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

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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! →

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

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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! →

Swords, and intermittency

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Yeah, it’s been like, forever. But I’m still alive, and around, and still writing and editing and swording and translating. I hope all of you are well and feeling reasonably successful in your endeavors. I’m still plugging away, feeling like it’s three steps forward and two steps back, but at least I’m making some small headway. While I’m here — I have yet to receive my copy due to logistical kerfuffles, but I’m eagerly awaiting Tim Rivera’s translation of Godinho’s Art of Fencing! Not only has he translated the text, but he’s also included a lot of additional material, extracting and collecting key points in easily findable ways. In other news, I presented a taster course workshop on Godinho at Swordplay 2017 which was well-received, and learned a ton from other presenters (including Skye Hilton and Steaphen Fick), and had a lot of (never enough) bouts with fantastic friends old … Read on! →

Destreza: Sword and Cape, in Oplosophia

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Hello, everyone! It’s translation time again! Today’s offer is a longer one, a translation of the section in Oplosophia* that discusses the use of the sword and cape. For those unfamiliar with historical uses of garments as off-hand implements in armed defense, this is totally a thing. Honest.

Destreza: On the meaning of Oplosophia

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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! →