This is the eighth scroll text I’ve done (for those keeping score – the fourth one has not yet been given out, so no blog post yet). This Order of the Silver Rapier, the East’s AoA level rapier award, went to a friend and fellow household member. I was very excited to get to write this scroll, read it in court, and pass the household lineage medallion to Ciarán .
The text was based on the English translation of the introduction to the Great Representation of the Art and Use of Fencing by Ridolfo Capo Ferro. I believe I used this version: http://mac9.ucc.nau.edu/manuscripts/CapoFerro-GRAUF.pdf Relvant text on page vii.
It is not our intention to hold you at bay with embellished and splendid words, in the recommending to you of the profession of arms that we practice. It is extolled in the due order of its merit, for which it is greatly prized and honoured, and always praised, and the greatness and valour are commended of those who worthily carry the sword at their side; among whom today shines gloriously the Most Illustrious Ciarán Ua Meic Thíre because not only is he endowed with full and marvelous advantage of that of the sword, but also of every other art, as his heroic actions by the same, to the wonder of all, clearly make manifest. But to turn to the sword, we say it is the noblest weapon above all others, in whose handling the majority of the industry of the art of fencing is honourably employed; therefore according to our judgment, on this Twenty-Fifth Day of March, AS LI, in our Barony of Settmour Swamp, we induct said Ciarán Ua Meic Thíre into our Order of the Silver Rapier.
Final scroll calligraphy and illumination by Nataliia Anastasiia Evgenova, turning the text into a page out of a rapier treatise:
