Here, as promised a few weeks ago, comes the missing link I talked about a couple of weeks ago. I paid for having it digitized after finding it, and now its available from the Royal Library in Stockholm. Its the only known fencing treatise in Swedish from the 18th century (printed about 1735 in Lund) and the only known by a spanish master. The author is Francisco Lorenz de Rada, fencing-master at Lund University 1733-42, by all accounts a very short-tempered and controversial person but a very good fencer who went on to become fencing-master to the royal court (before coming to Lund he was fencing- and dancing-master at the Royal Academy of Åbo). For some odd reason he published the work under the pen-name of Don Emanuel Friedrich de Sommerecourt. Its a short treatise on cut and thrust-fencing, most likely intended for the Swedish officers rapier common at the time. It seems to be partly based on Destreza but also on lots of other influences, among other things he describes a special thrust in quarte developed by the fencing-master Captain Porath at the Royal Academy of Uppsala, which he approves of and also describes how to defend against. The only illustrations are a few typical circle diagrams. Its a fairly odd bag of tricks-like treatise and its written in, at times, quite horrible Swedish (in fact he apologizes for this at the beginning of the treatise).
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:43:36 +0000
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