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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TOO-TUM |
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TOURNAMENT, or TOURNEY (Fr. tournement, tournoi, Med. Lat. torneamentum, from tourner, to turn) , the name popularly given in the middle ages to a species of mock fight, so called owing to the rapid turning of the horses (Skeat). Of the several medieval definitions of the tournament given by Du Cange (Glossarium, s.v. " Tourneamentum "), the best is that of Roger of Hoveden, who described tournaments as " military exercises carried out, not in the spirit of hostility (nullo interveniente odio), but solely for practice and the display of prowess (pro solo exercitio, aique ostentatione virium)." Men who carry weapons have in all ages played at the game of war in time of peace. But the tournament, properly so called, does not appear in Europe before the 11th century, in spite of those elaborate fictions of Ruexner's Thurnierbuch which detail the tournament laws of Henry the Fowler. More than one chronicler records the violent death, in 1o66, of a French baron named Geoffroi de Preulli, who, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, " invented tournaments." In England, at least, the tournament was counted a French fashion, Matthew Paris calling it conjlictus gallicus. By the 12th century the tournament had grown so popular in England that Henry II. found it necessary to forbid the sport which gathered in one place so many barons and knights in arms. In that age we have the famous description by William FitzStephen of the martial games of the Londoners in Smith-field. He tells how on Sundays in Lent a noble train of young men would take the field well mounted, rushing out of the city with spear and shield to ape the feats of war. Divided into parties, one body would retreat, while another pursued striving to unhorse them. The younger lads, he says, bore javelins disarmed of their steel, by which we may know that the weapon of the elders was the headed lance. William of Newbury tells us how the young knights, balked of their favourite sport by the royal mandate, would pass over sea to win glory in foreign lists. Richard I. relaxed his father's order, granting licences for tournaments, and Jocelin of Brakelond has a long story of the great company of cavaliers who held a tournament between Thetford and Bury St Edmunds in defiance of the abbot. From that time onward unlicensed tourneying was treated as an offence against the Crown, which exacted heavy fees from all taking part in them even when a licence had been obtained. Often the licence was withheld, as in 1255, when the king's son's grave peril in Gascony is alleged as a reason for forbidding a meeting. In 1299 life and limb were declared to be forfeit in the case of those who should arrange a tourney without the royal licence, and offenders were to be seized with horse and harness. As the tournament became an occasion for pageantry and feasting, new reason was given for restraint: a simple knight might beggar himself over a sport which risked costly horses and carried him far afield. Jousters travelled from land to land, like modern cricketers on their tours, offering and accepting challenges. Thus Edward I., before coming to the throne, led eighty knights to a tournament on the Continent. Before the jousts at Windsor on St George's Day in 1344 heralds published in France, Scotland, Burgundy, Hainault, Flanders, Brabant and the domains of the emperor the king's offer of safe conduct for competitors. At the weddings of princes and magnates and at the crowning of kings the knights gathered to the joustings,which had become as much a part of such high ceremonies as the banquet and the minstrelsy. The fabled glories of the Round Table were revived by princely hosts, who would assemble a gallant company to keep open house and hold the field against all corners, as did Mortimer, the queen's lover, when, on the eve of his fall, he brought all the chivalry of the land to the place where he held his Round Table. About 1292 the " Statute of Arms for Tournaments " laid down, " at the request of the earls and barons and of the knighthood of England," new laws for the game. Swords with points,were not to be used, nor pointed daggers, nor club nor mace. None was to raise up a fallen knight but his own appointed squires, clad in his device. The squire who offended was to lose horse and arms and lie three years in gaol. A northern football crowd would understand the rule that forbade those coming to see the tournament to wear harness or arm themselves with weapons. Disputes were to be settled by a court of honour of princes and earls. That such rules were needful had been shown at Rochester in 1251, where the foreign knights were beaten by the English and so roughly handled that they fled to the city for refuge
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The 15th century had seen the mingling of the tournament and the pageant. Adventurous knights would travel far afield in time of peace to gain worship in conflicts that perilled life and limb, as when the Bastard of Burgundy met the Lord Scales in 1466 in West Smithfield under the fair and costly galleries crowded with English dames. On the first day the two ran courses with sharp
and the Lady Pallas came forward, embowered in moving castles, to present the champions. Such costly shows fell out of fashion after the death of Henry VIII.; and in England the tournament remained, until the end, a martial sport. Sir Henry Lee rode as Queen Elizabeth's champion in the tilt-yard of Whitehall until his years forced him to surrender the gallant office to that earl
The tournament was, from the first, held to be a sport for men of noble birth, and on the Continent, where nobility was more exactly defined than in England, the lists were jealously closed to all combatants but those of the privileged class. In the German lands, questions as to the purity of the strain of a candidate for admission to a noble chapter are often settled by appeal to the fact that this or that ancestor had taken part in a tournament. Konrad Grunenberg's famous heraldic manuscript shows us the Helmschau that came before the German tournament of the 15th centurythe squires carrying each his master's crested helm, and a little scutcheon of arms hanging from it, to the hall
points scored by the champions. (0. BA.) End of Article: TOURNAMENT, or TOURNEY (Fr. tournement, tournoi, Med. Lat. torneamentum, from tourner, to turn) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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