Girolamo Cavalcabo
Bolognese fencing master who taught fencing to the future French king Louis XIII; his fencing treatise appeared in French in 1597.
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Girolamo Cavalcabo was a fencing master from Bologna who, at the end of the 16th and start of the 17th century, taught fencing in Rome and later in Paris. In France he was known as "Hieronyme" or "Hieronymus".
He served at the court of the French king Henry IV and taught fencing to the heir to the throne, the future Louis XIII, and his brother Gaston of Orléans. The diary of Jean Héroard, the heir's personal physician, describes an episode in which Cavalcabo was struck while correcting his pupil's foot position. Brantôme's memoirs mention a "Hiéronime" teaching fencing in Rome.
In 1597 a French translation of his fencing treatise by the Seigneur de Villamont was published. A large part of his text is contained in the 17th-century manuscript Livre Des Leçons, attributed to Pedro de Heredia. His son César was master of arms at the French court until 1642.
The historian Egerton Castle believed that his father was Zacharia Cavalcabo, who published a treatise by Angelo Viggiani in 1567, and, without citing a source, also that his fencing teacher was Viggiani himself; both are conjecture, not documented fact. We have not been able to verify the dates of his birth and death.