Happy birthday! Compendio for everyone! (At least the bits I’ve already done)

It’s my 45th, and it’s a little past my Patreon’s first. So let’s celebrate! Linked in this post you’ll find the Prologue and the First Dialogue of Pacheco’s Compendio. Because of the generous support of my Patrons (who receive these releases three months early), I’ve had the time and space to read up on Aristotelian and Renaissance science to update some of the footnotes and text in these two files.  Here’s that Prologue! Here’s that First Dialogue! Now, on to some details.  What is Compendio? The Compendio de la filosofia y destreza de las armas, de Jerónimo de Carranza, is Don Luis Pacheco‘s heavy (heavy!) edit of Carranza‘s Philosophy of Arms, considered to be the source of an Iberian fencing style called la verdadera destreza (LVD).  Pacheco deliberately notes in his prologue that he’s gone through Carranza’s text and omitted anything not directly related to fencing. For someone whose sentences … Read on!

Destreza: Sword and dagger, in Oplosophia

Okay, as promised: Here is a very, very rough initial translation of the dagger section (which now includes the correction provided by Eric Myers in the Destreza in the SCA Facebook page). Unlike previous translations, I’m not including the bulk of the work in the body of this post; I have <checks document> 41 footnotes over eight pages. And one of those footnotes spans more than one page. One thing to note here is that this is not Rada’s or Texedo’s or Viedma’s dagger. Read the whole thing through (he makes a lot of noise in the early bits saying his way is different but obviously superior if you just try it, etc. etc.), then read it again. If you need help visualising some of these things, the scholar class notes from the Brisbane School of Iberian Swordsmanship may help.  CLICK HERE for translation of sword and dagger section in Oplosophia. … Read on!

On practice and the new year

Before I begin, I just need to say I hate the new WordPress text editor and need to figure out how to revert. This is infuriating. Anyway. Back when I was in New York, practicing iaido, every new year of practice we’d rededicate ourselves to our studies by performing a thousand cuts. I can’t entirely remember if we only did one kind of cut, but these days, I have to vary it up. That said, the cuts aren’t the meat of the matter of this post. A significant part of my Destreza practice is reading and translation. There’s painfully little original LVD material available in English, and I’m one of the handful of people well placed to solve it. So here’s a variation on the thousand cuts, and symbolic rededication to my practice. I’ve been working on the off-hand section of Figueiredo’s Oplosophia for a few years now, very intermittently. … Read on!

A review of Manuel Lozano’s translation of Ettenhard’s Compendio

If you just want to get into the evaluation of the translation, scroll on down to the EVALUATION section below. If you want the summary conclusion of my review, you can scroll on down to CONCLUSION. You can always scroll back up here to read the rest later. INTRODUCTION This post is a partial review of Manuel Lozano’s translation of Compendio de los fundamentos de la verdadera destreza y filosofía de las armas – or Compendium of the Fundamentals of the True Skill and Philosophy of Arms by Francisco Antonio de Ettenhard y Abarca. It is a partial review because I did not read the translation in its entirety. The reasons for this will be detailed in the EVALUATION section of this post. Any non-Spanish-speaking practitioner of la verdadera destreza is keenly aware of the lack of translated materials, and has very good reason to get excited when translations are announced. … Read on!

Destreza: Sword and buckler, in Oplosophia

Hello, everyone! It’s been yonks, hasn’t it, but here we are. Today I’m offering a translation of the section in Oplosophia* that discusses the use of the sword and buckler. This is now an old translation that I’ve left largely unedited, so there are potential inaccuracies, and there will certainly be refinements I’ll want to add in future (since I’m currently revisiting Oplosophia). But I wanted to get this out into the world anyway, as raw as it is — keeping these caveats visibly in place. Finally, anything in square brackets [] is my own note (or in a couple of cases below, a footnote). Modern Spanish translation: Capítulo Noveno, Libro Tercero (AGEA Edition pg. 204-206) Cómo usará el Diestro el Broquel cuando hace compañía a la espada, y de los primeros que lo inventaron Hoy día es tan conocido el uso de la espada y broquel, asi por su liviandad … Read on!

Destreza: On the meaning of Oplosophia

So in my vast stretches of spare time (ha), one of the things I do when I’m not actually trying to stab willing practice partners with rapiers is read primary sources. Under various advisements, I’ve chosen to take a look at Oplosophia e verdadeira destreza das armas by Diogo Gomes de Figueireido. You may have noticed that it’s in Portuguese, and that I have not mentioned speaking or reading Portuguese (I am, however, fluent in Spanish and have worked as an editor in that language). Yeah. Apparently I like a challenge. Anyway, one of the first things I wanted to sort out was what the heck oplosophia meant. So I went poking around the interwebs, and all that came up for me was either references to the book itself, or mentions of the term being a hapax legomenon — a word that only appears once in any given context within a language. So … Read on!