Guy Windsor's discussion of Fiore's longsword material places the techniques in judicial duels, tournaments, battlefield violence, and personal self-defense. Modern practitioners cannot reproduce the legal, social, emotional, or lethal conditions surrounding those encounters. Safe free play remains useful training, but it rewards success under modern equipment and rules rather than under the historical context. A technique that performs poorly in sparring may still have suited its original purpose, just as tournament habits might fail in real combat. The same warning applies to naval games and simulations: their rule systems are tools for inquiry, not replicas of the past.
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Why modern sparring cannot reproduce historical combat
A medieval longsword manual illustrates how modern safety rules and social conditions change what a simulation can teach.