Finding the Blade (repost)

Reposted from my main blog, Adam's Worm.

While in Chicago, I signed up for Renaissance style fencing lessons at Forteza Fitness. This club is a member of HEMA - Historical European Martial Arts. Their goal is to reconstruct early forms of fighting, through careful study of primary documents and with hands-on experimentation. I signed up on lark (swords!) but I quickly discovered that learning to fence in the Renaissance Italian style (the style that became popular in Elizabethan England) was opening my eyes to concepts and connections I had before understood only hazily and indirectly. It is a testament to the value of experiential learning. Not only was I understanding more deeply the material culture of the past, but I was appreciating its connection to concepts and ideas of the period as well. My esteemed instructor, Trey Ptak, is a man who, but for his name, could have stepped from the pages of Alexandre Dumas. He teaches, partly in Italian, directly from the pages of dei Liberi, Fabris, and Capoferro. Imagine a gym class that begins with a lecture on dueling and sword design and in which discussion ranges from Romeo & Juliet to Aphra Behn. Here are some of the things I have learned, or relearned.

1. One of the most familiar concepts in Renaissance court culture is what the Italians called sprezzatura. Castiglione describes it best. The courtier should strive, "to do his feats with a slight, as though they were rather naturally in him, than learned with study: and use a Recklessness to cover art, without minding greatly what he hath in hand, to a man's seeming." When I teach the literature of this period, we always spend some time on this concept, reading Castiglione and considering the implications for a culture in which a gentleman is always deliberately advertising his recklessless and nonchalance without apparent regard for the consequences (consequences which in a Renaissance court could be deadly). The sword of course, was one of the quintessential marks of a gentleman, so it is no accident that its use would demonstrate the basic principles of aristocratic identity. However, handling a sword according the principles laid down in ancient fighting manuals brings this concept into sharp focus. Every aspect of swordplay seems designed to evoke casual disregard for consequence. The shoulders are relaxed, the sword held lightly, every movement is to be elegant, ideally liquid and without apparent effort. At the same time, the weapon is deadly, with a fine point (ours are blunted, thank heavens), and the game is one of life and death. I can think of no better analogue for court life in, say, the court of Henry VIII. It makes me think anew of Shakespeare's Richard II talking about Death:
   

   As if this flesh which walls about our life,
   Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
   Comes at the last and with a little pin
   Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

   The sword embodies both the bravado of the Renaissance courtier and his necessary anxiety.


2. The earliest fencing manuals were conceived in part by mathematicians. As a result there is a clear emphasis on geometry in the practice which reflects a well-known larger interest in geometry in Renaissance culture as a whole. The various guard positions are designed to create what has since been called a "cone of defense," in which attacks originating from a single point need to be deflected only outside a narrow cone that includes the body of the defender. See, for example, the aerial diagram of the two main guard positions, terza and quarta (3rd and 4th), in which a slight repositioning of the blade suffices to ward off two different attacks. This process, while invoking the nonchalant "just enough" quality of sprezzatura, echoes Renaissance developments in fortifications, which were also driven by geometric principles. The most famous illustrations are by Vauban, but the basic principle is the same as in fencing, only in reverse. A bastion is built to take up the entire cone of defense formed by defensive cannon, denying any sheltered spots for an attacker. Renaissance fortification is also based on the concept of forward defense or of treating defense as a kind of offense. Likewise Renaissance fencing manuals considered offense to be an extended form of defense. The classic attack, today called a "lunge," was for the Italian writers, merely an extension of a guard. One attacks by extending a guard, thus protecting oneself while attacking. Renaissance ideas about fortification had a huge influence upon the radial design of cities in the period, and cities in turn had an influence upon the human mind. The connections might seem obvious, but until I was forced to hold a sword in the various guards and to watch the effect of those guards upon the blade of an opponent, I had not thought to connect swordplay with city architecture or with larger ideas about cognition.


3. The language of Renaissance fencing is also the language of music and dance, based on terms like tempo (time) and misura (measure). One is in measure (in attacking distance) or out of measure. One can attack in false time or in true time. A tempo in fencing can be described as either the pause between two movements or the movement between two pauses. In reality, a good fencer's movements may seem smoothly continuous, but the discipline is based on the separation of movement into discrete moments separated by instants in which one movement ends and another has yet to begin. I may be extrapolating too far here, but physically engaging in swordplay on a Renaissance plan makes me realize the extent to which basic concepts of time are under construction at the time. Writers of the period are fascinated by what has been called the instant of change, when one action or situation ends and another begins. The instant itself is vanishingly small, but it is still recognized as a thing since two states, such as life and death, are clearly different. It is therefore probably no accident that a play like Romeo & Juliet, which is so interested in the instant of change (falling in love, dying) is also a play in which fencing plays a dramatic role.

The Mouldwarp

Today I learned a) that a "want" is a mole -- it's an Old English word, but eventually it comes to be used only in Herefordshire, and that "mole" is perhaps short for "mouldwarp" which means something like "earth turner." I like the longer version. Now I can use it for the many moles which roam our farm. Incidentally, I also came across an Elizabethan statute that put a bounty on the poor things.

Thoughts on Herefordshire, part 1

Workin' on my MLA paper.  

Herefordshire is characterized by three simultaneous and contradictory attributes. First, it was held up as a place of extreme agricultural promise and fertility; second it was represented as a place in which the poverty of the land necessitated extraordinary agricultural innovation and industry; and third it was represented as a place where poverty and environmental stress constantly threatened.

Here is a stab at the first part (unedited):

Throughout the seventeenth century, Herefordshire was consistently idealized as an agricultural paradise by nature, a place exceeding all others in England in absolute fertility. Thomas Fuller says “It is not to be accounted the Second shire for matter of fruitfulness." Its most famous agricultural products were sheep (Lemster wool was the benchmark against which others were measured), apples, and wood. John Beale says the county “is reputed the Orchard of England, and (in the generality of good husbandry) excelleth many other places” (2). Its fruit trees “sweeten, but also purifie the ambient aire.”  Evelyn singled Herefordshire out for his companion works on woods and apples: Silva, and Pomona. Herefordshire Salmon also frequently come up in discussions of the county. According to Fuller, “the River of Wy affords brumal [winter] Salmons, fat and sound, when they are sick and spent in other places.”

The so-called Golden Vale along the tiny river Dore occupies an important place in these agricultural claims. In his atlas of Britain, John Speed introduces Herefordshire like this:

The Counties climate is most healthfull and temperate, and soyle so fertile for Corn and Cattle, that no place in England yeeldeth more or better conditioned: sweet Rivers running as veynes in the body, doe make the corne bearing grounds in some of her parts rightly to be termed the Gilden Vale: and for Waters, Wooll, and Wheat, doth contend with Nilus, Colchos, and Egypt. (49)

In his map (and others from the period), the “Gilden Vale” is one of only two features specially labeled in the county. The other is the Marcley hill landslip of 1571 or 1575 (of which more later). The title of the Golden Vale probably comes from a false etymology of the river Doire or Dore (imagined as the French d’Or), but in the minds of early modern writers that false etymology was the ground for superlative speculation.  “If any demand how much gold is to be found therein,” writes Thomas Fuller, “know that even as much as in Chrusaroas or, Golden stream, the river of Damascus so called from the yellowness of their water as this vail is so named either because gilded with flowers in the spring, or because being the best of Molds [soils, OED 1b] as Gold is of Mettalls." In their attempt to reach for superlatives, both Speed and Fuller reach for Classical comparisons (Colchos, Nilus, Chrusaroas) as does Drayton in his discussion of the Golden Vale in Poly-Olbion: 

Th'Hesperides scarce had such pleasures as be there: 

Which sometime to attaine, that mighty sonne of Jove 

One of his Labors made, and with the Dragon strove, 

That never clos'd his ies, the golden fruit to guard; 

As if t'enrich this place, from others, Nature spar'd: 

Banks crown'd with curled Groues, from cold to keepe the Plaine, 

Fields batfull, flowrie Meades, in state them to maintaine; 

Floods, to make fat those Meades, from Marble veines that spout, 

To shew, the wealth within doth answer that without.  (Drayton 106)

The Hesperides are perhaps the perfect allusion because they combine apples with the paradisal place, but Drayton is also asking the reader to imagine the Golden Vale as a place that might be threatened with depredation.

Mapping Herefordshire

Moving slowly along. I spent a little time going over the Herefordshire page in Speed’s 1612 Atlas with a magnifying glass. One thing that struck me more obviously with the paper version in front of me is the extent to which the rivers are emphasized, even small ones.

This is consistent with arguments I’ve made (and am busy expanding elsewhere) about the depiction of rivers in English poetry of the period. Apart from the standard items (towns, bridges, rivers, hills - loosely represented), the map of Herefordshire makes special note of only two features: the “Gilden Vale” (it’s the river Dore) and Marcley Hill (see my post on the travelling hill). Strikingly, New Court on the Dore, is outlined as a major site. Today nothing remains of New Court except a place labled on the most detailed Ordnance Survey map as “New Ct. Farm.” My sources tell me the building on that site is new. On the other hand, the current Ordnance Survey map still locates the site of the 1571/5 landslip as “The Wonder.” Here is Speed compared to the OS map.

Lurid Agriculture

As part of this MLA paper I’m working on, I’m revisiting Rowland Vaughan’s treatise on water meadows, an early modern form of irrigation which he invented. This might not sound exciting, but listen to the language of one of the prefatory poems, written by John Davies. Thanks to Vaughan’s agricultural innovation, he

holds the Sperme of Herbage by a Spring)
Infuseth in the wombe of sterile Lands,
The Liquid seede that makes them Plenty bring.
…
For, as all Womens wombes do barren seeme,
That neuer had societie of Men;
So fertill Grounds we often barren deeme,
Whose Bowells, Water fills not now and then.¹

It’s not surprising to see the landscape gendered like this (there’s a long tradition of this going back to the classical period), but it’s rare to see the point made so explicitly. I’m still thinking about what to do with passages like this.

1. Rowland Vaughan and John Davies, Most Approued, and Long Experienced Water-Workes, London, 1610. ↩︎

Thinking about Pollaiulo’s *Battle of the Nudes* in the Art Institute

I’ve always been fascinated by Pollaiulo’s Battle of the Nudes because art historians seem unable to figure out what it’s about. Some have tried to argue for a particular classical source based on iconography or similarities to other works. Others have rejected specificity, arguing that the painting is either a stylistic exercise in the nude figure in action or that its content is moral (in a general sense).¹ Since the print is unique, however, attempts to close it down have been unconvincing. This is fine by me.
The other day I encountered the print again in the Art Institute of Chicago, this time in a wonderful exhibit on Dionysos that matched early modern prints with classical objects. Next to the print is a classical statue of a group of satyrs fighting a snake (acquired by the Art Institute in 2010, I think); the placard notes that it has been suggested that Pollaiuolo drew on this statue in creating the print. This argument dates back to Laurie Fusco’s 1984 article ², and indeed there are some remarkable similarities between at least one of the satyrs and the print.

Some of those similarities have to do with the position of the middle satyr, but the faces of the satyrs are also markedly similar to the faces in Pollaiuolo’s print. In moving back and forth from the classical sculpture to the print, I began to consider more carefully something I think everybody notices: the similarity between the all the faces in the print. This similarity is certainly noticed by those new to the print ³, but it is not something art historians have paid much attention to, probably because there are so many other examples of early art in which individual faces are rendered using a generic pattern. I began to wonder, however, whether in this case that process is not responsible for the similarity between the faces and whether Pollaiulo is deliberately portraying a battle between one person.
The most important evidence in favor of this hypothesis is that the faces in Pollaiulo’s print are hardly generic They are highly marked with distinctive features. If we look at an example of a piece in which the generic principle is at work, such as Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina, we can see the difference. The faces in Michelangelo’s engraving are generic in the ordinary sense, with average undistinguished features.

Even here, however, Michelangelo has introduced external details (facial hair, clothing) that while not truly individualizing the characters at least prevent us from thinking they are the same person. Pollaiulo’s faces, on the other hand, have not only the same features but the same hairstyle and the same hair band, and those details are carefully recorded. If there is a template at work, it might be the classical satyr-face, but even here the similarities exceed the reach of the genre.

If the figures are deliberately representing one individual, then the engraving as a whole clearly has a moralizing focus on internal conflict. This is not an alien idea to Renaissance art and literature. There is a long tradition of representing the individual allegorically, a tradition dating back to Prudentius’ Psychomachia and extending forward to the medieval morality plays. It’s a tradition that is reflected in Renaissance emblem books, too, and the mysterious chain in the middle of the picture might work in those terms. But this post has gone on long enough.

1. See Jay A. Levenson, et al., Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art (National Gallery of Art, 1973) 66-80. Also,
   Joseph Manca, “Passion and Primitivism in Antonio Pollaiuolo’s Battle of Naked Men.,” Notes in the History of Art 20, no. 3 (2001): 28–36. ↩
   
2. Fusco, Laurie. “Pollaiuolo’s Battle of the Nudes : A Suggestion for an Ancient Source and a New Dating.” In Scritti Di Storia Dell’arte in Onore Di Federico Zeri, 1:196–99. Milan & Los Angeles, 1984. ↩︎
3. Kyle. “Art 236: Post #3 - Formal Analysis.” Art 236, January 18, 2012. http://kyleg235.blogspot.com/2012/01/post-3-formal-analysis.html. ↩︎

A Traveling Hill

I’m trying to enrich my understanding of an event in Herefordshire in the late 16th century. Here’s what happened, according to John Speed and William Camden’s Theater of the Empire of Great Britaine:

But more admirable was the worke of the Omnipotent even in our owne remembrances, and yeere of Christ Iesus 1571. When the Marcley Hill in the East of this Shire rouzed it selfe out of a dead sleepe, with a roaring noise removed from the place where it stood, and for three daies together travelled from her first site, to the great amazement and feare of the beholders. It began to journey upon the seventh day of February, being Saturday, at six of the clocke at night, and by seven in the next morning had gone fortie Pases, carrying with it Sheepe in their coates, hedge-rowes, and trees; whereof some were overturned, and some that stood upon the Plaine, are firmely growing upon the Hill, those that were East, were turned West; and those in the West were set in the East: in which remove it overthrew Kinnaston Chappell, and turned two high-wales neere a hundred yards from their usuall paths formerly trod. The ground thus travelling, was about twenty six Acres, which opening it selfe with Rocks and all, bare the Earth before it for foure hundred yards space without any stay, leaving that which was Pasturage in place of the Tillage, and the Tillage overspread with Pasturage. Lastly, overwhelming her lower parts, mounted to an hill of twelue fadomes high, and there rested herselfe after three daies travell.(1)

The note in this copy indicates that most of the text comes from Camden’s Britannia, but the earliest editions of this work (in Latin) do not contain a reference to the event, so I’m guessing this is all John Speed’s addition. The date is also a little uncertain. Some (much) later references to this event say it happened in 1575, and one says it occurred on February 17. All, however, seem to be derived from Speed’s account in 1612. Yet Speed himself calls the date “Saturday” in one edition and “Sunday” in another. February 7, 1571 was a Wednesday (ecclesiastical year) or a Tuesday (legal year) according to the historical calendar app I wrote, which is always right. I’m hoping to find some ephemera at the Newberry Library, not indexed in EEBO, that can help clarify the source.

And why, you might ask, is it relevant? Well, first of all Hereford is held up as an epitome of England’s pastoral countryside. As Speed and Camden put it,

No place in England yeeldeth more, or better conditioned: sweet rivers running as veines in the body, doe make the corne-bearing grounds in some of her parts rightly to be termed the Gilden Vale: and for waters, wooll, and wheat, doth contend with Nilus, Colchose, and Egypt: such are Lemster and Irchenfeild, the banks of Wye, Luge, and Frome.(2)

That means that landscape descriptions for Hereford are particularly important in understanding attitudes toward the environment in England more widely. Second, the language of the passage, which literally animates the landscape, is bizarre, as is the concentration of agricultural images: pasturage, tillage, sheep, etc. This feels to me like language originating from near the source. Finally, Hereford was also the site of rapid environmental change in the agricultural landscape, a change sometimes contested even in terms of the relative proportions of tillage and pasturage. This event is oddly contiguous with that environmental change.

1. John Speed and William Camden, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine Presenting an Exact Geography of the Kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Iles Adioyning: With the Shires, Hundreds, Cities and Shire-Townes, within Ye Kingdome of England, Divided and Described by Iohn Speed. (London, 1612). p. 49.
   
2. Ibid.