Rapier is a style of sword combat growing out of the single handed sword/ sidesword tradition. It was popular from the late 16th Century until the mid 17th Century, when it began to transition to what today we call Small Sword. The weapon is a long single handed sword with complex hilt optimised for thrusting. Historically they were just called swords everywhere except England and Germany.
Fencing with a rapier is physically more demanding and more suitable for the duel than other styles of historical fencing.In the Italian style it is dominated by blade engagement and the lunge more familiar to students of modern fencing, while still including powerful cuts and wrestling grips common in HEMA.
For the Italian style of rapier we use texts by a variety of authors who conform to a common style and theory of fencing strongly connected to northern Italy in the early 17th century, specifically: Gran Simulacro dell’Arte e dell’Uso della Scherma (by Ridolfo Capofero di Cagli), Giganti, Alfieri, and Fabris.
For the Iberian (Spanish and Portugese) style of Rapier, we are follow the La Verdadera Destreza (true science of fencing) tradition. This is strongly informed by Puck Curtis’ article From the Page to the Practice as well as the few historical texts available in English translation e.g. Rada book 3 and Pacheco.
Here’s a video showing some highlights from an Italian Rapier class.
Useful References:
- Puck Curtis’ article From the Page to the Practice
- Translation of Giganti
- exercises for learning Rapier on youtube