The warriors of medieval Italy practised a complex and complete martial
art, which included the wielding of sword, axe and spear with wrestling,
knife-fighting and mounted combat. In the waning years of the 14th
century, Fiore dei Liberi was a famed master of this art, whose students
included some of the most renowned and dangerous fighting men of his
day. Credited by fencing historians as the father of Italian
swordmanship, toward the end of his life, Master Fiore preserved his
teachings in a series of illustrated manuscripts, four of which have
survived to the present day, and have become the basis of a worldwide
effort to reconstruct this lost martial art. This magnum opus, Il Fior
di Batalgia (The Flower of Battle), composed in early 1409, is one of
the oldest, most extensive, and most clearly elucidated martial arts
treatises from the medieval period. Freelance Academy Press is proud to
present Flowers of Battle, a multi-volume series of lavishly illustrated
hardcover books, combining full color facsimiles of the Master's
original manuscripts, professional, annotated translations, and
extensive peer-reviewed essays. Volume III, Florius de Arte Luctandi,
presents a translation, transcription and reproduction of
chronologically the last, most recently discovered, and visually most
lush Flower of Battle manuscript. This posthumous work raises more
questions than it answers: for whom was the manuscript creared and why?
Why was it translated into a complex, humanistic Latin, and from what
prior source? Why are there clear nomenclatures and instruction
differences between this and the other three manuscripts, and do these
changes reflect an evolution in the Master's thinking, or errors in
transmission? Mondschein and Mele tackle these questions and more in a
lavishly illustrated introduction that seeks to set the manuscript in
context, as an objet d'art, as an example of Renaissance patronage, and
as a practical martial arts memorial.
