A&S

Flatbread

25. 26.

This past weekend my wife and I went to July Coronation.  It was a very long court for me to have forgotten my chair, but some very well deserving people were recognized.

After court we went back to Mistress Safiye’s sunshade and got out the brazier, filled it with charcoal, and got to work.  It was flatbread day.  I’d been planning this one for a while, so I’m very happy with how it turned out.

I did two different versions.  One standard flatbread and one desert flatbread.

The first was translated in Medieval cuisine of the Islamic World by Lilia Zaouali (p72). It’s originally from Ibin Razin’s Andalusian cookbook Kitab Fadalat al-khiwan fi tayyibat al-ta’am wa-l-awan (Book of the Excellent Table Composed of the Best Food and the Best Dishes)

Take semolina and moisten it, energetically mixing with a little water and salt.  Divide the dough into pieces and knead each piece with clarified butter.  Roll it out, first by hand and then with a rolling pin, fold it, add clarified butter, and roll it out again to obtain a very thin layer.  For this purpose use a shaubak, which is a piece of carved wood, thick in the center and thin at the extremities.  Small lumps of dough can be rolled out three at a time, placing one on top of the other with clarified butter between each layer.

Heat an iron skillet or one of unglazed clay. Take a piece of the rolled out dough and heat it until it has become white and lost all its moisture, at which point remove it from the fire and beat it with the hands in order to separate the layers.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Fruitcake?

So, I’ve decided to take a step away from the Swetnam research for a few minutes and do some baking.  Well… kinda… I don’t have time this week for baking, so I’ll have to take care of this next week, but I can do the prep now.

I was alerted to a good looking period fruitcake recipe by Medieval Cooking, and kinda want to try it.  Of course I then went to backtrack it and found that the original was translated by a Charles Potter… of course I can’t find that translation yet, but I’ll keep trying.  It seems he’s in the SCA so I should be able to find him eventually.

The original text is called Libro Novo and is in Italian.  I speak absolutely no Italian so a good translation is a must.  What intrigues me the most is that there are four bread recipes in it, so I will need to find a full copy eventually.  That being said.  Lets take a look at the recipe that was posted at Medieval Cooking .

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Chapter 6

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

This chapter is about how to use Joseph Swetnam’s manual.  However, there are the usual digressions.  It’s a good chapter.  I’m finding the slow transition from philosophy of combat into theory of combat interesting.

 

Chap. VI. Diverse reasons or introductions to bring thee the better unto the knowledge of thy weapon

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Chapter 5

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

We now begin to get to the combat application part of Joseph Swetnam.  Chapter five is a combination of how to fight a duel with a bit towards the end on avoiding duels.

 

Chap. V. The cause of quarrells, and what preparation you aught to be prepared with to answer a challenge.

Swetnam truly has it in for people who duel without cause.  He does give leave to duel if your reputation is truly insulted, but for other than grave insults he admonishes us to turn the other cheek.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Chapter 1

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

This first Chapter sheweth what weapons are chiefly to be learned, with many other principall notes worthy of observation

Swetnam likes long chapter titles.

Now we get to the beginning of the manual.  As I understand it the first several chapters are not directly about combat, but are instead about various topics related partially to combat.

A number of different looks at Joseph Swetnam I’ve read ignore these chapters.  I’m hoping to get a feel for his concept of combat through reading them.

I’ll try to organize his thoughts, something Swetnam doesn’t seem to have done.  That means that it won’t be in the original order, as Swetnam jumps around a lot.

 

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Preface to Peers

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

 

Unto all Professors of the Noble and worthie Art of Defence I send greeting

Is how Joseph Swetnam begins his second preface.  This one is only eight pages long, rather than 14.

He begins with a call to his peers.  He extolls them for being men of good self government and the pinnacle of the community.  He calls on them to remember that their lives are not their own but their country’s.  He extolls them to be the best they can be because you never know when you may die.cover page

He explains that his peers must set a good example.  He gives an anecdote of a gentleman who was exceedingly good at putting out eyes with his rapier, and that although he was a very good fencer it encouraged others to attempt it, which was bad because it first encouraged men to take foolish risks while fencing, and second that one should not enter the duel with a murderous mind.  The point of the duel should be to end the duel, not to kill your opponent, as you may be hung for that.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Preface to the Reader

This is part of an ongoing project to sumarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

As I said in my previous post I’ll be breaking Joseph Swetnam’s manual down by sections.  This is for the first three sections (kinda).  It includes title page, dedication, and first preface.

 

Prince Henry

Prince Henry 1594 – 1612

I’ll throw a few pictures in to break up the 1700 word post.

First off we have our standard title page with a bit of aggrandizing.  We have our dedication to the Prince Charles, the brother of his dead Patron.  I wonder if he was hoping to snag himself a new patron with this.  Nothing surprising here.

Then we have our introduction for those who aren’t his patron.  It’s entitled: “An Epistle unto the common Reader”.  The intro to the reader is fourteen pages long.  It includes such comments as that he isn’t a scholar and has never attended university.  But he seems to consider himself good enough anyway.  The next five pages seem to be his trying to prove that you don’t need a university education to quote random things.  The only problem is that he’s not very good at it.  He is more than heavy handed with his metaphors – which go on forever – and he approaches his point in a slow spiral so you know about where he’s going, but he never seems to get there.  He mixes quotes from scripture with morality plays and popular ballads.  It very much seems like a first year university student trying to pretend he’s learned by spewing as much information onto the page as possible.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Thoughts on Reading Swetnam

Well I’m kinda back.  I’m only allowed to pick up my sword for 15 minutes at a time, but I have my strength coming back to most of my body and I’m on a lot fewer drugs, so my head is much clearer.  This means that I can get back into some of my studying.  After my work with Saviolo I very much wanted to move on to Joseph Swetnam.  So it’s time for that now.  With Saviolo I found that I didn’t like his writing style as much as I did Di Grassi (though I liked the content more), so it’s interesting to me to see Joseph Swetnam’s style which seems very different from the earlier masters.  I’ll be writing this as I go through his Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence which was published in 1617.Cover

Similar to Di Grassi and Saviolo I’m reading Swetnam in the original.  This is the big reason why I’m starting with the English masters and not the Italianate ones.  I would like to get a grounding in the thought of the time rather than read it through the eyes of a translator.

First Di Grassi published his work in 1570 (translated into English in 1594) and Saviolo published in 1595.  I still think that Saviolo’s work is derivative of Di Grassi’s, and subscribe to the thought that Di Grassi’s manual was taught in Saviolo’s school before his own manual came out.  I did find a number of parallels between Saviolo’s work and dall’Agocchie’s work which came out a few years prior.

Joseph Swetnam published in 1617 – 22 years later.  Saviolo should thus be a completely new generation of fencing.  His work is more likely to be derivative of Fabris, Giganti, and Capoferro but from an English perspective.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago