Rob Runacres – författare

In the 17th century Italy was the place to learn the art of the sword. Travellers visited training salles and across Europe Italian works on fencing were translated and Italian schools sprang up. France was no exception. Francois Dancie’s 1623 treatise L’Espee de Combat (The Sword of Combat) is therefore an anomaly. Dancie’s views are blunt and acidic. He says that many who teach fencing are a ‘bunch of libertines’. He has no truck with the geometry that had crept into fencing since Agrippa’s work of 1553 and had contempt for that author’s use of illustration. Dancie’s style follows an Italian form, but rather than following other authors by providing an explanation of tempo and measure, Dancie prefers to concentrate on what temperament is required in a confrontation. His is a direct, fighter’s treatise, dedicated to a military man of similar temperament, his methods and descriptions speak more of the street than the salle.

In 1597 the great French traveller Seigneur de Villamont translated a fencing manuscript by his teacher, Girolamo (in French ‘Hieronyme’) Cavalcabo of Bologna, along with a shorter piece by Paternostrier of Rome. This treatise seems to have brought Cavalcabo to the attention of the French court and he, and later his son César, would be invited to teach the future Louis XIII. This treatise may represent survival of the great fencing tradition of Bologna, and could have influenced the development of French swordplay in the early seventeenth century. Now translated into English, this treatise offers an insight into the fighting style of the period.