From the Page to the Practice

During the mid-1500s a new approach to sword theory was developed in Spain based on the works of Aristotle, Euclid, and Plato and incorporating other scientific, mathematical, and philosophical concepts. The system was called La Verdadera Destreza, the True Art. This new Spanish method focused on a universal method of fighting based on reason and mathematics that could be taught to any student. Applicable to any weapon. the tradition thrived from 1569 until it began to fade in the 1800s, when it was gradually replaced by the fashionably modern French fencing tradition.

The Destreza masters were educated men striving to reinvent the practice as an essential part of early modern aristocratic education. Training a young man to use the sword was a mechanism to create the ideal Spanish noble and the curriculum included mathematics, physics, religion, philosophy, and the other elements of a larger classical education. This created an incredibly robust fencing literature, but one very difficult to comprehend by anyone not equally versed in Spanish court culture.

Having built an international reputation for translating these complex texts and making them comprehensible to modern audiences, Puck and Mary Curtis have created this first-ever English language guide to training in authentic 16th century Destreza. Fully illustrated, this extended primer provides a student step-by-step instruction in all of the fundamental elements of the Spanish school, in the precise technical language of that school, and is instrumental to anyone with even a passing interest in this famed tradition of swordplay.