Tournaments at the Dawn of the Age of Chivalry

This website will discuss the development of the tournament of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the era stretching from William the Bastard to Richard the Lion-Hearted. It will also provide a few suggestions for recreating a tournament from that time in the context of a large mediaeval recreation group like the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Tournaments sprang from the barbarian tradition of equestrian showmanship, like dressage, and the need for practice in the new technique of charging with a couched lance. In order for a charge with couched lances to succeed, the cavalry must form into line, charge in unison, and be prepared to regroup to repeat the charge. Also, hitting a target with a couched lance on a charging horse requires hours of practice. Naturally, after such forms of training as tilting at the ring or the quintain (a training dummy), the next step would be to train under something similar to battlefield conditions. The tournament provided this training.

The supposed "inventor" of the tournament was Galfridus de Pruliaco, a Norman knight who died in 1066. However, the ascription of his name to the tournament was done by people who lived much later than the eleventh century-leaving Galfridus in scholars' limbo. Whether one is willing to give Galfridus the benefit of the doubt or not, a Sicilian chronicler of the early twelfth century named Geoffrey of Malatesta wrote about tournaments taking place on that island two generations before his time.

However, there are no descriptions of what tournaments were like until the 1100's. There, the record expands from one lonely mention of a tournament at King Arthur's court in the fiction of Geoffrey of Monmouth to detailed descriptions in the Arthurian poems by Chretien de Troyes, the real-life tournaments attended by William Marshal, and the tournament regulations of Richard the Lion-Hearted. After that, tournaments feature prominently in biographies, chronicles, and works of fiction as the schools of chivalry, where men learned how to wage war and gain honor.

In the beginning of the 12th century, tournaments were not the sport of the great nobles, the magnates, but of the lesser nobles or the gentry. Henry II of England, in fact, forbade his people to hold tournaments in England, calling them breeding grounds of sedition and sin. The Pope agreed with Henry and also tried to ban tournaments. For the most part, though, the magnates and the kings only interefered with their vassals' tournaments when it appeared that they might interfere with public order on a large scale or, perhaps, would conflict with tournaments that they themselves were planning to hold.

At the end of the century, however, Bertrand de Born, a Provencal poet and knight, complained that the magnates were crowding into the sport of the poor gentleman, making it expensive to hold, even to attend, a tournament, because of the added pageantry now expected from the knights. Even worse, in England, Richard the Lion-Hearted instituted a tax for participating in a tournament!

De Born's complaint was well-founded. The real goal of the twelfth century tournament was the collection of prisoners, their weapons, their armor, their horses, and their saddle and tack. The prisoners would either have to raise a ransom out of their own resources, or hope that their friends or lords could rescue them or lend them the ransom money. This was an extremely lucrative way for the poor but skilled gentleman to make a lot of money-a typical prize was four horses and their gear; the dismounted men often were aided by some attendant of theirs to get away while the other man had to capture the horse. The classic example of a poor gentleman making it big on the tournament circuit is William Marshal-a fourth son, with no inheritance whatsoever, who entered onto the tournament circuit, did well, became rich through his captures and ransoms, and attracted the attention of the English royal family. In a way, the tournament paralled our professional sports as roads to success for the skilled but penniless.

The setting of a tournament, the time and place, seems to have remained the same throughout the century, and even in fiction. The only season in which tournaments weren't held was winter-the latest recorded by a biographer of William Marshal was in November. In northern France, it seems that one could, in season, generally count on a tournament to be held somewhere in the area on a weekly or biweekly basis. In England, Richard the Lion-Hearted permitted tournaments to be held in only five locations, which were specially fitted up for the purpose. In other parts of Europe, the location depended upon the whim of the host. The tournament was nominally set in the fields between two villages. Sometimes, the fighting spilled into the village streets. In order to avoid this, according to a tale of Chretien de Troyes, some hosts might temporarily block off the gates to the village. In either case, the tournament needed safe havens for both sides. These havens were used for several purposes:

1) As places for the deposit of prisoners and their goods,

2) As places for a knight to find first aid and rest,

and

3) As places to where knights could escape when being pursued by an overwhelming group of enemies. Though it sounds unchivalrous, this was an early application of "discretion is the better part of valor." Getting captured was a serious matter-equipment for war was often beyond a young knight's means. When William Marshal was a young knight, he happened to have lost his horse, and could only get a broken-down nag after having pawned his most valuable piece of clothing, the cape in which he was knighted.

The schedule of a tournament would generally resemble this: A few weeks before, the host would send out heralds to announce it in "places of honor"-the courts of other nobles and at other tournaments. After it was announced in the courts and tournaments, the knights would gather in teams. A few of the rich and powerful had teams made of picked champions like William Marshal, but usually teams were more often based on neighborhood or family ties. The teams would head to the site. These teams, in turn, also grouped into sides based upon regional identity (ie., a team of Flemish knights would almost always fight for the count of Flanders, even if he wasn't their immediate lord). In fact, breaking this custom was sometimes seen as treasonous-a link to the tournament's roots in war. Also, traders, heralds, troubadours, and others would flock there in search of knightly largesse. This process could take several weeks.

During that time, the host would have his people mark off the havens, and possibly set up seats, though there are plenty of records, fictional and otherwise, of spectators watching from the walls of the castle or town. In later years, they would make a special enclosure especially suited for the horses' footing, to make the fall from horseback less painful for the knights, and to enable the spectators to get close to the action.

Meanwhile, the knights would amuse themselves by various means-dancing, chess, singing, or jousting (single combats). Jousting was regarded mostly as a young man's sport, and secondary to the main draw-a mock mass combat or melee. Melees, at that time, were unruly affairs. It was not unheard of for knights to bring along companies of archers or heavy infantry to even the field for their side, though this was considered unsporting. Sometimes, the crowd would try to enter the action, pitching stones and other things at unpopular knights. Eventually, the practice of using infantry was banned, along with the practice of sending in one's attendants to haul in captives to one's haven using ropes and polearms.

Each participant who could afford to do so would hire a herald to wear his arms, lead cheers for him, and precede him into the field during the opening procession, announcing his feats and titles. The heralds were also considered the judges of the tournament, along with the more experienced or more prestigious knights. The role of the judge was not like our marshal, however, but rather, to assign the prize to the most chivalrous fighter. This role was later shared with the ladies among the spectators in the latter half of the twelfth century, once Provencal ideas of courtly love spread to the rest of Europe.

Finally, at the close of the day, the tournament would end. The records are mixed about what happened next. Sometimes, as we would expect, the host threw a party for all the participants, and the prize would be awarded there. At other times, the team leaders would feast their followers separately. Later on, the hosts were the ones providing the feast.

The prize seems to have varied through the years. At first it was simply recognition-nothing tangible, just a boost to ones' good name. It also didn't necessarily go to the man with the best haul for the tournament, but to the "most chivalrous." Later on, it became something of moderate value. Once, William Marshal won a giant fish! Personally, I hope it had been smoked or salted before becoming the prize. Tournaments usually lasted for no more than four days, which implies that there would have been more than one melee. However, it seems that there was only one prize.

After the end of any particular tournament, the crowd of people departed, usually for home. Those who were part of a permanent tournament team, like that of the Young King, Henry II Plantagenet's son, would go with their leader to the next tournament. The troubadours and others who gathered to entertain or serve the participants would also tramp the roads for the next tournament. At that time, heralds were a subset of the troubadours, and didn't have permanent patrons; this changed as the centuries wore on.

As the twelfth century drew to a close, the tournament changed. At first it was little removed from warfare, and, as far as the rich and famous were concerned, unimportant-a game for young men who hadn't yet made their marks and profitable practice for the tail end of the aristocracy, who were expected to be good cavalrymen and little else. At worst, tournaments were thought to be places for vice and violence. By the end of the century, however, it drew all levels of the aristocracy, which damaged, but did not remove, its use as a moneymaker for the poor gentleman.

In the generation after William Marshal, the tournament's nature changed. It may have begun as fighter practice, but it became a game-a martial game, but a game. Instead of fighting with the weapons used in war, this next generation of tournament participants used bated weapons, sometimes even whalebone wrapped in silvered parchment. Also, instead of tournaments affecting literature, as it did Chretien de Troyes, the tournament now was affected by literature, with hosts holding tournaments with themes drawn from romances. Naturally, these were called "Round Tables."

I close now with a few suggestions on holding an event with a twelfth century tournament as its theme. First, the morning would be taken up by impropmptu or bearpit matches, and the afternoon with a melee. Each fighter ought to be encouraged to hire a herald. The field ought to have at least one haven set up. Because they fought with weapons of war, the goal ought to be to wound, not to kill, one's opponent-dead men don't pay up very well. Deciding on the prizewinner might be done by a secret vote of the marshals and the fighters. Given that the prize wasn't great back then, equivalents in this area might be Virginia hams or similar premium simple foods (sausages, a large jar of pickled artichokes, or-shades of William Marshal-smoked fish).

The references I used were:

Barber, Richard. The Knight and Chivalry. Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 1995.

Benson, Larry Dean, and Leyerle, John. Chivalric Literature: Essays on relations between literature and life in the later middle ages. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1980.

Clephan, R. Coltman. The Medieval Tournament Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995.

de Troyes, Chretien. Arthurian Romances, translated and edited by D.D.R. Owen. London: J.M. Dent, 1993.

Duby, Georges. William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry, translated by Richard Howard. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.

Geoffrey of Monmouth. Histories of the Kings of Britain, translated by Sebastian Evans. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1928.

Keen, Maurice. Chivalry New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.