manual

Swetnam Ch. 12 The manners of a passage

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.

Here is the third part of this section in Chapter 12.

The manners of a passage.

When making a passing lunge (Swetnam calls this a passage) you must be fast, nimble, and focused.  It is a dangerous attack as it brings you very close to your opponents weapon, and is more dangerous the more skilled your opponent is.  To counteract the innate danger in this lunge you must be skillful, have practiced, and have good judgement, especially in knowing where your opponents weapon is.  You must make your passing lunge as fast as possible, as soon as you see an opening with your opponents sword high you need to step forward with your left foot quickly, and parry your opponents weapon with your dagger, pushing it up and out of the way at the same time that you attack with your rapier.  Your parry and attack must happen at the same time rather than as two actions or it will be too slow.  The passing lunge is most effective if your opponent likes to stay in the same guard, but is more dangerous if he moves from guard to guard frequently.

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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