A knife would be pressed into each of their hands. A signal would be
given—at which point they would stab each other like wild beasts. They
would flail away until one of them either succumbed or begged for quar-
ter” (1994, 13).
These “duels” are perhaps the origin of trial by combat or the judicial
combat. The belief was that God would favor the just combatant and en-
sure his victory. Authorities would punish the loser, often hanging him. Ju-
dicial combats may have occurred as early as A.D. 500. Popes sanctioned
them. Such trials largely disappeared by 1500. During the interval, the
practice was “increasingly a prerogative of the upper classes, accustomed
to the use of their weapons” (Kiernan 1988, 34).
Another possible source for the duel was the medieval tournament,
which seems to have had its origin in small-scale battles between groups of
rival knights. By the fourteenth century, the joust, or single combat, took
the place of the melee, as the small-scale battle was called. Sometimes
blunted weapons were used and sometimes they were not. Kiernan asserts
that “all the diverse forms of single combat contributed to the ‘duel of hon-
our’ that was coming to the front in the later Middle Ages, and was the di-
rect ancestor of the modern duel. Like trial by combat or the joust, it re-
quired official sanction, and took place under regulation” (1988, 40).
Chivalry developed, and by the 1500s treatises on dueling were pub-
lished. The duel in modern form became a privilege of the noble class. Stage
Four was finally reached. For an individual, the ability to give and accept
challenges defined him as not only a person of honor, but as a member of
the aristocracy. As Europe became modern, the duel did not decline as
might be expected, for the duel became attractive to members of the mid-
dle class who aspired to become members of the gentry. Outlawing of the
duel by monarchs and governments did not prevent the duel’s spread. The
duel even spread to the lower classes, whose duels Pieter Spierenburg
(1998) has referred to as “popular duels” in contrast to “elite duels.” The
practice even persisted into the twentieth century.
Perhaps because the duel persisted in Germany until World War II,
creating a plethora of information, recent scholarly attention has focused
on the German duel in the late nineteenth century. Three theories for its
persistence have been offered: (1) Kiernan sees the duel, including the Ger-
man duel, as a survival from a bygone era that was used by the aristocracy
as a means of preserving their privileged position; (2) Ute Frevert argues
that the German bourgeois adopted dueling as a means by which men
could achieve and maintain honor by demonstrating personal bravery; (3)
McAleer views the German duel as an attempt at recovery of an illusory
past, a practice through which men of honor, by demonstrating courage,
could link themselves to the ruling warrior class of the Middle Ages. The
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