Learn Fiore

Since we’re mostly stuck at home and cannot practice or study in-person, we’ve decided to start an online book club to read and discuss Fiore. We started with the longsword sections (sword in one hand, sword in two hands, sword vs armor) with primary interest on the art itself and secondary interest in application to SCA combat forms. For more information see our Facebook page for the book club at https://www.facebook.com/Virtual-Book-Club-Fiore-105687057975899

For people unable to get a book in time for the club, I have made slides for the meetings. The slides are just close crops of the plates from the Getty museum’s own scans plus Hatcher’s translation for the text, my highlighting of the move instructions in the text, and a few pictures of our group doing a particular play or two.

Meetings are at 7pm Eastern US Time every other Sunday evening

• Meeting 1 – Oct 11: Intro to Fiore and Longsword Postas (Getty pg. 23v-24v)
• Meeting 2 – Oct 25: Sword in One Hand (without videos) Part 1, Part 2 (with videos) (Getty pg. 20r-21v)
• Meeting 3 – Nov 8: Sword in Two Hands pt 1 (Getty pg. 25r-26v)
• Meeting 4 – Nov 22: Sword in Two Hands pt 2 (Getty pg. 26v-30v)
• Meeting 5 – Dec 6: Armored Sword (Getty pg. 32v-35r)
• (Holiday Break)
• Meeting 6 – Jan 10, ’21: Sword in Two Hands – Largo (Getty pg. 25r-26v) repeat
• Meeting 7 – Jan 24: Grappling and Baton (Getty pg. 6r-8r)
• Meeting 8 – Feb 7: Dagger part 1 (Getty pg. 9r-11r)
• (no meeting Feb 21)
• Meeting 9 – Mar 7: Dagger part 2 (Getty pg. 11v-14r)
• Meeting 10 – Mar 21: Dagger part 3 (Getty pg. 14v, 38, 15r-16r)
• (No Easter meeting, Apr 4)
• Meeting 11 – Apr 11: Dagger part 4 (Getty pg 16v-20r-a)
• Meeting 12 – Apr 25: Spear and Poleaxe (Getty pg 31r-v, 35v-40r)
• Meeting 13 – May 16: Mounted combat (Getty pg 41r-47r)
• Meeting 14 – June 6: Spear and Poleaxe (Getty pg 31r-v, 35v-40r) repeat.

We’ve now completed our full pass through the Getty manuscript and are no longer meeting. At some point in the future we may repeat all or part of the book club if there is interest. Let us know.

Llwyd will be teaching a class titled “Fiore’s Sword in Armor – Halfswording for fun and profit” on February 13, 2021 at 11am during Atlantia’s Winter University online event. As with the sword-in-one-hand class at last University, the plates and translated text will be presented, discussed and then short videos of Llwyd’s interpretations of the plays will be shown. The class is free but advanced registration through the University website is required.

We had some recording-toggle issues with a few of the videos for the presentation, but did get 6 videos that are representative of the 16 plates in the section. Including even short 5-second clips makes the files fairly large, so I had to break the file with video into three parts. A PDF file with no video is also linked below and is much smaller.

• Small, no-video PDF file
• Large Powerpoint files with videos: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Llwyd will be teaching a class on Fiore’s Sword in One Hand section. The class will be online at Atlantia’s Kingdom University at 10am on Saturday September 12, 2020. The class will show each plate from that section of the manual and the English translation of the text. We’ll discuss what is being shown and described and then watch a 5-ish second pre-recorded video of Llwyd’s interpretation of the play. We would very much prefer to be doing this interactively in person, but hope this approach will simulate an in-person class as well as can be done virtually.

Llwyd is also doing a practice run of the class to try out the sharing platform and to get feedback on his draft slides and videos. That practice will be Tir-y-Don’s A&S class for the week on August 27 at 7pm. The draft slides for the class can be downloaded from these links:

With the SCA’s largest annual gathering, Pennsic, canceled for 2020 due to Covid-19, various virtual partial replacements are being set up.

Pennsic University is being virtualized as a temporary YouTube channel that people can submit videos to. We have submitted a merged version of our Applying Fiore to SCA Combat videos (our group’s channel has it in two parts, VPU will have it in one part). There should be lots and lots of other cool classes on all areas of interest to the SCA. You can find VPU on YouTube here.

If you’ve found us via VPU, welcome!! Please look around, there are lots of articles and pictures here as well as a lot more videos on Fiore on our own YouTube channel.

It has been a while, but we just posted 4 new videos to our YouTube channel. Due to stay-at-home orders from the Covid-19 virus, Llwyd shot and presented these videos alone. And since he didn’t have anyone to spar with, he chose to focus the videos on fundamentals. So, there are videos on holding your sword, what a sword’s “true” and “false” edges mean, and terminology for range, cuts, and footwork. A playlist with the new videos can be found here. Please excuse some of the minor camera issues.

Welcome to 2020!

We’ve had a number of events happen in the lives of our members that have, temporarily, slowed down our work. But we’re still here: still reading, experimenting, and learning. We hope to return to teaching and videoing shortly. Our recent Fiore work has focused on his longsword plays. Here’s a picture of our silly variant of the 6th Student Play within the Zogo Stretto (close range) longsword section. We’ve replaced the master’s sword with a selfie camera in order to rub in the effect of the bind. This seems very on-brand for Fiore.

Stay tuned for more Fiore in the new year!

It’s time again for Atlantian University. We will be teaching three classes, with two being taught for the first time. The classes are “Applying Fiore’s Combat system to SCA Combat Forms”, “Fiore for the Armored Medieval Fight”, and “Fiore Poleaxe”. You can see a video version of the SCA combat class on our YouTube page (in two parts), and the notes for the Armored Medieval Fight class are on the articles page. Please plan to come join us!

Also note that Robert Charrette, author of our favorite Fiore interpretation, will be teaching Fiore classes at the event. Look for classes taught by “Laeghaire O Laverty”.

Three new videos have been added to our Youtube channel. Two are longsword plays – The Peasant’s Blow and a similar play from the Sword in Armor section. The third video is part 1 of 2 on Using Fiore in SCA Combat. This part looks at three Fiore plays, extracts common features, and discusses the skills needed to apply those features. Part 2 (which we haven’t filmed yet) will discuss drills to develop and practice those skills. This is a video version of our new class for Atlantian University which we plan to teach in February 2019.

Due to Florence, the approaching hurricane, the site for Fall University has cancelled all rental use so that the space can be used for evacuations. So, the event has been cancelled. The next University is February 2nd at Louisa County Middle School in Mineral, VA. We will almost certainly run Fiore related classes there. Stay tuned! In the intervening time we hope to shoot some more video possibly including the new class on application of Fiore’s approaches to SCA combat.