Salvator Fabris
Fencing master from Padua, teacher of the Danish king Christian IV and author of the treatise Lo Schermo, overo Scienza d'Arme published in Copenhagen in 1606.
Quick Facts
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Salvator Fabris was born around 1544 in Padua and died there on 11 November 1618 at the age of 74, of a "malignant fever" after roughly ten days of illness. He is known as the fencing instructor of the Danish king Christian IV and author of the treatise Lo Schermo, overo Scienza d'Arme.
In the fifteen-nineties he served Archbishop Johann Friedrich of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp. From 1601 to 1606 he taught fencing to King Christian IV. We have not been able to verify from whom he himself learned fencing.
He published the treatise in 1606 in Copenhagen at the king's expense. It contains 191 copperplate engravings by Jan van Haelbeck and Francesco Valeggio and is the first Danish book with copperplate illustrations. It covers combat with the sword alone, sword and dagger, and sword and cloak, as well as unarmed defence against a dagger; the second book deals with continuous attacking techniques, which was unusual among 17th-century Italian treatises. The treatise was reprinted as late as 1713 and translated into German and English (English translation 2005).
After 1606 he returned to Italy and taught at the University of Padua. He held the title of Grand Knight of the Order of the Seven Hearts. The claim that he took part in choreographing the duels in Shakespeare's Hamlet is unsubstantiated, and his identification with "Salvator Fabritz," implicated in 1594 in a Swedish assassination plot, is also unlikely.