On March 17th 2001 I ran the first official class of what was then called “The School of European Swordsmanship, Helsinki”, or SESH, in a small room at the Olympic Stadium, in Helsinki, Finland. So today is our 25th birthday: happy birthday to us!
Our classes were held in primary school sports halls:
And even outside, when the Finnish weather allowed:
It's fair to say we've come a long way since then!
To celebrate, I’ve created a COOL FREE THING. (Well, I've caused to be created by paying the excellent Katie to do the actual work.) Would you like a full-colour facsimile of Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, with a second copy with my English translation laid out like the original?
Of course you would. You can use these print files to get it printed wherever you like (I use BookVault in the UK).
While you are there (the files are hosted at swordschool.shop) use the birthday discount code SWORDSCHOOL25! to get 25% off all digital products (ebooks and audiobooks). The code also works on our courses platform: courses.swordschool.com
The code expires at the end of April, so no desperate rush.
Note: no purchase or sign-up is required to get the facsimile print files. It's entirely free. You'll need to put your email address in to download it, but we won't sign you up to anything unless you opt-in during the process.
The Facsimile
Written in the 1480s for the court of Urbino, Filippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi is a cornerstone source for historical European martial arts: concise, sharp, and packed with principles that still matter in fencing today—timing, measure, courage, deception, and decisive action. This book is designed to reproduce the experience of reading the original manuscript as closely as possible.
The first half is a full-colour facsimile of the 42-folio vellum original held in Rome. The second half is a layout-matched English translation, replacing Vadi’s text while keeping the manuscript’s structure and rhythm intact.
For clubs, instructors, and independent students, this is Vadi as he should be read: directly, clearly, and in context. And for practical study, every play has video support available via simple links keyed to the folio number.
Made available under a Creative Commons Attribution–Non Commercial–ShareAlike licence, this facsimile is free for anyone to print and share.
For deeper scholarship, footnotes, interpretation, and video-supported training for every play, see the companion volume (available for pre-order, due out in May).
Please note: You will receive a zip file containing the PDF download of the interior file, and a separate PDF cover file. Recommendations for how to have this printed into your own hardback book are included. You can download the zip file from the confirmation page after checkout, and you will also receive an email with a download link.
Please share this post, and the book, with anyone you think will be interested.
So what happened in the last 25 years? I’ll post a lengthy “history of Swordschool’ post next week. In the meantime, avail yourself of all our other cool free stuff:
Free Resources from Swordschool
The Syllabus Wiki. We are currently rebuilding it, but it’s as usable as it ever was during the rebuild process. It’s how we host and organise our free reference resource for syllabus and interpretation. We started it in 2010, and while it was neglected somewhat as we built the online school, it’s still useful, and is being thoroughly re-organised, expanded, and brought up to date. For instance, we have now got the first 20 plates from Capoferro represented with image, text, and video. And we've made a solid start on Fiore too.
The Sword Guy Podcast. I started this during lockdown so that sword people stuck at home and missing the social aspect of training could virtually hang out while sword geeks chatted about swords. It now boasts over 200 episodes, with a range of well-known and less well-known guests.
GuyWindsor.Net. This blog! I started it in 2012, and it now has over 500 posts on various topics. I recently reorganised it and created a ‘start here’ page.
Swordschool Vimeo channel. With over 500 videos, it’s a monster, and hard to navigate, which is why we have the Syllabus Wiki. Almost all public interpretation and training videos are on the wiki (or will be soon). It also hosts backups of our online courses, in case that platform goes down, so not all of those 500 videos are public. But feel free to dig around for something interesting.
The Newsletter. This has existed since about 2015, but I didn’t do much with it until lockdown. Since then it’s been a regular fortnightly bit of swordy positivity in your inbox. About 6,000 people subscribe at present- you should join them! Subscribe below, or click the link for access to all previous emails.
That's a whole lot of free stuff. It's all made possible by the people who actually buy our products: books, courses, seminars; or who support us on Patreon. Until the end of April you can get 25% off all digital products (sadly not physical books or t-shirts: they cost too much money to make and ship), with the code:
SWORDSCHOOL25!
This works on Swordschool.Shop (for ebooks and audiobooks), and on our courses platform at Courses.Swordschool.Com
Happy Birthday to us!