About Us

Spada Press was founded in January 2017, with the launch of our beautiful full-colour facsimile edition of the legendary Il Fior di Battaglia, by Fiore dei Liberi. Our purpose is simple: to put affordable facsimiles of historical european martial arts sources into the hands of enthusiasts. It would be wonderful if everybody could have the original manuscript in their home, but some of these are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while a very few manuscripts have been lavishly and beautifully recreated, most fencers can’t afford to spend a thousand dollars on a book.

Also, most reproductions are created as part of a lengthy scholarly edition. These editions are excellent, and very useful, but they are expensive, go out of print very quickly, and frankly there is no substitute for just sitting alone with the book, without a modern voice leading you through it.

So we get the best scans we can find, lay them out as close to the original size as possible, and publish them using print on demand technology. We aim to produce the best quality facsimile possible for the price of a normal book. You can afford to have one on the shelf, and throw one in your fencing bag. Which is also why these are only available in case-bound hardback- it’s the most hard-wearing cover.

Next on our list is Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, which is in layout now…

You can find Il Fior di Battaglia on Amazon US, or Amazon UK.

And in any other Amazon store; just search for the ISBN: 9789527157114

Don’t like Amazon? We haven’t yet figured out how to sell these lovely books directly from this website, but you can find the book in any online bookstore, or get your local store to order it in, using the ISBN: 9789527157114