Scola, overo Teatro (Nicoletto Giganti, 1606)

Scola, overo Teatro is a printed fencing treatise by Nicoletto Giganti, published in Italian in Venice in 1606 by Giovanni Antonio and Giacomo de Franceschi. On the title the author calls himself a Venetian, and in the dedication to Cosimo II de' Medici he states 27 years of professional practice. According to English Wikipedia, the Giganti family came from Fossombrone in the Marche and served as minor nobility in the army of the Venetian Republic. The book teaches fighting with the rapier alone (spada sola) and with rapier and dagger (spada e pugnale). Tom Leoni calls it the best pedagogical work on the rapier of the early 17th century and the first treatise to describe the lunge in full. A sequel was printed in 1608 in Pisa by Giovanni Fontani, dedicated to Christofano Chigi, adding further weapons to the rapier as well as fighting with the dagger alone. For a long time it was known only from a mention in Marchionni's Trattato di scherma of 1847. The promised works on the dagger and on cutting techniques never appeared, as the Sicilian master Giuseppe Morsicato Pallavicini noted in 1673. In Frankfurt, French-German editions were published from 1619, the first in a translation by Jacob de Zeter. The 1622 edition added the second book by Salvator Fabris, and Johann Joachim Hynitzsch then accused Giganti of copying Fabris, an accusation English Wikipedia considers probably unfounded. Tom Leoni translated the first book into English in 2010, and the 1608 sequel appeared in English in 2013 in a translation by Terminiello and Pendragon.

Martial arts in this work

Contents

In Scola, overo Teatro of 1606, Giganti discusses two disciplines: the rapier alone (spada sola) and the rapier accompanied by a dagger in the left hand (spada e pugnale). Tom Leoni sees in the book the first treatise to describe the lunge completely and the best rapier textbook of the early 17th century. The Pisa sequel of 1608 expands the equipment of the left hand: to the rapier it adds the dagger, rotella, target, buckler and cloak, as well as fighting with the dagger alone, the dagger against the spear and different weapons matched against each other. Wiktenauer and English Wikipedia differ slightly on the exact list of these combinations. The second book has 53 illustrations, which English Wikipedia judges to be very poorly drawn. Monika E. B. Stankiewicz redrew them from the only known copy, whose scans are not publicly available.

Editions and translations

The first edition was printed in Venice in 1606 by Giovanni Antonio and Giacomo de Franceschi. The sequel appeared in Pisa in 1608 from Giovanni Fontani, the first documented mention of it was brought by Marchionni in 1847, and its existence was definitively confirmed only by the English translation of 2013. In Frankfurt, a bilingual French-German edition appeared in 1619 in a translation by Jacob de Zeter, in 1622 an unauthorized edition combined with the second book by Salvator Fabris followed, and in 1644 another. According to Wiktenauer, it was precisely the link with Fabris and the loss of Giganti's second book that lay behind Hynitzsch's accusation of copying. The 1628 copy held in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna bears extensive contemporary annotations, transcribed by Julian Schrattenecker and Florian Fortner. The English translation of the first book was published by Tom Leoni in 2010.

People and martial arts

• Nicoletto GigantiAuthor
• Jacob de ZeterTranslator
• Cosimo II de' MediciPatron
• Christofano ChigiPatron

Details

Form

Printed book

Editions

• 1606 · IT · Scola, overo teatro · Giovanni Antonio e Giacomo de Franceschi · first edition
• 1608 · IT · Libro secondo · Giovanni Fontani · first edition
• 1619 · FR · translation
• 1622 · FR · translation
• 1644 · FR · translation
• 2010 · EN · translation
• 2013 · EN · translation