Firstly, does anybody practice it?

Secondly, why is it in Capo Ferro's manual?

Thirdly, who would have used it?

As there are a good number of Bolognese practitioners here I am sure the rotella will be nothing new to you, but from a rapierists perspective, people look at me funny when using a shield in conjunction with a rapier, and rightly so, for it is a rather unusual weapon to find in what many would call 'true' rapier manuals. On the first point, I do practice with rotella, I have owned and used a year now, and intend to buy more. I use police riot shields (spray painted of course), as the concave double strap nature and size make them perfect for the job, as well as cheap and readily available. Here are a few sparring clips from early this year when we first got started with them, I have not got anything more recent, since we have had more practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIxBIWrbTEA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_qmNgFp8Kg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkQRoA_Co8

I use them simply because, A - they are in Capo Ferro's manual, and B - they are a hell of a lot of fun.

So on to the second point, why are they in his manual? Well it could of course be tradition, after their popularity in the previous century, but then other masters did not feel the need for this. Two whole plates are also a fair amount to expend in a short manual, so I would have thought they have a more practical usage. Clearly Capo Ferro considers it a very dangerous combination to face, and rather implies there is a chance you might have to. Seeing as there is little evidence to support any of this, my further thoughts are speculative.

Firstly, I think the addition of a rotella to a rapier gives effectively a military combination, with this in mind, I think it is a quick addition to a man's attire enabling him to increase combat effectiveness at a minutes notice. I think this would serve two purposes, one, that town guards and militias could equip in seconds when needed, not as such for all out war, but public disturbence, rioting, dealling with bandits etc. Secondly, we know that the Italian cities were rife with violence after dark, hence the usage of weapons such as the lantern shield. I believe a rotella could have been used for greater defence and a deterant, particularly after dark, by anyone from typical civilians to hired personal guards.

As I said, evidence to support these ideas is not easy to come by, but I truly believe that the rotella has more than simply a traditional salle usage, thoughts? and does anybody else do this?

So you think that your riot shields were anciently used as... Riot shields? Well, that's a definite possibility. I'd say early modern cops were pretty nasty customers and probably used any sort of implement they could get their rather dirty hands on!

As for your questions, they are thought provoking. I will answer them with my own guesswork:

Firstly, does anybody practice it?
Not yet, but I'm on the waiting list of a blacksmith friend of a friend (you know how these things go) who has a great passion for historical work, and is slowly gaining a great deal of experience. Let's say that when (and if) he's done I'll have a couple of metal rotelle, and will have a great deal of fun practicing it with a 17th century sword!

Secondly, why is it in Capo Ferro's manual? Who would have used it?
I think a rotella would not be that strange a sight, in those times. Di Grassi writes 40 years before CF and says that rotelle are commonly used by people of the noble persuasion both at day and at night on every kind of... business (and we can imagine what kind of business requires a big iron shield). Docciolini describes its use in 1601 with a tone that we could only describe as "matter of factly". Bonaventura Pistofilo cites the rotella in his 1621 oplomachia, along with the buckler and the targa as defensive weapons, even if he doesn't dwell on the subject too much (he much preferred speaking about military weaponry, the theological virtues required of a sergeant and of the lenght of a proper soldier's beard). Marcelli still speaks about the rotella in 1686, but lumps it together with the aforesaid targa and the buckler. That is, he knows they are different defensive implements, but just says that you should use them more or less as you would use the common dagger. This last one stinks most of an "odds and ends" chapter of the treatise.

So, I'd say rotelle were more common than what we normally think: they started out as self defence protection and duelling equipment. The first use probably faded during the 17th century while the second, dueling, wasn't even really popular to start with, but lingered on (at least in fencing tradition or, possibly, just oplological and technical fencing literature) and died off along with rapier fencing itself at the end of the century.

Firstly, does anybody practice it

We've worked through the material a couple of times. As I recall, it's pretty clearly an application of Capoferro's theory to a larger shield.
Do we fence with it? not really, don't really have enough rotelli, and they're pretty heavy.

Secondly, why is it in Capoferro's manual?

First off, to reference Tom's excellent article on duelling, a duellist could be called upon to fight with "any weapons commonly used for war." We know that the sword and rotealla was commonly used (the Spanish were famous for this combination), so a duellist could be called upon to use it.
As Francesco has already said, many other authors included it in their manuals. Agrippa spends a couple of plates on it as well, and I know that one of the Portuguese manuals that Eric is working on has a considerable amount on this weapon combination. Thus, I'm not sure that this was an entirely uncommon weapon combination.
I think that Capoferro included it as a demonstration of how to apply his theory to other weapons, even those that are otherwise larger and more unwieldy than a dagger or cloak. But like you, I have no way of really proving it.
Re-reading the section, almost feels like he's cribbing someone else though (like the way he cribs viggiani at the end). I wonder if we could find who (if anyone, he's referencing here).

Thirdly, who would have used it?

I'm not entirely sure who would have used it. This is especially compounded by not really having a good idea about who Capoferro's audience was to begin with. It may have been used in war, it may have been used in duelling, and it may have been used in the salle; but I think that's the same as for any of the other weapon combinations that he teaches. Considering the lack of head protection, and the sheer number of head shots in his manual, I'm not sure that he was teaching towards a "salle" audience.


On another note, the rotella we have is pretty heavy (at least for my non beefy arm). From your videos the riot shields you guys are using seem pretty light by comparison, how do you think this effects your fencing, or your interpretation of the theory?

Which Rotella do you have? I use the MRL ones (although with custom handles and straps). Although they really need a quilted liner, I don't think that would make them too heavy. OTOH, anything held at arm's length is going to get heavy.

One of the reasons why Capoferro might have included it (beyond his own preference) was to illustrate the possible dangers of incorrectly using it, as Capoferro himself say (forgive my quick and dirty translation):



Remember that later he talks about the dangers of going to parry a feint with it (and IIRC, shows a technique that illustrates just that).

All that said, you'd think that a targa or buckler would be a little more appropriate. However, perhaps he thought that the rotella better illustrates how you can screw yourself if you don't know what you're doing, or screw your opponent if he doesn't know what he's doing.

Steve

This is my inclination as well. It is possible that CF felt that people did not quite "get" the rotella as opposed to the buckler or targa. To put it another way, he may have felt that his contemporaries' skills with the buckler/targa were sufficient, but not so with the rotella.

I think Steve has it exactly right. I've used and taught CF Rotella and Sword mainly to show that you have to use the specific techniques to not screw yourself. Unfortunately our rotelli weren't heavy enough (wimps!), so I had a hard time stopping students from instinctively whipping them around to parry. Even with the too light ones, it was still far too easy for me to feint them out of a line. Given the number of rotellli I've seen in museums, somebody was using them.

Like so much of what we study, if you do exactly what the treatise states, they work great. They're a good bit of fun as well.

How heavy should be a rotella on average? The blacksmith friend I spoke about earlier examined a few and read about their spec some time ago. The thickness varied wildly, with a record of 12 kg, a monster probably made to withstand gunfire. The other two examples stopped at 6 or 7 kg or so... But after some simple calculations, he found that a rotella with a thickness of 3 mm will weigh no more than 4 kilos. 3mm are thick enough to soak a LOT of punishment, so I don't know why the rotelle examined were so weighty.

I never doubted the plenty of rotelli were in use, but I was discussing a rather late period of their usage, and seeing as dating surviving examples accurately is very difficult, we cannot rely on that for evidence. I am very much inclined to think they were being used, as I said at the beginning, but so many people, at least this side of the pond, think otherwise.

In terms of weight, I have looked in to this also, and yes, it seems to vary to a shocking degree, with some coming in as light as 1kg, and the typical being 2-3kg from what I have seen so far. Again, context is a difficult thing to work out, which models were used and when. Certainly there are some very heavy models about, but these things were built for their purpose, I think the heaviest are probably ceremonial or particularly special use, think of the modern police ballistic shield, it in no way represents the current riot spec model in weight, and serves a different purpose.