Finally! Fiore returns, in Italian and English


Hi!

Hallelujah! At last! After three months of back and forth with the printers (and setting up to print with someone else at twice the price), the Fiore Facsimile with translation is now working properly.

Everyone who bought it in December has had their order re-run yesterday, so new copies are being printed and shipped. Now that they have been taken care of, we can open it up for new orders!

This book reproduces the Getty manuscript in its entirety, in full colour, and as close as possible to the size of the original. But that's not all:

The second half of this volume is a second reproduction of the manuscript with the original Italian text replaced by my English translation. This recreates the experience of reading the original Italian as closely as possible. The book also includes an introduction to Fiore and his life and times, the provenance of the manuscript, and suggestions for further study.

This way, you get the original, and the translation, in one volume… for the same price as the original facsimile-only edition.

The excellent Katie Mackenzie has done a gorgeous job on the cover and layout:

The translation section includes tags on the pages so you can find the section you want from the page edges. You can find it here:

If you buy the facsimile you will get a free ebook copy of the companion volume, which includes a complete transcription of the manuscript. Or you can order it as a paperback too (with a discount if you get them both together).

It has been a long slog to get this to work, for reasons that don't really matter (six defective proofs before we got a good one. The previous record is one). It started with the awful cold-water shock of embarrassment when I realised we had shipped defective books, and ended with an eye-watering bill for reprinting and shipping new ones. But I've done my best to keep everyone informed, and to make good on the trust placed in me by everyone who buys from my store.
So, not the customer experience I was hoping to generate for my people, but we got there in the end!

yours,

Guy

Guy Windsor's Swordschool

Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.

Read more from Guy Windsor's Swordschool
Philippo Vadi

Hi! It’s been an odd couple of weeks since I last emailed. For some reason I’ve completely stalled on the Dagger book (From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the dagger techniques of Fiore dei Liberi, to give it its full title). But I am making actual headway on a revised, rewritten, and expanded second edition of Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists. If you have any questions for me to address in the book, or suggestions, or requests for it, please go to this...

Leonardo's notebook

Hi! So you made it through the launch-process winnowing, well done! All in all, the launch sequence for Von Baumann triggered 59 unsubscribes, which is about normal- the average number of unsubscribes per newsletter email is about 5. And 116 people chose to click the ‘don’t send me any of that German wrestling stuff!’ link, thus avoiding the temptation to unsubscribe altogether. Hurrah! Other than the excellent folk who chose to buy the course, my favourite response to the launch was this,...

Jessica throwing Guy with the 4th Twirchringen

Hi! Last June I flew to Kansas to shoot Fiore dagger plays with Jessica Finley. While I was there she asked if we could also shoot a course on Von Baumann’s wrestling plays, because they formed such a handy mini-system. A great introduction to German wrestling, and also useful to broaden the education of Fiore scholars. She had helped me with the Abrazare (Fiore’s wrestling) course the previous year, so she knew what it Fiore covered- and what he left out. And she thought Von Baumann’s...