{"id":1595,"date":"2014-07-15T18:05:23","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T02:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/?p=1595"},"modified":"2014-07-15T18:05:23","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T02:05:23","slug":"a-defense-of-pacheco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/2014\/07\/a-defense-of-pacheco\/","title":{"rendered":"A Defense of Pacheco"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Don<\/a>

Don Luis Pacheco de Narv\u00e1ez<\/p><\/div>\n

He is acerbic, often dogmatic, and difficult to like.\u00a0 Pacheco’s work at first glance would not seem to be an ideal metric by which to unify a tradition.\u00a0 Many people reading Pacheco for the first time have a strong negative reaction to the trollish way he jibes at the works of others.\u00a0 He does not resist the urge to throw punches in his prose and perhaps it makes him an early species of today’s\u00a0internet troll who pokes and annoys others for his own amusement.\u00a0 Reacting to his tone, we might quickly dismiss him but the problem is that Pacheco is also an incredibly gifted technical writer and theoretician who is perhaps the most prolific fencing author in history. \u00a0Most of the technical information\u00a0we currently have\u00a0about La Verdadera Destreza is a direct or indirect result of Pacheco’s work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carranza’s work does not contain enough technical material to describe a complete system. \u00a0Thibault’s work is both extensive and technical but appears to be out of sync with the other authors. \u00a0Most of the other La Verdadera Destreza\u00a0authors available are derivative of Pacheco’s core system which means they are in some sense accountable to his examination standards. \u00a0For this reason I often find myself presenting or defending Pacheco’s position as a common point of verifiable evidence even while I acknowledge that the tradition is broader than a single author.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The classical tradition that trained me enforces a core standard of practice with meticulous care.\u00a0 As an example, the hand in the invitation of second shall be held at a certain height and angle; to do otherwise is incorrect.\u00a0 However, if we examine the historical record, we see a multitude of different examples of the invitation in second and it might seem that this insistence on uniformity would be a compulsion which also borders on trollish antagonism towards the students.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 What purpose does it serve?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By reducing scope in\u00a0the school and during the examinations it creates right and wrong answers.\u00a0 That brief state of artificial purity allows students to develop their core skills and to carefully climb within a\u00a0demanding system from ignorance into technical competence.\u00a0 As the students develop understanding and ability their own questions naturally arise which challenge the purity of the right and wrong answers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An Instructor candidate should be able to recite the answers in the textbook and teach most of the actions described.\u00a0 The Provost candidates teach at a higher level and might qualify their answers, delve into difficult and broader theory, and occasionally explore concepts outside the textbook.\u00a0 The Master candidate is expected to not only be able to teach the textbook in its entirety but to also know when to leave it aside and justify the reasoning.\u00a0 The mastery of the lesson and execution becomes a personal expression which realizes\u00a0the tradition as an act of creative art.\u00a0 An answer outside the scope of the book can become correct when good reason and judgment are applied.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

William Gaugler’s\u00a0fencing master’s program was not cloning human versions of his\u00a0textbook but rather creating a common language and understanding by which a\u00a0community could work outward to achieve nuanced understanding which could be both broad and deep. \u00a0This might best describe\u00a0the position from which Figueiredo wrote his Oplosophia; he has enough knowledge and expertise to master a tradition and yet uses his\u00a0ability to provide critical expertise on the elements involved which challenges the canon of the tradition itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is within this textbook form that Pacheco’s work shines.\u00a0 We have his proposed testing criteria and a large body of work which we can use to create a uniform standard for examination.\u00a0 A student citing Pacheco in his examination works from a defensible place of canonicity which provides a textbook of right and wrong answers.\u00a0 It forms a common core of theory and practice from which the students may safely learn in an elegant\u00a0simplicity and ultimately transcend\u00a0into multi-hued complexity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pacheco is not the only voice\u00a0in our tradition but he is one of the great LVD authors\u00a0and\u00a0just as the textbooks in the classical program provide a beginning, mastery involves internalizing the work and seeing beyond the rules into the deeper and changing causes from which they are derived.\u00a0 Studying Pacheco diligently can\u00a0become a Carrancine exercise in the search for verifiable science which can be taught and demonstrated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For a Carrancine teacher Pacheco\u00a0serves as a brilliant starting point, as a tool for teaching and examination, as an exercise in application, and as a historically uniform standard for evaluating knowledge and practice. \u00a0Pacheco is a ready-made\u00a0roadway from ignorance, through competence, into mastery. \u00a0When that path\u00a0is paired with Carranza’s instructions about teaching, science, art, and ethics we move from creating builders into creating architects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He is acerbic, often dogmatic, and difficult to like.\u00a0 Pacheco’s work at first glance would not seem to be an ideal metric by which to unify a tradition.\u00a0 Many people reading Pacheco for the first time have a strong negative reaction to the trollish way he jibes at the works of others.\u00a0 He does not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,12,1,13,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}