Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise (Medieval & Renaissance Texts)

Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise (Medieval & Renaissance Texts)

Camillo Agrippsâ€™s widely influential â€œTreatise on the Science of Armsâ€ was a turning point in the history of fencing. The author â€” an engineer by trade and not a professional master of arms â€” was able to radically re-imagine teaching the art of fencing.

Agrippaâ€™s treatise is the fundamental text of Western swordsmanship. Just as earlier swordsmanship can be better understood from Agrippaâ€™s critiques, so too was his book the starting point for the rapier era. Every other treatise of the early-modern period had to deal explicitly or implicitly with Agrippaâ€™s startling transformation of the art and science of self-defense with the sword. Likewise, all of the fundamental ideas that are still used today â€” distance, time, line, blade opposition, counterattacks and countertime â€” are expressed in this paradigm-shifting treatise. This is a work that should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the history, practice or teaching of fencing.

His treatise was also a microcosm of sixteenth-century thought. It examines the art, reduces it to its very principles, and reconstructs it according to a way of thinking that incorporated new concepts of art, science and philosophy.

Contained within this handy volume are concrete examples of a new questioning of received wisdom and a turn toward empirical proofs, hallmarks of the Enlightenment. The treatise also presents evidence for a redefinition of elite masculinity in the wake of the military revolution of the sixteenth century. At the same time, is offers suggestive clues to the place of the hermetic tradition in the early-modern intellectual life and its implications for the origins of modern science.

Camillo Agrippaâ€™s â€œTreatise on the Science of Armsâ€ was first published in Rome in 1553 by the papal printer Antonio Blado. The original treatise was illustrated with 67 engravings that belong to the peak of Renaissance design. They are reproduced here in full. The complete original Italian edition is available online.

Introduction, glossary, notes, bibliography, 67 illustrations.
Country USA
Manufacturer Italica Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2010-10-04
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Italica Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2010-10-04
Format	Kindle eBook

Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise (Medieval & Renaissance Texts)

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