[21 Feb. 2025]
Senese, Alessando. The True Use of the Sword. Bologna, IT: Herede di Vittorio Benacci, 1660. Translated by Christoper A. Holzman, 2025, Lulu Press.
Though a fencing text long-dismissed as poorer than most (Iacopo Gelli referred to it as “a work of limited fencing value”), Senese’s True Use of the Sword, despite its flaws, nonetheless contains considerable value. Not only does it contain some useful insights into the Art, but it also contains contemporary concerns that resonate today within the historical fencing community. Beyond this, while the True Use of the Sword will frustrate readers keen for detailed explanations of individual techniques or actions, it is surprisingly insightful with regard to combat psychology and preparedness, as well as some of the deeper truths that arise after long study of the Art.
I had the pleasure to assist Christopher Holzman with the Latin portions of this translation, and came to understand his doubts about it in the process. [n] Most of the works that Chris has translated into English, to date, have been stand-out treatments in one way or another. Marcelli, Rosaroll & Grisetti, and Del Frate are major works within the Italian fencing tradition; even less significant works, such as Terracusa e Ventua’s True Neapolitan Fencing is important for what it reveals about the survival of the Neapolitan system, and, as one of the only Italian works on fencing from the 18th century.
Senese’s text, in contrast, is a curious book. As with his previous work, Chris does his best to stay as close as one can to the original phrasing and vocabulary, a particularly daunting task when the original author was not, to put it mildly, a great writer. If anything, Chris has improved the readability of the original, an impressive feat given the sometimes-convoluted modes of expression Senese favored. Footnotes, courtesy of Chris, will help explain some of the terms and clarify some of the denser explanations the author offered.
Organization
The book is organized around Senese’s chief tenets for fencing. There is considerable front-matter, mostly dedicatory, and much of it in Latin. Senese informs the reader in a short epilogue that a friend provided the florid Latin encomia to Charles Ferdinand, Archduke of Further Austria (d. 1662) and the Latin summary in the last part of the book. The initial dedication appears in Latin and Italian, but is followed by an ode, an epigram, and a distichon, all in Latin.
For students of history and early modern literature, the inclusion of the seven liberal arts to frame the ode will be unsurprising, but the ways in which Senese (or his friend) link each one to aspects of fencing is perhaps novel. The epigram is rich in classical imagery and in a way echoes the use of the liberal arts in the ode, though here the author enumerates his specific concepts of fencing and their value.
A note to the reader follows and in it Senese explains his position:
The art of using the sword for the defense of one’s body is the true art; not that which is commonly practiced in the schools and taught by the professors, let alone those particular blows that I read from the writers; but for that which the most famous swords of my country already practiced, and for those precepts that I offer to you to read in this present work.
The true art is that which offers a determined end to be infallibly obtained with the exact observance of its precepts.
The letter to the reader informs what follows in his rules; it is the why to his how, as it were, and beyond that gives at least one master’s view of his contemporaries. Fencing treatises were often resumes of a sort, and naturally Senese ‘s poor opinion of the efforts of all other masters was meant to push himself forward, but at the same time some of what he says was also true. This is not to say that one could make oneself unbeatable or invincible, nice as that would be, but that there were issues within many schools that led their students to losses, even death, when it mattered. Senese was hardly alone in such complaints.
The first few chapters define terms and provide key explanations of his ideas. Chapter 2, for example, explores what Senese calls “the long game,” what we would today call working from critical distance versus fighting in distance. The next chapter takes up “weight,” what we would call “guard” or the guard position today. Like many 17th, even 18th century works, Senese wanted the weight on the rear leg (cf. Besnard, Marcelli, Girard, etc.). Measure and its navigation, motion and movement, line, perspective, finding the sword, and what he calls “the indivisible tempo” follow.
His chapters on the “true wound” and “true parries” reveal a far more conservative approach to defense than that of many of his contemporaries. It is not that other masters failed to take this perspective, but that they less consciously call out the issues and problems around them. This perspective is one of the chief attractions to The True Use of the Sword: it is less a book on fencing than it is a book on how to approach actual fighting with a sword.
Chapter 11, on the feints, is likely to excite the simple-minded and kindle useless debate and discussion in some circles of historical fencing, but nothing he says there is untoward. Readers who stop at the first line, however, will miss the point. The feint, to be effective, must appear to be a credible threat and not, as he remarks, motions that are basically probing actions. A proper feint forces the opponent to parry. Cuts, the subject of Chapter 12, will read a bit differently from some masters, too. In Senese’s view, cuts are used in two instances: as a riposte or as an attack. An obvious point, but one he makes as a way to attack those who use cuts poorly. The example he gives, a feint to the face to draw the parry, and then a cut to the torso or leg, illustrates his meaning. Here, as in most places, Senese reminds us that measure, timing, etc. must be correct as well.
Of particular interest is his chapter (Chapter 13) on the use of the sword alone against someone using sword and dagger. Much of what Senese says here provides a window into the thinking that typifies “transitional rapier” and ultimately, smallsword. For Senese, if one relies on a dagger for defense, one is handicapped. In this he is not wrong, but he was not alone in stating this either. Marcelli, among others, covered the sword alone first for a reason. In Senese what we see is a 17th century master attacking common problems of the day—this is important, because we have a tendency to think fencers were “better” in the past, that masters were as effective at fighting as they were in teaching, and in putting forth their own views it can be easy to miss the reality. Then as now some were better teachers, more effective fighters, than others.
Chapter 14 provides a brief summary of his key tenets; chapter 15 the key faults in poor fencers.
The remaining portions of the book, the first on “the necessary and infallible rules of the proper handling of the sword” and the second on “a figure explaining the theory of a would to the opponent’s left,” were written in Latin. The rules, via fourteen individual sections, repeat, again, the principles by which Senese teaches the Art. The explanation of the figure is rough reading, but will prove useful for the patient reader who takes the time to explore it in space.
Significance
Unlike most works of the time, Senese does not include detailed descriptions of technique or list a multitude of various actions. He states, then repeats, a set of guidelines that should inform how one uses the repertoire of fencing. By analogy, Senese is more akin to Zbigniew Czajkowski’s Understanding Fencing than he is Gaugler’s Science of Fencing. For example, Senese states that anyone who wishes to teach the sword professionally must be able to “operate respectively in four cases:” in courteous bouts for amusement and as exhibition; effectively in bouts where they demonstrate their superior skill against strangers; in actual fights where harm or death are possible; and in those cases where the teacher is out in the world in difficult terrain. The reason is that
In each of these four cases, the person must have meditated and prepared what he must do, because he has to operate differently in each of the aforementioned ways, since it takes more than knowing how to put oneself in beautiful perspective on guard and performing a pretty thrust to the target, however, the perceived opinion of the common people against the professors is now wonder.
The True Use of the Sword contains many such asides that highlight different cultural attitudes. For another example, Senese is quick to call out those untutored but nonetheless teaching, a problem that resonates all the more now:
they remain blind and learn all that can be learned in six months, which has nothing to do with the perfect science that is learned with effort and not in months but in years. So, sparing the effort, they also spare the science…
Therefore, take it as the most certain vanity every time that someone will be persuaded to want to teach this profession in a short time, or rather, some particular blows, because he will really teach being killed by some hasty, bestial ignoramus.
In like vein, Senese laments the common incidence of the incontro, or double, in bouts and duels of his time. Today’s historical fencers—for sometimes different reasons—wrestle with the same problem. One explanation as valid then as now is that
many fencers with a singular and artful game who, having arrived so that they are at a certain mark, stop themselves there as if no more remains for them to learn and in the occasions they remain either confused or doubtful and they always have questions to ask according to the diversity of encounters, a sign that they lack the true rule that resolves all the questions and hinders all the vanity.
Tourney-“HEMA,” for example, is rife with fencers rushing to measure and doubling; some even game doubling just as their Olympic cousins do. All of this is to say that Senese demonstrates that nothing is new and that the problems we see now are merely the same issues in different costume.
This text, however, is not without practical advice for given situations. Sense, wisely, recommends that the “most secure” wound is one that follows a parry. He reminds us that in seeking another’s blade we should only do so when it is out straight before us. Read together with other fencing treatises of the time is perhaps the best way to read Senese. At the very least, having read him, a fencer will read Giganti, Pallavicini, and Marcelli with a better grasp of the larger picture informing their respective approaches.
Do not read Senese for technique—this will be a disappointment. Read Senese first for the view it gives one of 17th century fencing culture. Second, read Senese for the sound tactical advice he shares, advice that in this reviewer’s opinion would do much to improve historical fencing today. His defensive mindset, his abhorrence of the double, and his wisdom in advocating that one does best who fences as if the swords where “white” (i.e. sharp) rather than “black” (practice weapons) is as sound now as it was in 1660.
[n] My close friend and colleague, Dr. Antone Minard (Simon Fraser University & UBC), and I had the pleasure to manage the Latin portions.
Capitale Escrime Historical Fencing 