Who wants to discuss Vadi?

[Bill Carew]

Just curious, what individuals or groups are actively working with Vadi? Not in the sense of 'using him as an adjunct to Fiore' but actually making Vadi a serious or even primary focus for longsword practice? And who has thoughts to share about his work? Does anyone know of any good videos (or articles) with Vadi interpretations? I haven't had any success finding much. There’s plenty of Fiore work around, ranging for impressive to ordinary, but little or no Vadi.

I realise Fiore tends to steal the limelight, but there is plenty to work with in Vadi, and with the forward focussed guards, narrow stances and new footwork, it has a distinctly different feel to Fiore in my limited experience. And certainly, there is more in Vadi to work with than, say, the obscure English longsword texts, and yet those have managed to attract a sizeable following.

There are some key features of Vadi's work that don't show up in Fiore to the best of my knowledge, and which if followed faithfully lead to a quite different looking system to Fiore IMO, including:

- Vadi's 'new' footwork and narrow stances with the feet close together
- his 'less charged' forward pointing stances
- his increasing use of molinelli (perhaps due to the less charged stances), including the first use of the stramazzone

In particular, in my reading of Vadi, there are footwork actions that read to me like demi-lunges, Meyer's broken steps and the Bolognese cambio di piedi (change of feet), that I don't see Fiorists using. I was keen to see how people interpret and physically perform these in combination with the actions of defence and attack.

[Keith P. Myers]

That's interesting Bill! I don't know anything about Vadi. He certainly sounds like his system deserves to be a focus of study in and of itself. The way you describe it, it is kind of what I would picture as the Bolognese doing Longsword, if they had done Longsword.

[Michael Chidester]

Obviously, Vadi shows the results of seventy-five years of evolution from Fiore's time, but I think the differences can easily be overstated. If you exclude the things that can be explained away by artistic differences (such as the fact that Vadi's artist paints figures with their feet closer together than Fiore's artist) or simple personal preference, what's left is a nice amplification on Fiore's system that illuminates many aspects that Fiore leaves dark.

And as I mentioned over on SG, in one place Fiore clearly instructs us that while waiting for our opponent we should stare in piccolo passo cum lo pe’ stancho denanzi: "stand over a small step with the left foot forward", which Tom Leoni rightly recognizes as a reference to the narrow stance. To see what this looks like, consult Fabris and other Italian masters who use the same term (Leoni no doubt caught this reference where others missed it due to his prior work with these masters). That would be folio 28r, the colpo di villano. What he advises us to do once is doubtless done at other times as well.

[Richard Marsden]

Guy Windsor will be releasing a Vadi book shortly. He raised money on Indigo for the project.

[Gregory Mele]

I have to agree with Mike, that there is a danger of overstating the uniqueness of Vadi's work. His individual plays are not unique, other than the eight at the very end of the manuscript, involving dagger and sword vs dagger, the first longsword technique, and two or three plays of zogho stretto. His opening chapters actually detail a lot of Fiore's plays that he DOESN'T show (for example, he describes how to perform the scambiar di punta, colpo di villano and the punta corta).

The main evolutions, IMO, are:

1. the stripping down of the armoured weapon systems, and renaming of the guards he maintains.

2. the addition of a different spear guard, that at first blush looks like tutta porta di ferro adapted to a longer spear. It is actually comparable an invitation position/lowline parry found in the Bolognese (but look at the grip of the rear hand - the spear can be used to thrust overhand or to cast one-handed!).

3. A reorganization of the sword guards to focus on point forward positions, with the right foot leading, and renaming therein.

4. An expansion of the segno, in part to explain his "new footwork".

5. An emphasis on initiating attacks with an acressimento and recovery with either a discressimento or pass.

Points 3 - 4 *are* significant, and make an interesting comparisons to Bolognese spadone, especially since Vadi's sword is fairly large. But, although back in 2002 I wrote in my book that he advocated an attack on a demi-lunge, and I stand by that, this "acressimento" is already covered by Fiore, and there are times that he uses the same. (See, for example, his discussion of fighting from dente di zenghiaro.) The other reason it is important to note this is that, although Vadi prefers right leg forward guards on the right side, if we look at his advice on how to parry, it is designed to create the same crossing at zogho largo that Fiore shows: left foot forward.

So is anything "new". Yes, I think so, and it is interesting to work with, since the devil is in the details. Here are three main examples I can think of:

1.Working with his guard positions and applying his discussion of the tower, sun and wheel from the Uomo della Spada (allegorical figure), his use of posta di falcon and the adapted posta di donna lend themselves towards a fast mandritto made with the acressimento of the right foot (the sun) while the left remains firm (the tower). If you needs defend, you can swiftly retreat with a discressimento of the same foot (moving back around on the wheel). He DOES NOT discount the pass, as some suggest, which is why we have the wheel metaphor - we can reverse which foot is the tower and which the sun.

2. The emphasis on the narrow stance (see Mike's post above), and the advice to keep the legs "well-paired" - which I interpret as a narrower stance, and NOT profiled, as folks assume, but actually a bit more squared - allows one to cut from side to side in the cross simply by using volta stabile/weight shifts. This is what I believe Vadi means about cutting "from knee to bending knee. And this is better footwork than the stepping of our ancestors". He is talking about not needing to actually take a step to cut around, but rather using body position and weight shift. This works pretty well, especially with longer swords, and something similar seems (to me) to appear in Marozzo's strette plays with the spadone.

3. Example, despite the "parry a mandritto with the left foot forward" advice, if we apply Vadi's assumed new footwork, we'll generally end up in dei Liberi's crossing of stretto (right foot forward), which may be that is the reason that Vadi prefers to illustrate primarily those plays.

So I would say that by ditching coda longa and altering posta di donna, plus adding posta di falcon, Vadi is substituting how he comes into measure and initiates a mandritto - with an acressimento, not a pass, and has attempted to adapt his stance somewhat to change the speed in which he can strike around the sword in the bind. Conversely, some of his left side guards put the left foot forward, meaning that he would enter with the thrust with a *pass*, whereas Fiore advocated an acressimento. I think these changes and preferences create some interesting differences in "the approach" phase of the fight - playing in zogho largo. Certainly we've seen that in fencing here. But I do think they are differences of degree, not kind, so even if Vadi is your root text, you will still clearly be in the dei Liberi school, just as Meyer is distinct, but still truly part of the Liechtenauer family!

Cheers!

[Bill Carew]

Great insights Greg!

What I like about Vadi is some of his distinctive elements, like his footwork, his narrow stances and the alterations he made to the guards.

I've drawn inspiration from his footwork advice in my own GLS interpretations. Being able to operate from the narrow stance, by bringing the feet together (even momentarily with things like the levare di piede or cambio di piedi) gives a lot of freedom to your footwork - you can literally step in nearly any direction with either foot while subtely changing or maintaining your distance, and you can change your stepping intentions or direction mid-stride. 'Half steps' from a position with the feet narrow spaced are also blindingly fast, allowing the 'hand' to move much closer to maximum speed and still keep pace with the 'foot,' thus maintaining agreement of hand and foot in a true time.

This kind of nimble footwork, which I think features quite prominently in Vadi, Meyer and the Bolognese (not to mention later systems like backsword etc), is not something you see modern longsword fencers use very much or very well yet. Particulary in free play, there seems to be a tendency for fencers of all styles to resort primarily to rather jerky advancing steps and rather long and desperate passing steps, with only the occassional triangle step or step offline, and almost nothing like the range of chasing steps, raising the foot (levare di piede) or changing the feet (cambio di piedi) we see in the sources.

The longer I practice longsword, the more I find myself returning to the topic and importance of footwork.

[Michael Chidester]

I agree about the importance and utility of the narrow stance. I love it myself, but it's difficult to find evidence of its use in the earliest sources.

[Gregory Mele]

Agreed, gents. I do think that is adaptation is very Vadi is "new", at least until we can find a pre-1500 Bolognese text! I think part of the reason it is not in the earliest material, however, is the need to keep armoured and unarmoured movement and dynamics in close accord.

[Dan Sellars]

Agreed, gents. I do think that is adaptation is very Vadi is "new", at least until we can find a pre-1500 Bolognese text! I think part of the reason it is not in the earliest material, however, is the need to keep armoured and unarmoured movement and dynamics in close accord.

Hello Greg,

Why would that not also be a consideration with Vadi?

Also up thread you said "Conversely, some of his left side guards put the left foot forward, meaning that he would enter with the thrust with a *pass*", why would you say that it would have to be a pass on the entry? Why not an acressimento?

Cheers,
Dan.

[Gregory Mele]

Hi Dan!

I think that Vadi clearly downplays armoured combat:

1. He downplays abrazare (body to body wrestling), subsuming it into the dagger, which is wrestling at the arms (primarily).
2. He strips the axe and sword in armour guards down to four, and reduces the number of plays.
3. He strips spear even further, and alters the guards to be more in keeping with the way we see in the common school (spear used like a bayonet/pike).
4. His poetic chapters on theory focus solely on unarmoured swordsmanship.

I am not saying that he teaches unarmoured combat, anymore than the Bolognese do, but rather we see a subdividing or adaptation of the art here that becomes progressively more acute in later Italian and German fencing as armour falls out of use. Eg: You can hold a head aloft in c.1480 Milanese armour, but not in the way that Vadi wants you to frame posta di falcon. In the same manner, his new footwork works well in the context of unarmoured or lightly armoured fighting, but less so in a full harness - and he returns to the older stances when showing sword in armour and axe.

Re: the thrust from the left. Yes, he could, but a)it is a bit more awkward as you play across your body with a two-handed sword grip, the acressimento really only is comfortable if it is a slope pace to your left, as if coming behind he opponent's guard, and b)if we are assuming a preference for attacking from the right first, as his text implies.