Fabris

Salvator Fabris (1544-1618) was one of the most influential masters of the Italian rapier. His long career culminated with his employment as royal fencing master at the court of the king of Denmark, Christian IV. It was the king himself who also sponsored the printing of his treatise Lo schermo, overo scienza d’arme (on fencing, or knowledge of arms), a lavishly-illustrated manual on the theory and practice of the Italian rapier first published in Copenhagen in 1606. Apart from explaining rapier alone, rapier and dagger and rapier and cape in painstaking detail, the treatise became the basis for a northern German fencing tradition that is documentable until well into the 1800’s. Admired by his contemporaries and celebrated by later fencing masters as “a name of the greatest reputation in our profession,” Fabris has also become a household name in the modern revival of historical martial arts. This book is a fully illustrated reprint of Tom Leoni’s English translation, originally published in 2005.