Opera Nova (Achille Marozzo, 1536)

Opera Nova is a printed fencing treatise by the Bolognese master Achille Marozzo (1484–1553), published in Italian in Modena in 1536 and dedicated to Count Guido Rangoni. The full title of the first edition is Opera Nova de Achille Marozzo Bolognese, Maestro Generale de l'arte de l'armi. It is not the same work as Antonio Manciolino's treatise of the same name from 1531. Marozzo was a pupil of Guido Antonio di Luca and ran a fencing school in Bologna near the Abbey of Saints Nabor and Felix. The treatise has five books. The first deals with the sword and buckler, the second with the dagger, the sword alone and the sword combined with other weapons, the third with the two-handed sword and the fourth with polearms such as the partisan, pike, spedo, ronca and halberd. The fifth book is devoted to duels and their legal and ethical side. According to Wiktenauer, the first edition has 296 pages and is illustrated with woodcuts. The treatise was reissued in Venice in 1550 and in 1567–68. A revised edition was prepared by Marozzo's son Sebastiano in 1568–69, and in it copper engravings by Giovanni Battista Fontana replaced the woodcuts. The Verona reprint of 1615 is based on this form. Wiktenauer and English Wikipedia both describe the work as the most extensive treatise of the Dardi school of Italian fencing and as one of the most influential fencing works of the sixteenth century. According to Wikipedia, the later Bolognese masters Angelo Viggiani and Giovanni dall'Agocchie were probably influenced by Marozzo's work.

Martial arts in this work

Authorship

The author of the text is Achille Marozzo, but the sources differ on several circumstances of its origin. Wiktenauer's author profile gives Bologna as the place of the first edition, while its description of the work and English Wikipedia give Modena, which we therefore follow. Marozzo's birthplace is also reported differently: San Giovanni in Persiceto according to Wiktenauer, probably Bologna according to Wikipedia. Wiktenauer further allows that Marozzo served at the court of Count Rangoni, to whom he dedicated the treatise, but only as a possibility. The author of the woodcuts of the first edition is also uncertain. Wiktenauer mentions that Hans Sebald Beham may have made them, but only as a possibility. Wiktenauer mentions the Bolognese reprint from the fifteen-forties without an exact year or printer.

Editions and translations

The first edition was printed in Modena in 1536 by a printer whom Wiktenauer gives as D. Antonio Bergolae. According to Wiktenauer, the Venice reprint of 1550 took over the typesetting of the Bolognese edition from the fifteen-forties. The revised edition of 1568–69, prepared by the author's son Sebastiano, was published in Venice by Antonio Pinargenti and carries copper engravings by Giovanni Battista Fontana in place of the original woodcuts. The Verona edition of 1615 reprints precisely this revised form. A modern Italian edition was prepared by G. Rapisardi in 1999 in Padua by Gladiatoria Press. An English translation was published in 2018 by W. Jherek Swanger, and a French translation by Aurélien Calonne appeared the same year. Further English translations were made by Craig Pitt-Pladdy, Carlo Parisi and Mike Ray.

People and martial arts

• Achille MarozzoAuthor
• Sebastiano MarozzoEditor
• Giovanni Battista FontanaIllustrator
• Guido RangoniPatron

Details

Form

Printed book

Editions

• 1536 · IT · Opera Nova · D. Antonio Bergolae · 296 pp. · first edition
• 1550 · IT · Opera Nova
• 1568 · IT · Opera Nova · Antonio Pinargenti
• 1615 · IT · Opera Nova
• 1999 · IT · Opera Nova · Gladiatoria Press
• 2018 · EN · translation
• 2018 · FR · translation