Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza
Spanish nobleman, soldier and judge from Seville, who founded the Spanish fencing school destreza with his 1582 treatise De la Filosofía de las Armas.
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Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza was born around 1539 in Seville. In the history of fencing he is known as the founder of the Spanish fencing school destreza (La Verdadera Destreza).
He studied at the universities of Seville and Salamanca. From the early fifteen-sixties he served the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. He also took part in the invasion of the Algarve under the command of Philip II. We have not been able to verify who his own fencing teachers were.
In 1582 he published in Sanlúcar de Barrameda the treatise De la Filosofía de las Armas y de su Destreza y la Aggression y Defensa Cristiana, with which he founded the destreza school. His system was built on geometry, Aristotelian logic and circular stepping patterns. His pupil was Luis Pacheco de Narváez, who further developed destreza; the Dutch master Gérard Thibault d'Anvers spread the school further.
He was a knight of the Order of the Image of Christ and, from 1584, a judge in Madrid. Between 1589 and 1596 he was governor of Honduras, accompanied there by his sons Gil and Jerónimo, and from 1596 he worked as a lawyer in Santiago de Guatemala. Sources disagree on the year of his death: one gives around 1600, another around 1608.