Bolognese Swordsmanship

Bolognese Swordsmanship, also sometimes known as the Dardi school, is a tradition within the Italian school of swordsmanship which is based on the surviving fencing treatises published by several 16th century fencing masters of Bologna, although records indicate that as early as the 14th century several fencing masters were living and teaching in the city: a maestro Rosolino in 1338, a maestro Nerio in 1354, and a maestro Francesco in 1385.

The Dardi school is named after Lippo Bartolomeo Dardi, a professor of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Bologna, who was licensed as a fencing master and founded a fencing school in Bologna in 1415, just a few years after Fiore dei Liberi had completed his Fior di Battaglia. The Dardi School constituted both the last great medieval Western martial arts tradition as well as the first great Renaissance tradition, embracing both armed and unarmed combat. No manuscript ascribed to Dardi himself survives, although his tradition became the foundation for the work of Antonio Manciolino and Achille Marozzo, both possibly students of famed Bolognese master Guido Antonio de Luca.

The Bolognese masters whose treatises have survived shared a greater consistency of style, terminology and pedagogy with each other than with fencing masters of the period from other parts of Italy, thus justifying their treatment as a single school. The Dardi school focused primarily the single-handed side-sword still used for both cutting and thrusting. The side-sword was used in combination with various defensive weapons, including a shield (brocchiero, rotella or targa), a dagger, a gauntlet or a cape. The two-handed sword or spadone was also still taught, although losing its prominence. In addition, instruction on fighting with the poleaxe and other polearms was given.

The Opera Nova of Antonio Manciolino was apparently first published in the early 1520s, but only a copy of the likely second edition, "newly revised and printed" in 1531, has survived. It was dedicated to Don Luis de Cordoba, the imperial ambassador to Pope Adrian VI from late 1522 to late 1523.

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