Digging into the cavazione

The counter to being gained, or constrained (or stringered), that is found in virtually every plate in Capo Ferro and Giganti, is the cavazione.¹  This is when you move your blade from one side of theirs to the other.  It’s often translated as “disengage,” but the problem there is that an engagement usually assumes your blades are in contact.  And ours aren’t, or shouldn’t be, according to Capoferro and Fabris.  So we’ll keep using the word cavazione.

Definition

Interestingly, a general definition for cavazione is ‘to dig out’ or ‘to quarry’. When applied to fencing it morphs a bit:

1.b. 'extract: relating to object' It. cavazione f. 'in fencing²

Going back to the root, it starts to make more sense:

Cavare: Pull out by force or artfully, remove, extract³

To get out, to free oneself from a difficult or embarrassing situation.⁴

So for fencing, the word cavare or cavazione encapsulates the concept of extracting your blade from a difficult situation - e.g. from the opponent’s constraint. I might also lay on it a shade of extracting by “digging out” from under their blade. That might be stretching the application of the translation, but it seems to work pretty well, truth be told.

Below we’ll get into what the Italian authors wrote about when, how, and why to cavatione, and I’ll add my own thoughts at the end.