The Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, and his son Guidobaldo, attributed to Pedro Berruguete. Picture credit

Galeazzo used to say that without books, nobody can truly be a Master or student in this art. I, Fiore, agree with this: there is so much to this art that even the man with the keenest memory in the world will be unable to learn more than a fourth of it without books. And a fourth of this art is not enough to make someone a Master.
-Fiore De’ Liberi’s Fior Di Battaglia (Flower of Battle), 1409, translated by Tom Leoni

My school, the Sacramento Sword School, is teaming up with the Sacramento Frei Fechter to put on a fundraiser tournament for the Sacramento Public Library. We want books on Western Martial Arts at the library, so we decided that the best approach was to raise the money and buy them ourselves and donate them.

Remember the swordfight from The Princess Bride? I hope you do – it’s the greatest swordfight in movie history. As The Man in Black fights and talks with Inigo Montoya, they drop several names – among them are Capoferro and Agrippa. Surprise – these are real people who wrote important books about swordfighting. English translations of these books are on the list of things we want to buy for the library.

So, if you want to see what swordfighting really looks like, or if you want to help us buy books for the Sac Library, come to the Sacramento HEMA Open on August 17, 2014. It’s free for spectators (but we’d be really happy to have you contribute to the book buying fund!). There will be a sidesword/rapier tournament starting at 9:00 AM, and we will have a longsword tournament in the afternoon.

It’s at the Sacramento Turn Verein Gymnasium:

3349 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95816
Note that parking and gym entrance are on I Street between 33rd and 35th

If you practice Western Martial Arts and want to compete, see this post on SFI for details.

We hope to see you there!