There are curricula and even entire pedagogical systems to model; there are books, contemporary and historical from which to glean technique and definitions; there are teachers and instructors and masters to supplicate to - and far too many who expect you to do so. At the end, fencing makes sense, it is inherently logical, and must therefore be discoverable and universally true. This discovery can be on your own (the autodidacts) or shared with others (perhaps even those deserving of your supplications). While there are pitfalls in store along either route our purpose here is in another direction, viz. how do I train fencers?
My dear friend, and one of my first students, Alexis once observed that as the curriculum of the Classical Fencing Society evolved it followed the Classical Trivium. While familiar to medievalists and anachronistic educators, it’s origin can be traced to ancient Greece. Here we remember it in its most familiar form:
Grammar - Logic - Rhetoric
“Grammar is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized, Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known, and Rhetoric is concerned with the thing as-it-is-communicated.”
The Trivium was foundational - necessary information for the student to proceed in their studies. It was never an end to pursue, but rather the key with which to unlock more knowledge. Sword science utilizes this sequence effectively. Grammar becomes for us the Technical information. What is an attack? How are attacks developed, executed and defended? Essentially the ‘what’ of fencing. Logic becomes for us the Tactical and scenario based information - the conditional clauses that provide context and meaning. Essentially the ‘why’ of fencing. Finally, Rhetoric becomes for us actual simulated Combat - free and spontaneous - the true communicative form of our science (essentially how our science becomes art).
As the Trivium is sequential, so too the order of sword training. Students begin learning a vocabulary - both in English and in body mechanics which expands to include blade actions. Altogether these movements, carefully constructed and repeated, become the working nuts and bolts with which fencing is built. Once the student can move and speak with the new vocabulary they need to learn why these nuts and bolts work. Armed with the logic of fencing the student is empowered to not only understand, but to continue to decipher and more accurately solve new problems which their opponents will attempt to confound them by. Ultimately, the student must surrender to the stress and uncertainty of combat. Only in this sacred place will the distillation occur: form subdues formlessness, logic dispels uncertainty, and experience makes action effective and effortless.
For these reasons it is understandable how the characteristic, sang-froid, has been used to describe our antecedent sword bearers. It is the appeal to reason, rather than emotive power, that the fencer acts and succeeds.
“Do not react negatively, rather respond positively.”
Therefore, in answering the question, “How do I train fencers?”, I must say that I do so scientifically and according to the Fencing Trivium, represented as,
Technicals - Tacticals - Combat
And just as in the medieval schools, this is just the beginning. Not only is this sequence to repeat itself on occasion, but it also enables the fencer to engage in ongoing conversations about combat theory, non-canonical or auxiliary techniques, risk assessment, and Reading (my fencing equivalent of behavioral observation). For these reasons my system is more method (in the scientific sense) than pedagogical - as I am not attempting to create, theorize upon nor critique an educational system. The contemporary Scuola headed by Maestro John Sullins is a pedagogical organization as it specifically studies the educational means to create fencing teachers as it does so. Method is actionable and its usefulness in sword training is no new discovery, proven with just a quick sampling of titles from across the centuries:
Salvator Fabris, De lo Schermo ovvero Scienza d'Armi - 1606
Giuseppe Rosaroll-Scorza and Pietro Grisetti, La Scienza della Scherma - 1803
William M. Gaugler "The Science of Fencing. Revised ed." - 2004
As the foundations for science solidified so too were the foundations for swordsmanship. It was during the 17th century that a method arose,
“consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”
Swordsmanship is less concerned with possibilities than it is realities, so we simply substitute ‘hypotheses’ with ‘solutions’ - specifically, those that protect us against a known adversary. Even so, we could consider the development of the aforementioned hypotheses as useful as we consider possible technique and combat scenarios. Would this alteration of a technique work and why or why not? How does this scenario manifest itself among random combatants? The method feeds the inquiry which then feeds back into the method.
More can certainly be said about standards, conventions and choosing the content - material appropriate for the next article.
