’re getting anchora to be more?
Dario Magnani
Yeah, because as an Italian, I will translate it as ‘again’. But in terms of numbers, again, is four times and in terms of numbers, I would translate it as more. So “Anchora sono iv cose in l’arte, zoe passare, tornare, acressere, e discressere.” I would translate that anchora as meaning more, rather than to another time, but another thing.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I would agree. So it’s ‘also’, like, we’ve had this, now we also have this. All right. So I think the pass is unremarkable. The return is not simply a pass backwards, but it can be used as a pass backwards. And we see that in the seventh play of the second part of the zogho largo across the middle of the swords, where he’s slipping the leg. But also, it’s that motion, where you’re basically swinging the front foot back towards the back foot and then exchanging your feet, so you get that tornare.
Dario Magnani
How would you take back the foot? Taking the foot back from the harm’s way?
Guy Windsor
I would say returning it, I mean, the thing is, ‘return’ in English has lots of shades of meaning, like “many happy returns of the day,” right? What the hell does that mean? Well, it means happy birthday. So just using ‘return’, I think is a useful translation of it, because it can mean all sorts of things. And it is used in several different ways in the text. And there’s no reason to suppose that tornare used on page 26 is different to the tornare used on page 19.
Dario Magnani
I probably have a smaller knowledge of the various shades of meaning of that word. To me, return had a rather simple meaning. But, again, given the point you have just given to me that about the return play, I would say I’d probably go back to using a return for every instance, though that’s less helpful in terms of interpretation for the people you are teaching to. It’s also less prone to mistakes.
Guy Windsor
And there’s a limit to how helpful we can be if it means interfering with the meaning of the text.
Dario Magnani
I agree. In this case, I’ll go back to return.
Guy Windsor
Acrescere and discrescere. I mean, it means increase and decrease. I would translate that as advance and retreat.
Dario Magnani
I would translate it if I was to use advance and retreat. I would always say advance the foot and retreat the foot, though.
Guy Windsor
But it’s not in the text. It’s in the text all over the place. Like yeah, in the in the play of the exchange of thrust, you know, “Acresce lo pe ch’e denanzi”, increase the foot that is in front. So he tells you which foot to do. But in the sentence that we’re talking about is just acrescere and discrescere.
Dario Magnani
In this case, yeah. If I was to translate the single word as acrescere, it’s fine to translate it as advance. Absolutely. As long as every time you use it, you refer to the foot, because it’s not the person advancing, but it’s the foot being advanced.
Guy Windsor
Yeah and when you discrescere the foot when you’re avoiding the cut to the leg, yeah, your body will move back a little bit, but it’s not a step back. You’re just pulling the front foot back out of the way and then striking.
Dario Magnani
He also tells you to put it back. Not in the plays of the longsword, but actually in the other one. No, no, you’re right.
Guy Windsor
That’s a nice change.
Dario Magnani
It’s in the description of the Boar’s tooth.
Guy Windsor
Now we should probably also bring up the location of this passage. I just love the fact that we’ve been talking about this one paragraph for over an hour. This is Fiore heaven really.
Dario Magnani
This time, because it is really on top of like, five or six hours. I would bring up one thing. So you would translate those as advancing and retreating, I’m fine with that. I actually do like that. It’s more readable than increase and decrease in modern English, absolutely. But what action do those represent?
Guy Windsor
Okay, if we talk about the front foot, for which we have clear textual evidence. If I do, for example, the exchange of thrusts, I stepped the front foot out of the way, I increased or advanced the front foot out of the way. So my front foot is going to move. If it’s my left foot, I’ll move my left foot forward and to the left, and then I’ll pass across with my back foot. You’re going to have to excuse both my Italian pronunciation and the fact that I will struggle to read these because I’ve got my glasses on. “Questo zogho si chiama scambiar de punta e se fa per tal modo” This play is called the exchange of thrust, and it’s done in this way, “Quando uno te tra una punta” when somebody attacks you with a thrust. “subito acresse lo tuo pe ch’e denanci fora de strada” Immediately advance your foot that is in front out of the way. “e cum l’altro pe passa ala traversa anchora fora di strada” And with the other foot pass across, also out of the way. Okay, so basically what’s happening there is my front foot is moving in this step, which is not passing and then my back foot is passing. So the acrescere does not require you to make that correcting action of the back foot. Like if you just do a simple fencing advance, front foot goes forward, back foot goes forward the same amount, right? In this case, it’s just the front foot moving. And in the avoidance of a cut to the leg on the previous page, 26r, he says “discresse lo pe ch’e denanzi. O tu lo torna in dredo.” “So withdraw or decrease or retreat the front foot back”. So you’re bringing that foot back. That doesn’t require any motion of the other foot. So I will also say that if I’m standing there, left foot forward, and I want to just take a step back, and I step back with my back foot and then recover my guard with the front foot. I would call that also a discrescere because there isn’t a sensible thing to call it.
Dario Magnani
This is my problem with our acrescere and discrescere. So there’s three logics we could follow. And the more it makes sense, in terms of fencing, the least it remains consistent with the book. So straight out of the book, it’s always the front foot moving forward and backwards, you don’t have any proof of the back foot being increased or decreased. I cannot accept this reading. Because it makes absolutely no sense that a whole fencing system doesn’t in any way consider the possibility of decreasing the back foot.
Guy Windsor
Well, of course it does. Because when he’s specifying the front foot, he only needs to specify the front foot if it can also be the back foot. But because he chooses to specify it must obviously be either foot.
Dario Magnani
This is exactly my point. So we don’t have any hard evidence of the back foot being able to increase or decrease but the same time, we have the specification of which foot is increasing and decreasing, even though it’s casually.
Guy Windsor
Also, it’s simply absurd. You can’t watch two people fence for any length of time without seeing at least a couple of discresceres in there. It happens all the time.
Dario Magnani
This is absolutely my point. That’s why I was saying I cannot accept an interpretation, saying that discrescere at the very least doesn’t apply to the back foot. I’m not saying you’d say that. I’m taking the levels. Okay. So, straight out of the book, we cannot demonstrate the existence of acrescere and discrescere of the back foot. But for level two, it’s impossible not to consider that. And then here comes level three, which is disaster, because I will need to recheck the tornare thing, because any interpretation we take of the tornare comes from one, two passages overall in the whole book. So I have two readings for mine. And the same way you have two for yours. So it’s nearly impossible to hard proof. I’m saying your mine and yours. Speaking of the ones we presented, not necessarily the ones we’ll be defending, because I think yours is rather good. And now that I have read the passage that way, this gives me even more difficulties. If we want to read the tornare the way I was doing it before. And I have always been putting my hands forward on that and saying, I can in no way say that I think this is correct. But I think this is a possibility. If returning is the action of pulling back our foot that has been advanced or retreated. So if you do an acrescere or a discrescere, and the tornare is the action of bringing it back, we fundamentally have the basics of modern sport fencing footwork, right into Fiore’s book.
Guy Windsor
Why not?
Dario Magnani
But that would really open up the possibility to consider Fiore’s standing in the short guard, and doing advancing steps without turning at all, front foot, back foot, front foot, back foot, front foot, back foot. This is the way I read it, a lot of people do not. I understand that you agree with this.
Guy Windsor
Okay. I don’t think that is a complete description of all the footwork you do with Fiore, because of course, you’re passing a lot. So basically, everything in sport fencing, except the flesh, and the long lunge, I would say is entirely present in every fencing system ever produced.
Dario Magnani
I can’t say every fencing for system because haven’t studied them all, but I am sure they are all in Fiore.
Guy Windsor
I’ve never come across a martial art that didn’t have those actions. The flesh is basically a bastardised …. And the lunge, well, we have it from dente di cinghiaro when you advance the front foot and you throw somebody in the face, it’s a short lunge. It’s just because of the mechanics of the weapon and the conditions of the fight and all these other things, it doesn’t make sense to do a full smallsword style lunge or a modern fencing lunge. But it is certainly a lunge-like action. It’s just a short one.
Dario Magnani
It’s a lunge. It’s a short one, but it’s a lunge. I agree. And in this framework, the meaning of the tornare action is, in my opinion, extremely important. Because if tornare doesn’t mean recovering a foot that’s been increased or decreased, we either have to suppose that actually doesn’t have a name at all and Fiore didn’t talk about it, or that it is not considered into the system.
Guy Windsor
No, okay. Right. I’m just going to stand up and I’m going to show you those two recoveries. And why I will be perfectly comfortable calling them recoveries in English. And this isn’t maybe great for the listeners, because they can’t see but I’ll try and explain what I’m doing as I do it. All right. So the defence against the sword thrust holding a dagger. I’m holding a pencil. I have chosen to put my right foot forward and my weight on my left foot. And when the thrust comes towards me, I recover my front foot out of danger, and I pass in. No problem. And when we have come to some crossing of the sword, somehow or other, I’ve parried, or I’ve attacked and been parried or whatever, and my opponent cuts for my leg, I recover my front foot. Now if it’s a short recovery, it may just be a discrescere and if there’s a full recovery to or past my back foot, I’d call it a tornare. I think the difference between discrescere and tornare there is simply how far the foot travels. And I think Fiore would not lose any sleep about which way you described it, because I think if he really cared, he would define it really carefully.
Dario Magnani
That’s possible. But I would say that if he talks about something, he is always trying to give it a repeatable interpretation or repeatable meaning.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but we’ve already established that volta stabile, in your interpretation, can be 1000 different things, so long as the sword isn’t going from one side to the other. Staying on the same side and going forwards and backwards, is volta stabile.
Dario Magnani
But it has a very strict definition. How would you define a tornare?
Guy Windsor
I would define a tornare as the recovery of the front foot. And so there’s an overlap between discrescere and tornare. And I’m quite comfortable with that.
Dario Magnani
So one is a definition of intention, let me say, needing to remove the foot from danger?
Guy Windsor
No, I would say one of them involves a turn of the hips and the other one doesn’t, in practice. A tornare, because of the way the foot is moving, you’re going to have to move your hips to make space for the foot. Whereas the discrescere and the acrescere can be done with your hips basically staying the same.
Dario Magnani
And how do you differentiate the tornare from a ‘passare indietro’, from a pass backwards?
Guy Windsor
Because if I’m passing all the way backwards, so from a left foot forward guard position into a right foot forward guard position, but doing it with a pass back of my left foot, if I do it to get out of the way of something, I’d say that’s a tornare. I don’t have a problem with that. Because again, a useful definition of art from this period is natural human actions ordered into a system so they can be studied and taught. And the thing about natural actions is they are infinite and varied. And what we’re doing is we’re applying classifications after the fact. And as with these things, there is going to be some slippage. Now, if one, if the foot does not pass the other foot, it is not a pass, I would say. So if I’m passing forwards with my right foot, my right foot is going to go past my left foot.
Dario Magnani
I wouldn’t define a passing step that way.
Guy Windsor
It’s a walking step.
Dario Magnani
Yeah. But given the strength of the structure of Fiore’s system, I would define a passing step as one that makes the sword go on the other side of the body.
Guy Windsor
No. That’s a mezza volta, but not all passes are mezza voltas. He said, a mezza volta is when with a pass forwards or backwards
Dario Magnani
A mezza volta is an action that involves a pass.
Guy Windsor
But if I’m if I have my sword and posta longa, and I just walk towards you, those are passing steps that I’m using, but they are not mezza voltas, I would say.
Dario Magnani
To me they are, because if I if I retreat my sword after that step, I’ll be retreating it on the other side of my body compared to before it.
Guy Windsor
It is staying in the middle of the body the whole way. It’s not going from one side to the other.
Dario Magnani
Again, mezza volta doesn’t say, you move the sword to the other side of the body. But it tells you that when you do a mezza volta, you become able to play back and forth on the other side. And if I am in the long guard with my left foot forward, if I want to go to the guard of the Lady, I have to go to the guard of the Lady on the right. If I don’t step.
Guy Windsor
Kind of yes. Except actually, no. How many times in the beginners’ class, have you seen beginners accidentally go into posta di donna with the wrong leg forward and get their legs all switched up and whatever. And that’s terrible. And it’s not Fiore and we all know that if you chamber it on the right you should have your left foot forward, so you do a nice passing step to get to the other side. Mezza volta, it’s lovely. But just look at the Bolognese. They are forever chambering on the wrong bloody side, and having the sword over on their right side low down with the right foot forward instead of the left foot forward as God intended. I mean, important, I think, that we don’t become so narrow in our definitions. So for instance, take frontale as an example. Okay, the guard of frontale as it’s shown, as I use it, as I interpret it, I have my left foot forward, it can be done either side but the way it’s illustrated in the text. My left foot forward, and the sword is closing my high inside line. So my sword is way over to my left. The only sensible action I can take from there is a reverso fendente not a mandritto fendente. It is therefore chambered on my left side, even though I am left foot forward, and it’s there in the book, I would say.
Dario Magnani
I wouldn’t.
Guy Windsor
So let’s say I’m in tutta porta di ferro and you swing a sword at my head, and I beat it aside and the moment of contact of the weapons, I am basically taking my sword from tutta porta di ferro into frontale. The motion that creates the parry is that transition from tutta porta di ferro into frontale. For that parry to work, it has to cross the central line of my body or your sword is going to hit me. So frontale in that instance, is going past the centre line of my body, and therefore over to my left, I do not have to take a step to do that, I’m still left foot forwards. From there, I can do all sorts of things. But the simplest, most straightforward, most obvious thing to do is from this position where the sword is on my left and the point is high, if I just drop it onto your head or over your arms or whatever, that is a reverso fendente, it is a backhand blow from above.
Dario Magnani
But is that anywhere in the book?
Guy Windsor
Sure. Absolutely. I wrote an entire article on it called One Play One Drill Many Questions.
Dario Magnani
I’m afraid I have to read it.
Guy Windsor
It’s in the book I sent you. Did you not read the entire 250 pages of it before we met? Sir, I am appalled.
Dario Magnani
I honestly can’t conjure it up in my mind where it is.
Guy Windsor
I’ll show you. Think of the crossings of the sword in the Zogho Largo. Either crossed at the point, or crossed at the middle of the swords. Right now the book is open to 25r. So I’ll do the one where it crosses into the swords. I’m here. Which means my left foot is forward. I’m crossing. Your sword is on my left, which means I need to have my sword on my left. Otherwise your sword is in my face. I’m closing the line. That is fencing obvious, right? So that is frontale. And I could strike from there a reverso fendente, no problem. And I could do it with a step or without a step.
Dario Magnani
I have no problem with this. So I probably didn’t understand what you were saying before at this point.
Guy Windsor
Fair enough. These things are best done sword in hand, obviously. But my point is, you there have an example of you being left foot forward, but the sword is chambered to strike from the left.
Dario Magnani
Yeah and no.
Guy Windsor
Here’s the thing. I think we have to get comfortable with the idea that these categorisations of actions are fuzzy at the edges. They overlap considerably.
Dario Magnani
Let me just ask a question on this. The action you’ve been showing in parrying in frontale, from tutta porta di ferro. Is that a stable turn, or is that a mezza volta or a volta stabile?
Guy Windsor
Well, it doesn’t have a pass. So it has to be a volta stabile. According to your definitions of the term.
Dario Magnani
Yeah. And the following attack, is that a volta stabile or a mezza volta?
Guy Windsor
It would have to be a volta stabile, because there’s no pass. Okay, do I can do it with a pass, which would make it a mezza volta.
Dario Magnani
So this completely holds to what I was saying before, that every passare, every full step, is going to generate a mezza volta and no mezza volta will happen without a full step. To which you say no, not every single full step is going to be a mezza volta. And then you came out saying, “This action has no full step. And so is not a mezza volta.” And I’m saying that’s nice. So this doesn’t in any way affect the statement that every full step is going to bring to a mezza volta.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, we’re talking about slightly different things. And also, don’t forget we have an example here of what you would call a volta stabile. Actually, the sword is going from chambered on the right to chambered on the left to back to chambered on the right. It’s a volta stabile to frontale and an volta stabile back with a reverso fendente. I have not moved my feet and I am still kind of changing sides.
Dario Magnani
Agreed, but the chambering is your definition, while mine is the range of motion of the sword. The range of motion of my sword is still on the right side of my body, because it’s across the right side. And it’s going to be moving again across the right side of my body. I haven’t been changing the range of motion by body to the left side of my body.
Guy Windsor
What’s happening is the sword is going past your nose, and therefore it’s going over towards the left. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s playing, mechanically speaking, on the other side. And my action, my strike from there is much weaker than it would be if I was chambered differently. But it’s still a four foot steel bar smacking you in the head quite hard. It’ll do the job. It’s not a complete mezza volta. But whenever you have any kind of classification of fencing actions, you always have this problem with definition, because the way people actually move don’t always fit into those nice, clean, neat, definitions.
Dario Magnani
There’s surely a margin of that but I feel that the margin we are having on the tornare is just too large. Well, compared to everything else, probably in the manual that is absurdly too wide of a margin. Leaving, basically, either interpretation is sensible. And I think it’s not how things usually go with Fiore, which lets you say, yeah, that’s it.
Guy Windsor
Okay. But I would say in this case, I think you’re worrying too much. But I think also, we should probably leave tornare for now, because I do have other questions. And we’ve just spent an hour and a half on question five. So let’s wrap that volta stabile, mezza volta, tutta volta and the four things up in a nice, neat little bow. And I’m going to skip my next question out of respect for your time, because otherwise, we are going to be here all day, about the pulsativa, stabile, and instabile and here’s the thing, if listeners are going, oh, fuck no, Dario, please tell us all about the pulsativa, stabile, and instabile interpretation, then what they can do is they can email me guy at guy windsor.com And say, for fuck’s sake, get Dario back to talk about that, and I will do so. But we’re going to skip it for now. Just so that my poor assistant who is going to transcribe this won’t actually murder me for making a four hour long episode. All right. This is a question I asked everyone, and I think I know what your answer is going to be to this one, which is what is the best idea you haven’t acted on yet?
Dario Magnani
This is actually an extremely difficult question. First, because I have quite a few ideas. And second, because of that “yet” part. Because you can have 1000 ideas and you cannot act on 1000 things in your life. So, it requires me to both decide which is the best one and which one is the best one that I will one day act onto? I think that probably that’s head protection. If we want to keep it to stuff I would do at the very least so as talking about gear. If we are talking about fencing, probably working around the tournament scene with a rule set that I do like more than people relentlessly bashing each other because afterblows put both things back even. In general, okay, making it so that if both got hit, it’s not even, it’s both that dead. Dead intended as losing something from that exchange, compared to just having got even and we can restart.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you’ve got basically two things there. One is developing better head protection. My top favourite thing for longsword or any kind of striking weapon is the Terry Tyndall style mask, which is just fabulous.
Dario Magnani
You really like heavy stuff.
Guy Windsor
No. It’s basic physics. The weight is part of the protection. I am not averse to training to be fit enough to use slightly heavier equipment, my longsword fencing is not slow because I’m wearing steel gauntlets and my fencing isn’t slow because I’m wearing a mask that weighs more than one those stupid fencing masks.
Dario Magnani
But at the same time, if you have 10 kilograms of stuff less, you’d have more stamina, more speed than whatever.
Guy Windsor
But all of my equipment combined when I’m doing longsword free fencing is less than 10 kilos. Well, I mean considering mask is about two and a half, the gauntlets are maybe one each, and my plastron is maybe two.
Dario Magnani
Okay, try entering a tournament without equipment.
Guy Windsor
I would not enter a tournament that doesn’t let me wear steel gauntlets because it’s just stupid and dangerous and unsafe.
Dario Magnani
But try entering a tournament where you are not required to wear a jacket, a gorget, protection for elbows. I mean, if we are looking at HEMA gear, if we are looking at what the majority of people purchase their gear for, which is the full gear is usually for competitions, because they will train with less than that probably other club and etc. But when they are going all out, they are going all out in full gear. Full gear implies at this very moment 3, 4, 5, 7 kilograms of jackets to two and a half three kilograms of masks if you’re if we are looking at stuff with a lot of overlays, and the gorget, the arm protectors, the elbow protectors, plastron, leg protections, knee protections, we can go on as much as we want. And in the end, if for every piece of gear, the solution is going steel and heavy. When you get to full gear, you start holding around 15 kilograms, probably, at very least, because people in HEMA tournaments at this moment are holding around 9, 10, without steel.
Guy Windsor
I wouldn’t do that. Okay, so in my mind, there’s armoured combat where you wear proper steel armour. And then there is fencing intended to simulate unarmed combat where you wear stuff that is not armour. Like fencing masks like the Terry Tyndall mask, that’s not a helmet, that is not armour. My steel gauntlets are armour, they’re the only thing that would track from one from one situation to the other. Although if I was free fencing with pole axes, I’d probably want clamshells because they are better protection. But I am not suggesting that we go full steel for body protection, or gorgets, or any of that sort of stuff. I’m perfectly happy using like inline skating pads for my elbows and knees. And I use a leather chest protector thing that is more than adequate for free fencing with longsword. I have a leather gorget I made myself which actually has a Kevlar lining in it. So it’s pretty damn puncture proof. I don’t see the need to add more to that.
Dario Magnani
Well, again, you are still already holding around at least a kilo and a half of gloves, more, and a kilo and a half of mask, more than someone else.
Guy Windsor
Why is that a problem?
Dario Magnani
For some people it is. Also you’re looking at it from the perspective of someone used to doing that with the physical shape to do that. But as an example, the more you go down in size, the more the ratio between weight and ability to carry it goes down. So the lighter the fencer is the smaller and the lighter the fencer is, the more that’s a problem. The least good someone’s cardio is, the more that’s a problem. It’s not a new thing in sports to be looking for performance. I mean, people look at 20 grams in running shoes.
Guy Windsor
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I am not disputing the value in producing equipment that is similarly protective, but it’s lighter. That has an obvious advantage because we’re trying to simulate unarmoured fencing, but the amount of weight we’re talking about, I would say that if that is a problem for the fencer, there is a problem of their fitness and conditioning, it is not a problem with the equipment.
Dario Magnani
But we are not talking about weight but bulk in general. I mean, a Tyndall mask is also rather large compared to a fencing mask.
Guy Windsor
It’s not. Compared to one of these fencing masks covered in those padded extra protective bits and the bits at the back. I wouldn’t say my Terry Tyndall mask is any bigger.
Dario Magnani
It’s one or two centimetres bigger in any direction.
Guy Windsor
But the sorts of people to whom that matters are very high level competitors who are competing for seriously valuable prizes. That doesn’t describe anybody in historical martial arts today.
Dario Magnani
I wouldn’t agree. I mean, if you were right in this, I’d be out of business, because I am literally making a product that is designed to be as light as possible. And it costs twice the alternatives in some cases. And it goes to the point that in some areas that it’s probably the most widespread glove at the moment. So I wouldn’t say that people don’t want that.
Guy Windsor
No, I’m not saying they don’t want it. No, no, no, no, I’m not saying that. I’m saying the sorts of people to whom a mask that is a centimetre wider, thus giving a slightly larger target area is a significant problem are either insane, or deluded. Or they are extremely high-level competitors. But we don’t have competitors at that level. Because we don’t have prizes at that level. No one’s getting Olympic gold medals and a career in advertising out of winning a historical martial arts tournament,
Dario Magnani
I think there’s a fault in your reasoning. Because e you are looking at it from the global perspective. Like, if you’re not going to compete for the Olympics, why are you trying that hard? My answer is, a lot of people would just like to win their local tournament. Or the any event in which they are or maybe make it out of the pools. Everyone has different goals. There are people that are going to want those two kilos less.
Guy Windsor
That’s true, that’s true, but I don’t think it will make any difference for them.
Dario Magnani
I do.
Guy Windsor
In which case, act on your idea and produce adequate head protection that actually works that is lighter than my Tyndall mask. And if it gives me the same visibility, and it gives me the same head protection, I will happily switch.
Dario Magnani
I will try to make you one.
Guy Windsor
So get on and act on that one. Alright, so your other one, your other thing you were thinking about was the rules of tournaments. I mean, pretty much every possible rule set has by now been tried out by somebody somewhere. And the rules definitely affect the game from start to finish, completely. There’s no disputing that. Change the rules, you changed the game every time. So what specifically would you change other than getting rid of the afterblow? What would you change?
Dario Magnani
So I have been testing that actually in a couple of events, with minimal differences between one and the other. And there’s actually also an article by myself out from a couple years ago, maybe three years ago, if not four. And I think what should change in the way the HEMA community handles competitions is that right now we are treating those as one versus one events. So based on the outcome of the single fight, and I think that’s the failure of, of the system, because as long as you make HEMA competitions the result of what happens between you and me, every time I can catch up to what you just did, I can reset the situation, which is the problem with afterblows, or we can go on with 1000s of sub rules like afterblows, doubles, numbers of doubles that make you go out of the tournament. They are arbitrary. The way I handle that is arranging that by pools. So that if you make a pool of people, and just three is already enough, but it’s easier with five or four people per pool, but let’s say three people. You, I, and A. So we fight. You and I fight. You hit me four times. I hit you five times. In a normal ruleset I’ve won. There’s also A. A fights you, hits you twice, gets hit once. He has won. Yeah, I fight A, I hit him 100 times. He hits me 101 times.
Guy Windsor
In a sensible world, I should have won. Because I’ve been hit the least you have.
Dario Magnani
Because I score pools by the person that has been suffering the least points, which is different from scoring fights by either the winner or the loser or whatever. But the person taking the least hits, the least points, I would say, across the pool is the one that’s passing.
Guy Windsor
I’ve attended events with that pool structure, and it’s very good at making people into cautious fencers.
Dario Magnani
Yeah, that’s my only point because that changes the way you compete. And that changes the way you train for competitions. And that allows us to change the way your club mates train with you. And so even people that don’t actually go to the event are going to be affected. That’s the biggest difference, you can make. The drawback, if so we want to call it, is that you can’t have a final, or at the very least the final needs to have a different rule sets.
Guy Windsor
You can have finals, because the people who make it out of the pools then have a pool together. And it’s not an elimination necessarily.
Dario Magnani
We have the Giants in that case.
Guy Windsor
Let’s say you have two people who have the least of everyone in the pools, they have the least hits against them. They’re the finalists, they fence it out. And it’s like, 10 blows of the sword, or five blows of the sword, or whatever. And whoever ends up with the least blows on them wins.
Dario Magnani
That’s fundamentally what we did. We went to three points actually, in every fight, and we actually that that was 60 more people per event. So it was easy to arrange multiple layers of pools. At the first round, or the eliminating round heavy double hitters were already out of out of the equation. So the quality of fencing from quarterfinals, semifinals on, kept going on.
Guy Windsor
Yeah it works. But this is an idea you have actually acted on?
Dario Magnani
I haven’t in the sense that, yes, we have arranged a couple events this way. But I haven’t had either the time nor the grit, I would say, to take on this any farther from 2019 or 2020 to make it actually something. Either a group of events, an international group of events, or whatever. So transforming this thing into a functioning league that can sort of compete with what exists at this moment.
Guy Windsor
So the idea is not just creating the ruleset, it’s creating events around that ruleset.
Dario Magnani
It’s making HEMA use that rule set, I would say that’s the goal. I devised the basics of the kind of ruleset, of not even just the ruleset, but the kind of rules that you can work around. I mean, you can have as much as your kind of rules you want. But the core concept of the scoring system, not even the rule sets, is that diffusing that.
Guy Windsor
Okay, and actually talking about it on this show might help get the ball rolling a little bit, because people who are organising events might go, actually, that’s very interesting. We should try that. And I would encourage them to do so because I’ve been to events with that sort of structure. And it does make a difference to how people behave, as one would expect. Well, brilliant. Even with stuff that we’re going to cut out, and even with those questions that I wanted to ask you. And actually, I need to go cook dinner for my children which I was supposed to start 40 minutes ago, this has been a great conversation.
Dario Magnani
It’s been almost four hours now.
Guy Windsor
Thank you very much for joining me. People who are listening, remember that if you want to hear him talk about the pulsativa, stabile, instabile problem, then you’re going to have to email me and let me know and then I’ll invite him back on the show. Thanks so much for coming along Dario, I should also say that we are both going to be producing articles for our respective blogs on the volta question and so I’ll put links to those in the show notes when they come out. So thanks so much for joining me Dario, it’s been lovely.
Dario Magnani
Thank you, it was a pleasure.
