The wrestling of the middle ages was a kind of mixed martial arts that included grappling in armor and with weapons in hand in addition to the hand to hand techniques. From Fiore:
“If your opponent is not in armor, strike him in the most painful and dangerous spots, such as the
eyes, the nose, the temples, under the chin and in the flanks. Also, see if you can come to the
grapples that arise from the binds--whether or not you and your opponent are wearing armor.
Abrazare (the striking, grappling, fighting method of the day) calls for eight qualities. These are:
Strength, Speed, Knowing advantageous grapples, Knowing how to perform breaks (i.e. breaking the
opponent's arms or legs), Knowing binds (i.e. binding the opponent's arms so that he is made defenseless and unable to free himself), Knowing the most dangerous places in which to strike, Knowing how to put the opponent to the ground without endangering yourself, Knowing how to dislocate the opponent's arms and legs in various ways.”
In summary and using modern language you have to have these qualities to wrestle well:
Strength (from exercising and being active)
Speed (from training)
Good grappling (advantageous grapples, binds and how to hit hard)
Joint manipulations (breaks, and locks)
Vital areas (place to hit that are effective)
Throws and takedowns
This is pretty similar to the skill set required for modern mixed martial arts. There are differences in understanding and circumstance though. For example, weapons figure very prominently in the middle ages and the possibility that weapons may be involved affects the sort of wrestloing you might want to try..
Back to Fiore:
“I [Fiore] will discuss each of these items step-by-step throughout the book, and supply illustrations for the benefit of those learning the art. After listing the components, I'll discuss the guards of abrazare. These guards can be of different sorts, some better than others. There are four guards that are the best, both for unarmored and armored abrazare, although these guards don't remain fixed for long, due to the immediate grapples that follow them. “
When Fiore says “although these guards don’t remain fixed for long”, he is saying that these are not postures that you assume and hold. Instead they are positions that you use in a dynamic way to do something. The guards of the middle ages martial arts are different from stances in asian martial arts in how they are presented. Both are postures that the martial artists utilize but stances are taught primarily as biomechanically correct postures. The emphasis is on first finding what is a strong and efficient line of power. Guards in the middle ages seems to be the most frequent positions that fighters find themselves in and the emphasis is on the dynamics. In other words, from a given guard they describe what the best targets are, what techniques to use, how its vulnerable, and what techniques can be used against it.
Next Fiore explains his method of explaining techniques and also espouses the value of the 4 guards that he considers to be most fundamental to wrestling:
“The first four Masters you'll see will be wearing crowns. They will show you the four guards of
abrazare, which are Posta Longa and Dente di Cinghiaro (one against the other) and Porta di Ferro and
Posta Frontale (also one against the other). These four guards make it possible to do all the things we listed in abrazare--both in and out of armor --i.e. grapples binds, breaks, etc.”
Fiore describes the first four guards:
“Posta longa and Denti de cinghiaro are pitted one against the other
Porto di ferro and Posta frontale are also pitted against one another”
He says that these four guards allow us to do all the things listed above in and out of armor.
Posta longa is like a front stance in karate with one arm extended out
Denti de cinghiaro is the boar’s tooth. One arm is extended upwards while the other arm is held lower.
Porta de ferro is the iron gate. Both arms are held low.
Posta frontale is with both arms extended upwards. It looks like a boxing ready posture.
There are other quards and postures. Some of these guards make more sense with weapons. Think of guards as frequent positions that you find yourself in when fighting.
To continue:
“Now we need to distinguish the guards of the Masters, of the students from the opponents, of the opponents from the Masters and of the Remedy from the Counter. The Counter is always placed after the Remedy; sometimes the Remedy follows or comes after all of its plays; but let's make all this clearer.”
Fiore is going to explain how his book is organized here and in so doing explain a bit more about the guards
“The guards, or "positions," are easy to recognize. Some guards will be set against one another and will not touch one another, studying each other to see what the opponent may do. These are called poste, or guards, or First Masters of the fight. They will be wearing a crown, meaning that the position in which they wait is optimal for defense. These guards are also the foundation for carrying arms while in guard.”
The first Masters are depicted by the persons wearing the Crown.
They will demonstrate a starting position or guard.
These starting positions may be at range or within body contact distance. They are supposed to be defensive postures and help the master to study their opponent.
The opponents are the characters in the diagrams who do not wear any insignia. The plays are presented like so: The first Master demonstrates a position against an opponent. Then the students of the First Master, all wearing garters, show a series of moves that can be done by the First Master position against the opponent. Think of it as a stop action movie. The Master shows a move, then the opponent responds and the students of the master show one move after the other in a sequence.
“A posta is the same as a guard. A guard (or posta) is what you use to defend or 'guard' yourself against the opponent's attacks. A posta (or guard) is a 'posture' against the opponent, which you use to injure him without danger to yourself.”
The guards are the positions that you use to guard against attacks and to attack without danger to yourself.
“The other Master following these four guards shows the plays that come from these guards and defends against an opponent who uses the actions deriving from the four guards. This Master, who also wears a crown, we call the Second Master or Remedy Master, since (by the rules of the art) he thwarts the attacks deriving from the poste or guards shown before,”
The Remedy Master wears a crown and also a garter. His purpose is to demonstrate how to defend against the opponent. So the plays of wrestling begin with the Master and then his students who show a sequence of possible moves. Then that flow is interrupted by a Remedy Master who puts himself in the role of the opponent and shows one way to interrupt the flow of moves and more specifically the move just prior to his action.
“This Second (or Remedy) Master has some students under him: these show the plays the Master or Remedy may perform after he executes the defense or grapple shown by the Remedy. These students wear an insignia below the knee.
Then a new movie begins when the remedy master initiates a counter to the flow of moves started by the first master. His students, like the students of the first master show a sequence of events that can follow from the remedy.
“They execute all the plays of the Remedy until another Master appears who performs the counter to the Remedy and all of his students. And because he performs the counter to the Remedy and his students, this Master wears the uniform of the Remedy Master and that of his students, i.e. both the crown and the insignia below the knee. This king bears the name of Third Master or Counter, because he counters the other Masters and their plays.”
That third Master wears a crown and a garter just like the second master. This is the “counter to the counter”.
“In some places, the art admits a Fourth Master or king who counters the Third king or Counter to the Remedy: I call this the Fourth Master or Contra-counter. Few plays, however, can go beyond the Third Master, after which lies danger. “
This process of defining a flow of moves can continue with a fourth master. He does not go beyond the third master very often.
“But enough about this. The guards of abrazare, the Second Master (i.e. the Remedy) and his students, the Third Master (Counter to the second and his students) and the Fourth Master (Contra-counter) act as the pillars of the art of abrazare--both in and out of armor.
Similarly. they support the art of the lance, with their weapon, guards, Masters and students; the same they do for the axe, the single and double-handed sword and the dagger. Overall, these Masters and students support the whole art of arms--on horseback and or foot, armored and unarmored--through the principles they follow in abrazare.
This, of course, is done to make the book easier to learn, and it only means that in the other arts you also need guards, Masters, Remedies and Counters as you do in abrazare. The colored letters, the illustrations and the plays will show you all the art clearly enough for you to understand it.
Let's now move on to the illustrations, their plays and their captions, which will show you the truth of
what I've said.”
Fiore concludes this section by saying that this method of explanation makes it easier to learn the moves and that this approach can also be used when learning swordsmanship, dagger, and lance.
In effect Fiore created a kind of movie at a time when movies did not exist.
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