a career of tournaments, where the victors won the weapons and armor of those they
defeated.
The original tournaments were fought as mêlées, open battle among many mounted
knights. Although the weapons were supposed to be blunted, participants were sometimes
killed. In 1183, Prince Henry, son of Henry II of England, died in a French tournament
after his father had forbidden tournaments in England. One could be excom-municated
for participating in a tournament, but this did not reduce their popularity.
By the end of the Middle Ages, tournaments had become much more elaborate and
ritualized encounters. Paired in two-man jousts, knights tried to unhorse each other with
their lances. Late-medieval jousters had to provide “proofs” of their nobility before they
could be admitted to a tournament. The heavy plate armor they now wore meant they
were rarely killed. Tournaments remained popular long after the 14th-century invention
of gunpowder, but as occasions for display, not mock battles.
Constance B.Bouchard
[See also: ARMS (HERALDIC); CHIVALRY; HERALD/HERALDRY;
KNIGHTHOOD; TOURNAMENT ROMANCES]
Barber, Richard. The Knight and Chivalry. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.
Duby, Georges. The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1977.
Keen, Maurice. Chivalry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Painter, Sidney. French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideas and Practices in Mediaeval France. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940.
TOURNAMENT ROMANCES
. The Roman du Hem (1278) by Sarrasin and the Tournoi de Chauvency (1285) by
Jacques Bretel (or Bretex) recount contemporary tournaments featuring historical
personages in a singular mixture of literary invention and documentary concerns. Hem, a
text of 4,624 octosyllabic lines, survives in one mutilated manuscript (B.N. fr. 1588)
written shortly after 1278. The polemical-allegorical framework has Prowess, Largesse,
and Valor lament Philip III’s interdiction of tournaments, which is detrimental to both
honor and the economy. Two young noblemen nevertheless plan a tournament that has
the principals disguised as characters from Chrétien de Troyes’s romances and reenacts
scenes from Arthurian romance. Chauvency (4,563 lines) survives in three manuscripts
(Oxford, Bodl., Douce 308; Mons, Bibliothèque de la Ville 330–215; Florence, Bib.
Laurenziana, Pal. CXVIII). It opens with an encounter between the minstrel Jacques and
the German Conrad Warnier (with a linguistically interesting accent), who informs him
of the great tournament about to take place at Chauvency. Jacques wants to cover this
event and, once at the castle, identifies the participants with the help of a herald (a
profession he denigrates). The bulk of the romance is taken up by countless jousts and
musical soirées that feature songs with refrains from contemporary poets, games, and
storytelling.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1734