Compás
Compás
Literally: compass, step along the circle
Also known as: Compases, Compass step
Circular footwork of the Spanish fencing system La Verdadera Destreza, letting a fencer approach an opponent without entering the line of the opponent's weapon.
Quick Facts
About
Compás, plural compases, is in La Verdadera Destreza, the Spanish Renaissance fencing school, the general name for the steps a fencer, diestro, takes around an imaginary circle. An academic dictionary of 1729 calls it a main foundation of the art of defence, through which techniques gain substance and by which a fencer attacks and defends at once. The circular movement allows approaching an opponent without entering directly into the line of the opponent's weapon. Destreza distinguishes several kinds of step: compás recto along the circle's diameter, curvo along an arc, extraño straight backward, mixto as a combination, transversal along angled lines, and trepidante to the side. Outside the starting stance, body weight is not meant to be evenly distributed. Destreza's founding work, De la Filosofía de las Armas by Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza, was written around 1569 and published in 1582; his student Luis Pacheco de Narváez further developed the system. Gérard Thibault d'Anvers took up the circle idea in his mysterious circle in Académie de l'Espée of 1630.
Historical sources
- Academie de l'Espée (Girard Thibault d'Anvers, 1630) — Gérard Thibault d'Anvers, 1626–1630