Hi!

The big news this week is that I have hashed out an arrangement with Freelance Academy Press, publishers of my The Medieval Dagger and The Armizare Vade Mecum, that allows me to sell all versions of these two books on my shopify store. Hurrah!

If you’re not familiar with The Armizare Vade Mecum, it’s a series of mnemonic verses for learning Fiore’s Art of Arms. It began when I was thinking about the verse structure of Fiore’s writing, and noticed that one of the paragraphs on folio 9v has about the right amount of ideas in it for a sonnet. Here’s the prose translation:

I am the noble weapon called dagger, I am very much entwined with the constrained play. And he who knows my malice and my art, of every nuance of armed combat will take good part. And I immediately end my cruel battle, there is no man who can go against me. And who will see me in the feats of arms, I cover and thrust with the wrestling. And I take away his dagger with breaks and binds, and against me no weapons or armour are worth anything.