MLARTC_FM.part 1.qxp

(Chris Devlin) #1

claim to fame was that it trained its monks to run for many
days and nights without stopping. The basis for such tales is
the khora,or pedestrian mandalas, run by Tibetan monks
around sacred mountains. Buddhist monks ran clockwise, while
Bon monks traveled counterclockwise. (This difference had to
do with which direction the practitioner held to be the most
important, the female/left or the male/right. The landowning
classes, which included priests and soldiers, generally preferred
the right-hand path, while the mercantile classes, which in-
cluded artisans, merchants, potters, burglars, hunters, and pros-
titutes, generally preferred the left-hand path.) Analogous
dances appeared in Islam and Christianity about the same time.
The Islamic and Christian dances represented the angels in
heaven and the progression of the planets. Only men did such
dancing, as women’s dances were considered lewd. Such dances
also reinforced Hellenistic medical theories, according to which
standing strengthened the spine, walking removed afflictions of
the head and chest, and well-regulated breathing tempered the
heat of the heart.
1042 Warrior-monks establish a Western Saharan Islamic nomocracy
known as the Almoravides (al-murabbitun—those who gather
in the fortress to wage the holy war). By the 1080s, these fun-
damentalists had conquered Morocco and invaded Ghana and
Iberia; Rodrigo Díaz, known as El Cid,was the Christian hero
of the Iberian defense.
About 1063 Following his reported intervention during a battle in Sicily,
Saint George becomes the patron saint of Norman warriors. Pi-
ous English soldiers continued seeking Saint George’s assistance
well into the modern era, and he was reported to be personally
supporting British forces as late as 1914.
1066 According to the Chronicle of Saint Martin of Tours,Geoffroi
de Preuilli, the man “who invented tournaments,” is killed dur-
ing a tournament at Angers. The Germans rejected the French
claim to primacy in inventing tournaments, citing as evidence
similar equestrian games played by the retainers of Louis the
German in 842 and King Henry the Fowler ca. 930.
About 1070 An Englishman known as Hereward the Wake exchanges blows
with a potter, the two men agreeing to stand up to each other’s
blows in turn, with the better man to be judged by the result.
The blows seem to have been open-handed slaps to the side of
the head rather than punches to the jaw, but in the parlance of
the day the game was known as boxing. In the nineteenth cen-
tury, the story caused Sir Walter Scott to claim that Richard the
Lion-Hearted played similar boxing games.
About 1075 Norman clergy start dubbing Norman knights. The reason
seems to have been that the clergy wanted to exert control
over the men-at-arms by blessing preexisting initiation rites.
Rituals varied from place to place. The practice of “striking
me kneeling, with a broadsword, and pouring ale upon my
head” (Burke 1978, 39–41) is associated with eighteenth-cen-
tury journeyman initiations rather than medieval aristocratic
practice.


Chronological History of the Martial Arts 797
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