A Cultural History of Sport in the Medieval Age 9781350023970, 1350023973

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
SERIES PREFACE
Introduction
CRITICAL APPROACHES TO SPORT IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE
SPORT IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE
DOCUMENTED SPORTS
SPORTS AND RHETORIC
PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
SPORTING TECHNOLOGIES
BEYOND TECHNOLOGY: THE SPORTING AESTHETIC
NOTES
CHAPTER ONE The Purpose of Sport ROBERT A. MECHIKOFF, NOEL FALLOWS, AND KEN MONDSCHEIN
RECREATION
SOCIOPOLITICAL MANEUVERING
TRAINING AND EXERCISE
CONCLUSION
NOTES
CHAPTER TWO Sporting Time and Sporting Space THOMAS C. DEVANEY
NOTES
CHAPTER THREE Products, Training, and Technology JONATHAN TAVARES AND LISA W. TOM
PRODUCTS
TECHNOLOGY
TRAINING
CONCLUSION
NOTES
CHAPTER FOUR Rules and Order NOEL FALLOWS
MÊLÉE TOURNAMENTS
MOUNTED TOURNEYS
JOUSTS AND PASSAGES OF ARMS
FOOT COMBATS
CONCLUSION
NOTES
CHAPTER FIVE Conflict and Accommodation MICHAEL HARNEY*
CONFLICT
ACCOMMODATION
CONCLUSION
NOTES
CHAPTER SIX Inclusion, Exclusion,and Segregation KEN MONDSCHEIN
GENDER DIFFERENCES
CLASS DIFFERENCES
GEOGRAPHIES OF DIFFERENCE
DIFFERENCES OF RACE AND RELIGION
MODERN MEDIEVALIST SPORTS
CONCLUSION
NOTES
CHAPTER SEVEN Minds, Bodies,and Identities GRANT A. GEARHART
WOMEN AND SPORT
MEN AND SPORT
SPORT AND THE CHIVALRIC WORLD
CONCLUSION
NOTES
CHAPTER EIGHT Representation EMMA LEVITT*
THE QUESTION OF REPRESENTATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
CONCLUSION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX

Citation preview

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF SPORT VOLUME 2

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A Cultural History of Sport General Editors: Wray Vamplew, John McClelland, and Mark Dyreson Volume 1 A Cultural History of Sport in Antiquity Edited by Paul Christesen and Charles Stocking Volume 2 A Cultural History of Sport in the Medieval Age Edited by Noel Fallows Volume 3 A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance Edited by Alessandro Arcangeli Volume 4 A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Enlightenment Edited by Rebekka von Mallinckrodt Volume 5 A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Industry Edited by Mike Huggins Volume 6 A Cultural History of Sport in the Modern Age Edited by Steven Riess

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF SPORT

IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE Edited by Noel Fallows

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021 Noel Fallows has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Series design by Raven Design Cover image: Tournament of Knights before Richard II, from the ‘St. Alban’s Chronicle’ © Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-2397-0 Set: 978-1-3500-2410-6 Series: The Cultural Histories Series Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SERIES PREFACE Introduction Noel Fallows

vii xiii 1

1 The Purpose of Sport Robert A. Mechikoff, Noel Fallows, and Ken Mondschien

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2 Sporting Time and Sporting Space Thomas C. Devaney

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3 Products, Training, and Technology Jonathan Tavares and Lisa W. Tom

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4 Rules and Order Noel Fallows

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5 Conflict and Accommodation Michael Harney

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6 Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation Ken Mondschein

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7 Minds, Bodies, and Identities Grant A. Gearhart

189

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CONTENTS

8 Representation Emma Levitt

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

241

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

261

INDEX

263

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION 1

A safety lance-head called a coronel, with three tines, specially designed to prevent armor and sight piercings, late fourteenth century.

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Children playing a game of pelota. Illuminated page fron the Cantigas de Santa María, Alfonso the Wise, manuscript, Spain, thirteenth century.

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Calendar page for the month of November, from Adélaïde of Savoy’s Book of Hours, Burgundy, mid fifteenth century.

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4

Tournament at Smithfield, England, before King Richard II, 1394.

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Tournament with swords, miniature in the Rich Hours of the Duke of Guise, Musée Condé in Chantilly.

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Helmet and breastplate with stop-rib, which belonged to a count of Matsch then known as Urs, made by the masters O and T, c. 1370–1410.

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A cane game in Valladolid, Spain, July 19, 1506.

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6

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CHAPTER ONE 1.1

Boys jousting on water, fourteenth century. Handcolored lithograph by Joseph Strutt from his own Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, London, Chatto and Windus, 1876.

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1.2 1.3

1.4

1.5

1.6 1.7

1.8

ILLUSTRATIONS

Miniature of two young men wrestling, from The Rich Hours of the Duke of Guise, Musée Condé in Chantilly.

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King Philip VI of Valois and the queen Blanche of Navarre going hunting. Miniature from the Book of the Hunt by Gaston III Phœbus, Count of Foix, Lord of Béarn (1331–91), 1387–8. Condé Museum, Chantilly, France.

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The Helmschau, or inspection of the helms at a German tourney. Konrad Grünenberg, Das Wappenbuch Conrads von Grünenberg, Ritters und Bürgers zu Constanz, c. 1480.

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The Kolbenturnier, or tourney with clubs. Konrad Grünenberg, Das Wappenbuch Conrads von Grünenberg, Ritters und Bürgers zu Constanz, c. 1480.

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A German knight is shamed in the Schrankensetzen, or mounting on the lists.

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Battering crests at the Nachturnier, or end tourney. Konrad Grünenberg, Das Wappenbuch Conrads von Grünenberg, Ritters und Bürgers zu Constanz, c. 1480.

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The Duke of Anhalt in a tournament. Miniature from the Codex Manesse, c. 1300.

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CHAPTER TWO 2.1

2.2 2.3

2.4

William Marshal unhorses Baldwin de Guisnes at a tournament. From Matthew Paris’ Chronica Majora, thirteenth century.

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Detail from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries showing hawking. Made in Tournai, fifteenth century.

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An informal urban tennis court. From the Book of Hours of Adélaïde of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy (miniature). Chantilly, Musée Condé.

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The Tournament Book of René d’Anjou, c. 1447, in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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CHAPTER THREE 3.1

Bone ice skates, twelfth century? The undersides of these skates, found in the Moorfields area, are polished from use on ice. They are of the type described by William Fitz Stephen in his description of London which forms the preface to his account of the life of St. Thomas Becket.

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3.2

Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, mounted, being assisted by Beatrice Le Scrope.

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3.3

Jousting helm associated with the Prankh family, German or Austrian, mid fourteenth century.

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Bernat Martorell, St. George Killing the Dragon, Catalonia, c. 1434–5.

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Henry II von Frauenberg during a chivalry tournament, represented with his lance and shield. Codex Manesse, fol. 61v, c. 1300.

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Lance-rest, grapper, coronel, and pointed lance-head excavated from House Herbede, probably German, early fifteenth century.

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Jousting Saddle for the Gestech im hohen Zeug (Joust of Peace in High Saddles). German, fifteenth century.

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3.4 3.5

3.6 3.7

CHAPTER FOUR 4.1 4.2 4.3

4.4

Detail of a medieval bronze tomb effigy of Edward, the Black Prince, 1376.

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Duke Henry IV of Schlesien-Breslau, winner of the tournament. From the Codex Manesse, c. 1300.

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Jousting score cheque relating to Prince Arthur’s marriage tournament in 1501, copied into College of Arms Ms. M.3, known as Ballard’s Book, at fol. 25v.

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The first documented foot combat at the barriers, Sandricourt, France, 1493.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER FIVE 5.1 5.2 5.3

Trial by combat. Enamel plaque depicting a duel between two medieval French knights, twelfth century.

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Knights’ tournament in Camelot Kingdom, miniature of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, manuscript, France, fifteenth century.

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A chivalric axe tournament.

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CHAPTER SIX 6.1

6.2

6.3

6.4

6.5

Lancelot and Guinevere playing chess, miniature from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, manuscript, France, fifteenth century.

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A woman called Walpurga or Walpurgis and a monk fencing with sword and buckler from a manuscript known as the Tower Fechtbuch (fencing manual).

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Inspection of the helmets, 1488–9. Scene from a tournament. Illustration from the Livre des tournois de René d’Anjou, collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Hunters pursuing a deer. Miniature from a copy of the Book of the Hunt by Gaston III Phœbus, Count of Foix, Lord of Béarn (1331–91), made in Brittany c. 1430–40.

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Alexander the Great hosts games among his troops.

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CHAPTER SEVEN 7.1

A woman fights a duel with a man in a pit.

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7.2

A woman grabs her male opponent by the genitals.

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7.3

A student and a monk fencing with sword and buckler from a manuscript known as the Tower Fechtbuch (fencing manual).

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CHAPTER EIGHT 8.1 8.2

The Jousts of St. Inglevert, France, 1470–5. Artist: Master of the Harley Froissart.

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Medieval tournament. The two sides of the contest with the Knight of Honor at the center.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

8.3

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Scene from a jousting tournament, miniature from the Romance of Tristan and Isolde, manuscript, France, fifteenth century.

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Jousting score cheque for a contest at the Field of Cloth of Gold, 1520.

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8.5

Miniature for the Month of February, puck games.

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8.6

A woman and a man wrestle in formfitting leather costumes.

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8.4

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SERIES PREFACE

A Cultural History of Sport is a six-volume series reviewing the evolution of both the internal practices of sport from remote Antiquity to the present and the ways and degrees to which sport has reflected—and been integrated into— contemporary cultural criteria. All of the volumes are constructed in the same pattern, with an initial chapter outlining the purposes of sport during the time frame to which the volume is devoted. Seven chapters, each written by a specialist of the period, then deal in turn with time and space, equipment and technology, rules and order, conflict and accommodation, inclusion and segregation, athletes and identities, and representation. The reader therefore has the choice between synchronic and diachronic approaches, between concentrating on the diverse facets of sport in a single historical period, and exploring one or more of those facets as they evolved over time and became concretized in the practices and relations of the twenty-first century. The six volumes cover the topic as follows: Volume 1: A Cultural History of Sport in Antiquity (600 BCE –500 CE ) Volume 2: A Cultural History of Sport in the Middle Ages (500–1450) Volume 3: A Cultural History of Sport in the Early Modern Period (1450–1650) Volume 4: A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Enlightenment (1650–1800) Volume 5: A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Industry (1800–1920) Volume 6: A Cultural History of Sport in the Modern Age (1920–present) General Editors: Wray Vamplew, Emeritus Professor of Sports History, University of Stirling, UK, and Global Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK John McClelland, Professor Emeritus of French Literature and Sport History, University of Toronto, Canada. Mark Dyreson, Professor of Kinesiology, Affiliate Professor of History, and Director of Research and Educational Programs for the Center for the Study of Sports and Society, Pennsylvania State University, USA xiii

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Introduction NOEL FALLOWS

CRITICAL APPROACHES TO SPORT IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE According to an anonymous Latin proverb: “Spoken words fly away, written words remain” (Verba volant, scripta manent). Looking back to the medieval age through the prism of the twenty-first century it is difficult to comment on physical activities such as sporting events, which happen in the moment in both time and space, without actually being able to see or hear them. However, the examination of concrete written, pictorial, and archaeological relics in a holistic way inevitably leads to the conclusion that there were indeed medieval sports. The main issue with many of the single-authored scholarly monographs on the subject is that the authors are almost forced into the position of using an inductive approach to the subject, a strategy that can be traced to the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s germinal book Homo Ludens (1938; trans. 1955). Huizinga’s theory can be distilled in the apothegm that play is the antithesis of work. Published during the same year as the “peaceful” occupation of Czechoslovakia and the annexation of Austria by the Germans, and just a year before the outbreak of a world war and the imminent invasion and occupation of Holland and most of Europe, Huizinga even includes warfare as a type of play, perhaps infusing the book with a subtle political statement not about the history of play, but the seemingly malicious joy taken by the Nazi regime in aggressive conquest and annexation. Huizinga was one of the greatest scholars of his generation and his theories about play remained essentially unchallenged for several decades. In the late 1950s Roger Caillois (1958; trans. 2001) criticized Huizinga’s omissions, such 1

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as descriptions and classifications of games, and took issue with his definition of play. In Caillois’ opinion Huizinga overemphasizes the notion of the secret or mysterious element of play, when in fact, as Caillois correctly points out, play is almost always spectacular or ostentatious and “tends to remove the very nature of the mysterious” (Caillois 2001: 4). Caillois sets the precedent among scholarly monographs on sports of enumerating a list of formal characteristics that define the nature of play. For him, play is: free; separate; uncertain; unproductive; regulated, or governed by rules; and fictive, or make-believe (Caillois 2001: 9–10, 43). His focus is primarily on sociological constructs of modern rather than medieval sports. Like Caillois before him, Allen Guttmann (2004: 16; 1st ed. 1978) also takes issue with some of Huizinga’s ideas in his introductory remarks in a book about modern sports, but he, too, uses an inductive method and defines sports according to his own list of modern criteria and standards, as follows: secularism; equality of opportunity to compete and in the conditions of competition; specialization of roles; rationalization; bureaucratic organization; quantification; and the quest for records. This list of essential ingredients excludes medieval activities and practices because they do not fit neatly into his theoretical framework. Insofar as sportsmen and sports records are concerned, Guttmann (2004: 51–2) also coins the term “marvelous abstraction,” as follows: “What is a record in our modern sense? It is the marvelous abstraction that permits competition not only among those gathered together on the field of sport but also among them and others distant in time and space.” The concept of the marvelous abstraction refers to deeds not only preserved for posterity in a written record, but also reproduced without interruption to the present day. This concept, Guttmann argues, informs and defines modern sports, and is neither apparent nor evident in the Middle Ages. His depressing conclusion with regard to medieval sports is that: “The Middle Ages had their acrobats and tumblers and jongleurs, but they were not a period of athletic specialization” (Guttmann 2004: 38). His opinions on the matter are shared by Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (1986) and Georges Vigarello (2000). Guttmann’s comment, however, once again inadvertently points to the very difficulties faced by a single author when analyzing medieval European sports, as it is impossible for one scholar alone to master all of the languages of medieval Europe, let alone pursue such extensive archival and archaeological study as to unearth the entire sporting past of the continent. In consequence much of the single-authored scholarship on the subject, while undoubtedly valuable, also tends necessarily to be uneven in chronological, geographic, and material coverage. Since the 1970s sports historians of the medieval period, realizing the difficulties involved in approaching the subject holistically, have gravitated toward edited volumes that rely on the skill sets of multiple scholars. In particular John Marshall Carter and John McClelland, in both single-authored monographs and edited

INTRODUCTION

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volumes (Carter 1988a, 1992; McClelland 2007, 2009), have challenged what I have called the inductive method followed by scholars such as Huizinga, Caillois, Vigarello, and Guttmann (see especially Carter 1990 on the limitations Guttmann imposes on the “marvelous abstraction”), arguing persuasively instead for a more deductive approach. Jean-Michel Mehl (2010: 20) has also observed that, while medieval sports lend themselves to different theoretical approaches, ranging from the ethnographical to the linguistic, psychological, and sociological, there is a delicate balance between privileging one approach over others and attempting an overly ambitious analysis that combines them all. As fresh primary textual and non-textual material has continued (and will continue) to emerge, Wray Vamplew and Dave Day (2018: 3) have sought a compromise to Mehl’s assertion in a volume of essays that offers a broad array of theoretical case studies as points of departure for future research into sports history, based on what the co-editors call the “expansion in the sports historian’s evidentiary base.” To invoke a bellicose term, the present volume is distinguished by the variety of its “angles of attack,” and takes the deductive approach one step further by offering a cultural history that takes into account the full materiality of sporting culture, including the kit and other equipment, as well as written, archaeological, and artistic records. The volume encompasses the period 600–1450. In the new millennium the history of sport in the Middle Ages has evolved into a legitimate field of academic inquiry unto itself, as attested by the present volume. Through edited volumes, modern scholars are able to approach the history of sport in a deductive and measured way. With a variety of scholars working in different aspects of the field, we now know that the evidence for sporting activity in the Middle Ages across a broad swath of social classes and geographic boundaries is not as exiguous as was once thought, as new primary texts and other evidence come to light, which can be subjected to thorough, specialized analysis from interdisciplinary perspectives.

SPORT IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE Manuscript illuminations, other pictorial sources, and a variety of literary, historical, archival, and administrative texts attest to the fact that medieval people of all classes practiced a wide range of ludic physical activities, i.e., pursuits whose purpose was divorced from producing material objects or direct economic benefit. And they practiced them with an intensity that, in the eyes of secular and religious authorities, repeatedly required that they be banned or otherwise regulated. But did these games merit the label “sport”? As we have seen above, for some influential sports historians, notably Guttmann (2004; 1st ed. 1978), Elias and Dunning (1986), and Vigarello (2000), these activities cannot be considered to be sports under any circumstances; or, if they are sports, they are so radically different from what we call sport today that one

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cannot speak of the two in the same breath. But since it is the premise of this six-volume set that sport is a cultural continuum from antiquity to the present, a case must be made here for the validity of sports as medieval athletic pursuits.1 In February 842, two of Charlemagne’s grandsons, King Charles the Bald and his half-brother King Louis the German, met at Strasbourg in order to conclude a treaty of mutual non-aggression. The ninth-century chronicler Nithard, another of Charlemagne’s grandsons and thus cousin of the two kings, was present and gives a detailed account of mock battles (ludos) between his cousins’ armies, seemingly as part of the celebrations (nam convivia erant illis poene assidua) and to keep the soldiers in shape (causa exercitii). Equal numbers (pari numero) of foot soldiers would face off, one side charging rapidly (veloci cursu ruebat) at the other, while the other side, under the protection of their shields, pretended (simulabant) to try to escape. Then the roles were reversed. Finally, the two kings accompanied by other young men, rode in, brandishing their spears and making a huge noise (ingenti clamore), and broke the “battle” up. There were also spectators present, at least partially for whose benefit the show—Nithard twice calls it a spectaculum—was produced (Nithard [842–3] 1907: 38). Since this event was a playful encounter and not a real battle, how are we to interpret it? Given that the most prevalent image of medieval physical contests is that of the armored knight ready to indulge in real or symbolic fighting, i.e., tourneying and jousting, the mock battle that Nithard relates would seem to fall into the category of martial sports. As Johan Huizinga pointed out in Homo Ludens (1938; trans. 1955), one of the requirements for play to be considered sport is that it must display some degree of prior organization, and this event was clearly organized in that it had a predetermined beginning and end, and the participants knew in advance what they were supposed to do. Like all athletics it required the expenditure of some physical effort; and like all sport since ancient times, it made provision for spectators. More importantly, the opposing teams were of equal size and so neither had the advantage of a greater number. But sport is also necessarily competitive—it is a contest in Allen Guttmann’s (2004) definition—and therefore there is obligatorily a winner. Since the whole purpose behind the meeting of Louis and Charles and their armies was precisely to forge a peaceful bond between them, it was thus essential that there be neither winner nor loser, and hence according to Guttmann’s definition we cannot really say that this mock battle was actually sport. What we can say with certainty, however, is that we may find in it the seeds of the martial sports that would inform and become the most evident and best documented athletic activities of the next six or seven centuries. The martial skills of the medieval knight gave rise to much more organized mock battles that did produce winners and losers and which we know as the tournament: en masse encounters of regionally-based teams of knights who fought each other in simulacra of real battles in order to take prisoners that

INTRODUCTION

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might be held for ransom; or at least to capture horses and equipment that the victorious knight might then sell or use himself (see Fleckenstein 1985, Barber and Barker 1989, and Crouch 2005). As Geoffrey Chaucer makes clear in his account of the knight in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales ([c. 1400] 1982), the knight’s only real occupation was fighting as a mercenary in actual battles, in which case the tournament may well have been a less perilous way for knights to hone and maintain their skills when not engaged in genuine warfare. We also know from the biography of the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman knight William Marshal that the knights themselves saw tournaments as an opportunity to make money. It has been estimated that a medieval knight might tourney on a regular basis once every two weeks (Denholm-Young 1948), which is a rhythm not so different from the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) tour. By the latter part of the twelfth century the mercenary dimension of tournaments had become sufficiently notorious that in the Arthurian romances composed by Chrétien de Troyes, the heroic knights Erec and Lancelot both claim that they participate in tournaments just to show off their skill and valor and have no interest in material gain. Certainly at this date tournaments were organized in advance and were judged by a committee of senior, perhaps retired, knights. Irrespective of the individual knight’s winnings, the judges selected one among them as the best, a kind of Most Valuable Player (MVP) who was given a prize of money. By the thirteenth century in Italy, and the fifteenth century elsewhere, the judges were also selecting second- and third-place “stars” of the encounter, and these were awarded lesser prizes than the MVP. It is unclear whether the tournament might have evolved out of the ninthcentury encounter described by Nithard, or whether the new military tactic of the massed cavalry charge with the riders holding their lances firm instead of throwing them like spears gave rise to it (the eleventh-century Bayeux Tapestry illustrates both tactics). By the early fourteenth century the tournament was such a well-established fixture that an anonymous chronicler could state that the sport had actually been invented by Geoffroy de Preuilly, a knight from Angers who was killed in the mid eleventh century. Whether or not Preuilly was a kind of Abner Doubleday avant la lettre, what is clear is that the medieval tournament, like nineteenth-century American baseball, had become such a thoroughly entrenched part of contemporary culture that it needed to have both an historical legitimacy and a technically-founded method that elevated it out of the status of mere aristocratic pastime. Around the year 1430 King Duarte I of Portugal supplied the latter in his codified set of the riding and jousting techniques that hitherto had been transmitted only orally (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016). It is also in the fourteenth century that the tournament and its more celebrated offshoots, jousting and fighting at barriers, start to be subjected to quantification, rationalized rules, and legalistically-framed laws, a process that becomes more developed in the century that followed. In other words, the

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF SPORT IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

tournament is being forced into a mold that, like the rulebooks of all more modern sports, regulates the behaviors that are permissible on the field of play and the variations that are excluded. We may attribute this shift to an increased concern for refined decorum and to a broadening of the talents required of a knight. In the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales ([c. 1400] 1982) Chaucer points to this shift by noting the generational difference between the knight’s accomplishments and those of his son. With the spread of projectile warfare (massed longbow volleys, armor-piercing crossbow bolts) and the invention of gunpowder, artillery, and individual firearms, the knightly skills became less useful in battle, and tournaments and jousting turned increasingly away from the capture of booty, becoming lavish displays of horsemanship, of expensive armor that was of no use in actual war, and of the handling of weapons that could inflict no real damage, except by accident. It does bear pointing out, however, that a particularly powerful blow to the head, body, arms, or legs with a three- or four-pronged safety lance-head called a coronel—designed to prevent sight piercings, and to mark or dent the opponent’s armor rather than pierce it—would certainly have hurt (Figure 1). Particularly in France the mêlée tournament starts to become the object of nostalgic prescriptive studies that have more to do with the organization and protocols of a tournament than with the athletics it entailed, seeking to enshrine it for the future in a ne varietur form, even as it is dying out. René d’Anjou’s La forme et devis d’un tournoi (c. 1460) and Antoine de La Sale’s Traité des anciens et nouveaux tournois (1459) are among the best-known examples of this genre. And long after it had ceased entirely to exist as anything more than as a historical curiosity, the seventeenth-century antiquarian Claude François Menestrier devoted a book, Traité des tournois (1669), to the subject. In the sixteenth century the first real Renaissance kings, England’s Henry VIII and France’s François I, still jousted in the way they believed that their medieval ancestors did, but the latter’s son Henri II’s unfashionable preference for “les tournois à l’ancienne manière” cost him his life in 1559 and put an end to martial sports in France. The English, ever behind the times in matters of culture (Lassels 1670), continued jousting until the 1620s, but on the Continent the focus shifted to a display of equestrian skills, accompanied in Spain by the elaborate game of canes, which will be addressed more fully below as well as in subsequent chapters. Henri II’s jousting death in 1559 reminded the world that jousting was not a completely harmless sport. In his Tratado del juego (“Book on Sports,” 1559: 288–9) Francisco de Alcocer speaks of “lanças con puntas de diamante,” apparently heavy lances with sharp points. It may have been precisely the danger entailed—and the concomitant excitement and adrenalin rush it provoked— that contributed to the sport’s popularity among nobility and royalty. As it is for Formula 1 auto racing, the willingness to risk serious hurt conveyed an element of glamor to the participants, which is why the knightly and noble classes of

INTRODUCTION

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FIGURE 1: A safety lance-head called a coronel, with three tines, specially designed to prevent armor and sight piercings, late fourteenth century. Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. Nr. LM-13346/Neg. DIG.-15773.

northern Europe restricted it to men who could demonstrate their noble genealogy. The action of the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale turns on this stipulation, inspired by the fear that a low-born individual might prove a better jouster than a more highly born competitor. In Italy the situation was somewhat different, a point that Thomas Szabó (1985) stresses in his essay on Italian tournaments. Lacking the landed feudal hereditary aristocracy of England, France, and the Germanic lands, Italian life south of the Po valley was centered on municipalities and the mercantile bourgeoisie. Jousting was a popular sport among city dwellers and the ruling classes, and is represented by the early-fourteenth-century poet Folgóre di San

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Gimignano as one of the regular pleasures of Florence’s gilded youth, who practiced it on Tuesdays and Thursdays and especially in the month of May (Folgóre [1308–16] 1965). Italian jousters did not take prisoners or seize horses and armor, but instead competed for prizes offered by the organizer: horses, armor, weapons, money, bolts of silk and velvet (see accounts of jousts in 1225 and 1326, recorded in Muratori 1931: 47 and 133). Unlike northern European practice, lesser prizes were awarded to the jousters who placed second and third, though the documents do not indicate the means by which the jousters were ranked. Italian jousting was also less violent than its northern counterpart, and when deaths did occur the chronicler was at pains to point out that they were the result of an accident, as when three squires (adestratori) were killed in Milan in 1326 when some horses collided. In 1518 the duke of Mantua advised his son, in Paris at the time, not to joust with the French because he risked getting severely hurt (Truffi 1911: 71–2 and 218–25). Another characteristic peculiar to the Italian tournament, indeed to late medieval Italian sport, is the fact that they generated serious literary works that have become part of the canon of Italian literature. The coming-of-age jousts (1468 and 1475 respectively) in which Lorenzo and Giuliano, the heirs to the Medici fortune and political power in Florence, showed off their martial abilities, were commemorated in two laudatory and lengthy poems, La giostra (“The Joust”) by Luigi Pulci ([1471] 1986) and the Stanze per la giostra (“Stanzas on the Joust”) by Angelo Poliziano ([1475] 1976). These literary monuments, like Giovanni Frescobaldi’s ([1460] 1973–5: 1:601–7) lengthy 1460 account of a presumably real calcio match, are unmatched in northern European literatures. They attest to the fact that real sports matches—and not just the fictional variety imagined in Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances—were thoroughly part of Italian high culture in the late medieval age. A few isolated combat manuals from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reveal that there were teachers of swordplay and wrestling, and hence that there must have been practice sessions between pupils or between master and pupil (Forgeng 2018b). Although the purpose in acquiring these skills was to use them in real fighting, whether in judicial duels or other altercations, the practice sessions themselves were ostensibly ludic contests. In the later sixteenth century, Italian fencing masters invited a paying public to watch their pupils practice what they had learnt, and to that extent we may say that these practice sessions were “sporting,” since the pupils were competing against each other, had practiced and trained in advance, achieved some reward for besting their opponents—at the very least in the form of some recognition from the master and the spectators— and no one was hurt except for a few scratches. The Italian master Antonio Manciolino in his Opera nova, 1531, in fact said that getting scratched was an essential part of learning how to fence. The problem is that medieval swordplay

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instruction remained largely undocumented and hence we are forced to make some assumptions, extrapolating back from what we know of Renaissance practice. Non-combat sports—chiefly involving spheroid objects, whether solid or air-filled—were widely played throughout the Middle Ages by all classes of people. Information concerning these games, however, is mostly pictorial: manuscript illuminations, occasional mural paintings, wood and stone carvings, and is very scattered and periodic. It is also not necessarily completely reliable, since for the most part the artist was not trying to document a sport but to produce a pleasing picture within the constraints of space, aesthetic conventions, and audience expectations.2 Written texts have to be pieced together from archival sources, mostly involving decrees attempting to ban games of this sort, or incidental literary references, or lists of sums lost wagering. The games played varied from country to country: the “ludum pilae celebrem” mentioned by the Anglo-Norman chronicler William Fitz Stephen is generally taken by the English to be soccer/ football—the game is identified by that name in an Anglo-Norman decree of 1314 (Magoun 1938), and later fourteenth-century English decrees do mention both pila pediva and pila manualis. Tennis, which was still played by hand— thus jeu de [la] paume—until the early sixteenth century (the English name is an approximation of the French word “tenez,” hold on, used, like “fore” in golf, as a warning to the other team before the serve) was imported into England during the fourteenth century (first mentioned by John Gower before 1400) from France, where it had been so widely played that it had generated a flourishing tennis-ball industry before 1300 (Mehl 1990). Public tennis courts are also recorded in France by the early fifteenth century. In Shakespeare’s Henry V, where Henry receives a barrel of tennis balls as a gift from the heir to the French throne, the gift is represented as a sign of derision, which in 1600 it might well have been, had it occurred then. But in the early fifteenth century, when the gift actually occurred, it was a sign of esteem since tennis balls were very expensive: hand-sewn leather filled with expensive materials. In France they also played a variety of ball sports grouped under the name of la soule (Loudcher 2010), a cross-country game that might involve some ritualistic dimension—one village against another, married men against bachelors—and in which the ball might be carried or struck by a shepherd’s crook (une crosse), later by a stick specially made for the purpose. In its most widely played version la soule might be very violent (Carter 1992, Mehl 1990) as is evident from local reports and from occasional lettres de rémission, pleas to have sentences commuted from players who had—by chance or by design—killed an opposing player (Davis 1987). Drawings from England, Spain, and Italy from as early as the beginning of the twelfth century show both men and women—not together—hitting a small ball with a tapered bat (Figure 2). Later pictures show men playing a version of golf derived out of la soule with purpose-made clubs differently shaped for

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FIGURE 2: Children playing a game of pelota. Illuminated page fron the Cantigas de Santa María, Alfonso the Wise, manuscript, Spain, thirteenth century. Photo by DeAgonstini/Getty Images.

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FIGURE 3: Calendar page for the month of November, from Adélaïde of Savoy’s Book of Hours, Burgundy, mid fifteenth century. INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo. Image ID: GD2658.

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distance and approach shots (Figure 3). In Italy they played palla al maglio, ball with a mallet, which might be played on a course through city streets or in the countryside. The game was imported into France in the late sixteenth century as palle-mail/paille-mail and then into England in the seventeenth century as pall-mall/pell-mell. In Italy they also played two games using a large inflated ball: one called pallone (literally, “large ball”) in which the players—two or three to a side, each wearing specially made wooden armlets—struck the ball back and forth over a fairly large distance and at some height and in some cases playing ricochet shots off the facades of houses; and another called calcio that involved large teams—as many as twenty-seven to a side—trying to propel the ball over the opposing team’s goal line. It is worth noting here that because the Italians call modern soccer/football calcio, the medieval-renaissance game is often mistakenly thought to be a game using the feet, though the first descriptions of the game, such as Antonio Scaino’s Trattato del giuoco della palla (“Treatise on the ball game,” Venice, 1555) and Giovanni Bardi’s Discorso sopra il giuoco del calcio fiorentino (“Discourse on the Florentine game of soccer,” Florence, 1580), specify that the ball is projected by the hand (see Bredekamp 2001). It has also been argued that the fourteenth-century English mercenary Sir John Hawkwood imported the game to Italy and, conversely, that he saw the game in Italy and imported it to England. In the early sixteenth century the Spanish humanist scholar Juan Luis Vives mentions games played with an inflated ball in Valencia and notes that the French do not play games of that sort, a piece of information corroborated by the French memorialist Robert de La Mark, whose memoirs cover the period 1499–1521. These ball games were not only played for recreation, since there were freelance professionals in France as early as the fifteenth century, in Italy by the early seventeenth; and salaried resident professionals in the Italian princely courts by the late fifteenth century, occasionally identified by name and national origin. People were earnest enough about these games that they were spending serious money to buy equipment and special costumes, to rent courts, and bet on the outcomes. They also played the games with considerable intensity, as fights, some leading to mortal blows, involving prominent people—François I, Sir Philip Sidney, the painter Caravaggio—are recorded. Archery and harquebus contests were also a feature of medieval athletic life. By the mid fourteenth century the English had recognized the tactical value of massive volleys of arrows against armored cavalry, and various royal decrees attempted to replace other recreational sports with archery practice in both France and England. But what had started as military training evolved into sports contests, especially in the German-speaking countries and in Italy where the weapon of choice was the crossbow, more adapted than the longbow as a weapon capable of striking a specific target with intense force. The Italian communes had to rely for their defense on local militias and encouraged their

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citizens to practice their shooting skills (including the use of firearms as these became more technically reliable and sophisticated) by holding annual competitions and awarding valuable prizes. As the nobility disdained projectile warfare, shooting contests became a passion for the bourgeoisie, and contests between teams from different municipalities became widespread. The Italian cities also nurtured rivalries between neighborhoods that might be mediated by sporting contests. Some of these contests were as rudimentary as massive fistfights (Venice) or stone-throwing battles (Perugia), and others were more sophisticated: horse races in Florence and (still today) Siena; calcio matches in Florence; and the bridge battle in Pisa. It is clear that some of these activities were little more than ritualized mob violence. Others, however, demanded of the participants some form of tactical discipline, special equipment, and probably prior training and practice. While they perhaps do not qualify as “sports” in the same way tournaments and tennis do, they were certainly athletic and ludic. Winners and losers were determined, increasingly by recourse to arithmetical ratios, and spectators were important parts of the occasions. It is interesting to note that while some of these medieval athletics were not sports if we judge them by the criteria imposed by some modern scholars, all of these encounters were classified unequivocally as “sports” by the late-nineteenthcentury scholar William Heywood (1904). In the sporting arena, then, the medieval period has certainly lent itself to long and vigorous academic debate with its own ebb and flow. To fuel this debate I fast forward now from the medieval age to the year 1966, when the Portuguese national football team traveled to England, where they reached third place in the FIFA World Cup. Guttmann never took this event into account (and there should be no expectation that he could be a Lusophone expert on top of everything else), but it sparked a nostalgic memory in Portugal of a typology that dovetails seamlessly with his marvelous abstraction. The popular press in Portugal, recalling a well-known medieval Portuguese legend, resurrected (in fact, re-resurrected, as the legend has multiple written and pictorial iterations throughout history) a chivalric romance tale known as Os doze de Inglaterra (“The Twelve of England”). This tale unfolded at the end of the fourteenth century when legend had it that twelve English knights at the household of John of Gaunt publicly mocked the twelve ladies-in-waiting to the duke’s wife (Gaunt was married twice, but precisely which wife is not specified), calling them ugly to their faces. Outraged, the ladies sought redress, but the English knights’ reputations were so fearsome that no one would come forward on the ladies’ behalf. Desperate for help, the duke appealed to his sonin-law King João I of Portugal to find champions in Portuguese realms who would fight for the ladies’ honor. The king assembled a team of a dozen knights who, due to the nature of their expedition, became known as the Twelve of

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England, led by Álvaro Gonçalves Coutinho (c. 1383–1445), known affectionately as O Magriço, or “The Lean One.” Coutinho was a historical figure as well as a character in the story, which purports to be true and is populated with historical figures such as John of Gaunt and King João I, among many others, though it is also imbued with tropes and motifs borrowed from the Arthurian romance tradition. It is easy to anticipate the grand finale of the story, which is that the twelve Portuguese knights traveled to England and defeated the English knights in a judicial combat. Numerous versions of the tale have survived across the centuries in manuscript and in print, and in prose and poetry (Fallows 2013: 1–34), and the combat has metamorphosed variously as a sporting contest on foot with poleaxes to a mounted jousting competition with lances. The Portuguese media in 1966 saw parallels between the prearranged medieval deed of arms and the modern football match between Portugal and England. However, the number of knights did not correlate to the number of football players, so they cleverly appropriated the nickname of Álvaro Gonçalves Coutinho and dubbed the Portuguese national team Os Magriços, or “The Lean Ones.” This moment of nostalgia captured the nation’s imagination and brought the legendary Twelve of England back to national and international prominence once more, on this occasion in direct correlation to a major modern sporting event. It is not only a fine example of Guttmann’s marvelous abstraction as it connects to medieval sports, but also demonstrates how alive and vibrant the Middle Ages still are and can be in the modern era. To this day the Portuguese national soccer team is known as Os Magriços. It is also important to understand that in the medieval period the lines between fact and fiction were often blurred with the result that the marvelous abstraction in this context must always consider the contemporary literature as a valid written record. In the case of Coutinho, we have a man who at one and the same time was a historical figure with concrete birth and death dates, and a character in a textual tradition of literary fiction where he has led a parallel and greatly extended life cast in multiple literary and pictorial iterations across the centuries. The concept of the double life was not out of the ordinary in sports culture in the Middle Ages. In addition to the lesser known Magriço, William Marshal (The History of William Marshal), Ulrich von Liechtenstein (Service of Ladies), and Emperor Maximilian I (Freydal and Theuerdank) are among the most famous examples of men and myth existing side by side in living, breathing, human form, and literary and pictorial form, and encapsulating a very medieval marvelous abstraction. The continued record of medieval sport, unlike modern sport, existed thanks to a constant dialogue with, and a cross-pollination between, the literature and art that ran parallel to it.3

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DOCUMENTED SPORTS The documentation of sports in the Middle Ages in general terms consists of narratives, images, and artifacts, all of which at one time intersected in a synergistic way. A stand-alone image of a person striking a ball with a bat and others catching the ball, for example, merely tells us what we see, that people played games with bats and balls—even the original caption in medieval Galician to Figure 1 (above) is vague, stating merely: “How children played ball in a meadow” (Como jogauan a pelota os mançebos en un prado). Clearly this was a sporting activity. Without a complementary narrative, however, it is impossible to determine what the rules might have been for the game depicted in the snapshot image, or its expected duration, if there were teams, or even if the game had a specific name ascribed to it beyond the descriptor “playing ball.” The mêlée tournaments rank among the earliest documented sports of the Middle Ages, in both narratives and images. These tournaments in reality stood halfway between sport and real warfare, with no clearly delineated line between the two, and were often so brutal and desultory that they could hardly be considered a sport in the modern sense, or even a sport like the more structured joust, which was born out of the knights’ own frustrations with the mêlée. In a mêlée it was possible to be intentionally targeted for abuse and sustain serious or even fatal injuries. From an economic perspective captured knights were expected to pay ransoms, or they were relieved of some of their most prized and expensive possessions, such as horses and armor—nobody must have enjoyed that, though there is no evidence of any reluctance on the part of knights to participate. However, the notion of capturing men for ransoms and taking their armor, horses, and other possessions was surely the seed out of which the sporting prize would grow. So even though not a sport in the modern sense, the activities that constituted the mêlée are interconnected in ways that contribute to the overall development of a sporting ethos. They should therefore be considered as part of an overarching and self-contained medieval sporting paradigm, a sort of embryonic stage of development in the long history of sport, a stage that existed for certain, but is not thoroughly documented, or can be easily defined by aligning modern iterations of sports with the medieval past and imposing their current structures on that past. Prizes, for example, dominate most modern sports, and winning the prize is the very raison d’être of many a competitive sport. The prize as we would recognize it today is always presented as a reward, and never stolen from another player, at least not in a physical sense; in metaphorical terms, however, it is still common to describe winning as “stealing the prize.” The prize as reward makes its first appearance in the medieval age at the joust, and typically consisted of a jewel, such as a diamond or ruby, or jewelry, such as a gold chain, or a cup or salver. Often the value of the prize is stated in contemporary sources, though money itself was never awarded as a prize at jousts as it is in many modern professional sports.

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If the potentially deadly violence at the high medieval mêlée tournaments precludes their being considered a sport in the modern sense, from a sociological perspective it is noteworthy that knights competed not only alongside their peers, but also with groups of mercenaries at these venues. Georges Duby (1985: 93) has estimated that the massive tournament fought on the outskirts of Lagny-sur-Marne in 1179, for example, attracted 10,000 participants, but only about 3,000 were knights with their retinues; the other 7,000 participants were mainly mercenary bands. The mixing of social classes on the tournament field points to the incipient democratization of sports. The history of sport is a hall of mirrors that reflects society at large. There would always be activities reserved for the elite (some of which were emulated in less expensive fashion by the lower echelons of society), but sports culture never could have enjoyed such a robust evolution without being accessible to all levels of society. Beyond the tournament, even when sports were played discretely among social peers, democratization would become a recurring theme, as was the case in wrestling, tennis, and early football games, for example, which were accessible to all. Of all the medieval sports, the joust is the best known yet the most oversimplified and misunderstood. The sport had a long history from around the thirteenth century to the seventeenth and evolved in complexity and sophistication across the centuries. It is often assumed that fatal injuries were the common denominator of the joust through the ages, which is a misapprehension, given the sport’s longevity, the preeminence and rapid evolution of defensive plate armor, and the natural desire of human beings to live rather than die. The sport would surely not have lasted as long as it did had not the armor actually worked. Jousting has been described dramatically as “the game of death” (McClelland 2007: 80), thus capturing the oxymoron: can an activity be called a game or sport if it consistently results in fatalities? And on the other hand, was jousting really as dangerous as is often assumed by modern scholars? The answer is yes and no. There were occasional deaths, for sure, though not all necessarily attributable to being skewered on the end of a lance. There are occasional deaths in modern sports as well, for just as wide a variety of random reasons as in the medieval joust. That jousting was a deadly sport is a conclusion that can be arrived at by considering some extant accounts of early medieval large-scale mêlée tournaments in isolation and extrapolating those accounts over centuries of constant evolutive activity, when in fact the opposite could be true, that because fatalities were relatively uncommon, this is the reason why they were almost always prioritized and referenced by contemporary chroniclers when they did happen, thereby making for a distorted and misleading interpretation of chivalric sports culture. It is only in recent years that the various misapprehensions about jousting have been seriously questioned. The jousters themselves endeavored to cloak their sport in an aura of danger, but even the jousts of war were not as dangerous

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as has previously been supposed. The fact is, the equipment worked, just as it does in twenty-first-century sports such as ice hockey and American football, the modern armored games. In jousts of war with sharply pointed leaf-shaped lance-heads, the point typically either bent on impact (depending on the angle), and dented the opponent’s armor, or it “disgarnished” the armor. This is a contemporary technical term which has multiple meanings depending on context: dislodge, displace, or tear off and cast to the ground. These types of lance-heads also sometimes pierced through the armor, but more often than not inflicting flesh wounds—painful though these may have been—rather than fatal injuries. Events would always be called to a halt for hours or even days while the armor was mended and, if necessary, the wounded jousters recovered. The Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones is one of the best-documented sporting events of the Middle Ages. It took place near the Órbigo bridge in León (northern Spain) from July 10 through August 9, 1434. Arguably the most expensive of medieval sports, the passage of arms was at its core a type of jousting competition whereby one or more knights—ten in the case of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones—would defend a highly publicized designated position within a specified time frame and invite all comers to joust with them

FIGURE 4: Tournament at Smithfield, England, before King Richard II, 1394. Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images.

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one on one at that site, in accordance with a list of published rules by which all were expected to abide. In the earliest passages of arms such as this one, the jousts themselves would sometimes be of a special class known as jousts of war, the purpose of which was to emulate real combat, with few or no extra pieces of jousting safety equipment. Seventy-seven jousters—some of them highly experienced and seasoned professionals; others rank amateurs or mere beginners—from Aragon-Catalonia, Brittany, Castile, Germany, Italy, and Portugal made their way to the Órbigo bridge in order to participate. In the case of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones the premise was that 300 lances were to be broken at the stave over this thirty-one-day period in competitions that had an unlimited number of courses until the three lances had been broken; hence there would be 100 jousting competitions in total, or three or four competitions per day—at least in theory. It is here that pictorial representations alone can be particularly misleading, as they always depict the jousters either making a smooth and accurate approach, or striking each other at the successful moment of the encounter (Figure 4). In fact, as I shall discuss below, some jousters were more or less skilled than others, and there were many complete misses and foul lance-strokes.

SPORTS AND RHETORIC The Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones was based on the notion of breaking the lances in order to release Suero de Quiñones from a prison of love, which in turn reflected and was influenced by the courtly literature of the time, most notably Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de Amor (“Prison of Love”), first published in 1492, but composed at a much earlier date (Ruiz 2012: 193–7). This intersection of sport and literature in the Middle Ages points to the importance of rhetoric as a framework for describing sporting activities. Rhetorical constructs must always be taken into account when approaching written medieval narratives about sports. For example, one of the earliest accounts of sporting activities in the Middle Ages is that of William Fitz Stephen, who enthusiastically and meticulously documented a number of games in his “Description of the Most Noble City of London” ([c. 1170–83] 1990: 47–67). Fitz Stephen was creating a celebratory snapshot of the city of London and the myriad sports played in the city, including cockfights, wrestling competitions, leaping contests, archery, stone throwing, bearbaiting, hunting, ice skating, and ball games, which he in turn aggregated according to the seasons of the year. He wrote in Latin at a time when the Church’s attitude toward sports in the twelfth century was preferring to embrace rather than reject or impugn such activities. His report or narrative was most likely written for the benefit of the clergy and other educated readers (see especially Carter 1992: 123–30).

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In a similar vein, Pero Rodríguez de Lena was an eyewitness as well as the official chronicler of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones. He also coordinated the reports written by other scribes who witnessed the event and made notes as it was actually taking place, making for the most minutely detailed account of a medieval passage of arms. Unlike Fitz Stephen, he wrote in his native Castilian for the benefit of jousters who may have had limited or no abilities in Latin. In rhetorical terms the technique of narrating in minute detail is called hypotyposis. Even though there is a chronological chasm spanning more than 200 years, as well as a substantial geographical and cultural distance between the accounts of Fitz Stephen and Rodríguez de Lena, the two chroniclers would have received a similar education underpinned by the study of rhetoric and they therefore use techniques in their descriptions that are so similar as to eliminate the temporal and spatial distances that separate their accounts. In other words, the greatest treasure troves of sporting accounts in the medieval period are invariably connected by the enduring power of rhetoric. Since the first readers (after the scribes themselves) of Rodríguez de Lena’s chronicle would have been the very knights who participated in the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, and since they did not have the luxury of being able to step back and watch slow-motion action replays of their performance, the anatomic details of the chronicle account opened the possibility—as much for them as for us—for a post facto dissection or autopsy of each combat. To the untrained eye, it is possible that the descriptions seem repetitive, even boring. However, for jousters skilled in the martial arts, and spectator enthusiasts who may not have lived the sport but knew it inside and out, each event was unique in its details. The longest jousting competition at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones consisted of twenty-seven courses run between Pedro de Nava and Francisco de Faces, most of them complete misses, before the requisite three lances were broken. Significantly, this competition took place on Thursday, July 15, 1434, that is, at the beginning (the sixth day) of the event. The joust moves at a painfully slow pace and exposes not only the participants’ lack of ability, but also the judges’ failure at this early juncture to realize that one month was going to be far too short a period of time to complete the event successfully. On the other hand, however, and despite a pitiful performance, the event is revealing about the kinds of men who attempted this difficult sport. Assuming that the weather in medieval Spain was the same as it is today, running twenty-seven courses in full plate armor on a hot July afternoon must have required tremendous fortitude and endurance, a testimony to the fact that these men, and their horses, were at the peak of physical fitness. The description of the joust is lengthy but unique in its detail, and therefore worth quoting in full, as follows:

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After this, on this aforenamed Thursday, Pedro de Nava, one of the Defenders of the passage of arms, entered the field and lists, in white armour and on horseback, and on the other side, opposite him, Francisco de Faces, brother of Lord Luis de Faces, likewise in white armour and on horseback. And now that they were both in the field, they charged against each other very vigorously, their spears in the rests. And in this first course Pedro de Nava struck Francisco de Faces on the left pauldron, and the spear neither gained a purchase nor broke. Even so, they both ran this course with great composure and chivalric verve. And they rode another four courses in which they did not encounter, except that in one of them they barricaded the spears. In the sixth course Pedro de Nava struck Francisco de Faces on the left pauldron, and he broke his spear upon it near the spearhead. And Francisco de Faces struck Pedro de Nava on the brow reinforce of the helmet and the spear neither gained a purchase nor broke. And they rode another three courses in which they did not encounter. In the tenth course Francisco de Faces struck Pedro de Nava on the rondel, and he broke his spear in half on it. And Pedro de Nava barricaded his spear. And they rode another five courses in which they did not encounter, except that in two of them they barricaded their spears. In the sixteenth course Pedro de Nava struck Francisco de Faces on the left pauldron, and the spearhead blunted on it, and neither one of them broke a spear. And they ran another course in which they did not encounter. In the eighteenth course Pedro de Nava struck Francisco de Faces on the bevor, and the spear neither gained a purchase nor broke. And they ran another two courses in which they did not encounter, except that in one of them Pedro de Nava barricaded his spear beneath Francisco de Faces’ bevor. In the twenty-first course they both struck each other on the rondels, and they barricaded the spears without breaking either one of them or suffering a reversal of fortune. And they rode another four courses in which they did not encounter, except that in two of them they barricaded the spears. In the twenty-sixth course Pedro de Nava struck Francisco de Faces above the eye-slit of the helmet, and the spear neither gained a purchase nor broke. In the twenty-seventh course Francisco de Faces struck Pedro de Nava on the couter wing, and glanced off it and hit the breastplate, and he broke his spear upon it near the spearhead. And the judges ordered that since they had completed their deeds of arms they should leave the field and go to their pavilions. And they said that they would be pleased to do so, since on this matter they were at their command.

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And here says the author, since he was present when the deeds of arms were being performed, that he saw that both knights were riding very well, with passionate hearts. However, he gives the advantage to Francisco de Faces, since he broke the two spears upon Pedro de Nava, and Pedro de Nava the one upon him. And he believes that this was because good fortune did not at the time wish to favour Pedro de Nava. — Fallows 2010: 412–14 This joust consists of three broken lances (Faces, courses 10 and 27; Nava, course 6); five successful attaints where the lance struck and gained a purchase, but did not break and therefore did not count (Nava, courses 1, 16, 18, and 26; Faces, course 6); a number of fouls where the lances barricaded (a term that I describe more fully below); and nineteen complete and often consecutive misses (courses 2–5, 7–9, 11–15, 17, 19–20, and 22–5), which account for just over 70 percent of the twenty-seven courses run. We can but speculate how tedious this must have been to watch, though at this early stage in the proceedings the judges and the chronicler are remarkably sympathetic, which prompts the question: Why? The joust described above is an example of the synergy between the rhetoric of both armor and written text, as it is a written text that answers the question why the judges were so patient with these two jousters, and reveals hidden information about the meaning of armor that cannot easily be seen simply by reading the chronicler’s description. The two jousters are described as wearing “white armor,” which in practical terms refers to “armour of plain, polished steel, without a permanently-attached covering” (Blair 1958: 58). A further, hidden meaning of white armor in the context of medieval Castile is revealed in the pages of a romance of chivalry, Amadís de Gaula (“Amadis of Gaul”), first published in 1508, but most likely composed many years prior to the publication of the first printed edition. In this work of fiction we read the following descriptions: And I considered it as a boon and I told him I would take the horse, because it was very good, and the cuirass and the helmet; but that the other arms were to be white as is fitting for a novice knight. . . . Then at this hour there arrived Gandalin and Lasindo, squire of Don Bruneo, both wearing white armour, as befitted novice knights. . . . The men of the past who established the order of chivalry considered it good that for the new joy, new, white arms be given. —Rodríguez de Montalvo [1508] 1974: 2:454, 458, 737 Thus it is a work of literary fiction which clarifies that at least in Castile white armor denoted a particular level of skill (or lack thereof). As noted in a 1415

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document edited by Pedro Cátedra (2002), it was commonly worn by young boys who practiced tilting at the ring in lieu of the more strenuous jousts practiced by adults. Even though white armor was of a high quality, those who wore it were immediately identifiable as novice knights. It is no coincidence that the chronicler of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones places emphasis on the fact that the two combatants in the longest and least competent joust at the event were wearing white armor. Of greater relevance to the medieval sports paradigm, however, is this intersection of literature and sporting reality, a phenomenon that consistently informs and defines medieval sports. In the world of chivalric fiction, as well as at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, where the jousters were not to know the identity of their opponents until the joust was officially declared over, wearing white armor sports kit itself was a way of concealing one’s identity. Paradoxically, however, some seasoned veterans would become and represent themselves as white knights, such as Chrétien de Troyes’ Cligès and Meraugis (see Gordon 2008: 77), and Joannot Martorell’s Tirant lo Blanc, in an ironic posture against received convention.

PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION Pictorial and written accounts of medieval sports, when considered in isolation, run the risk of causing confusion rather than clarification and must therefore be corroborated whenever possible. For example, the sword and buckler fencing techniques depicted in the one-dimensional illuminations in medieval manuscripts (Figure 5) are not as sophisticated as the multidimensional technical and geometric diagrams in later renaissance fencing manuals (sundry examples reproduced by Anglo 2000: 40–90). This does not mean, however, that the fencing depicted was in and of itself “more” or “less” sophisticated in either epoch, but rather, by the Renaissance there was an increasing desire to capture and cement actions in space and time into written words and diagrams, which in turn necessitated new technical vocabularies and diagrammatic schema influenced by new advances in artistic representations of dimension, depth, and perspective. Beyond the pictorial, with regard to sporting language, still today it is often game-specific. Cricket, to cite but one modern example, has its “bunny,” “googly,” and “royal duck” that are all limited to this one sport. We have the luxury today of locating definitions quickly on the Internet or with the aid of specialized dictionaries. An added twist to the case of the best-documented medieval sports is that the language of academic discourse alone is an inadequate tool for explaining the subject at hand, since even with the aid of detailed and clear descriptions specialist readers may not be entirely familiar with, or able to visualize accurately, some of the technical terms that the players would have

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FIGURE 5: Tournament with swords, miniature in the Rich Hours of the Duke of Guise, Musée Condé in Chantilly. Photo by Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images.

used. Such terms can obscure the meaning of sport, as they are often vaguely defined, or not defined at all in contemporary sources. In jousting, for example, swooping, making the sign of the cross, barricading, and fishing the lance are the most common types of foul strokes. These fouls are discussed in a fragmentary way across multiple contemporary manuals, and it is only by teasing descriptions out of the different extant written sources that they can be defined as follows: swooping means that the lance is not held steadily and wavers up and down during the charge; making the sign of the cross means that it wavers from side to side; barricading means crossing the lance a full 90 degrees so that the opponent runs into a horizontal stave, potentially snapping it but without being struck by the point; and while not a foul per se, fishing refers to lowering the lance with a

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quick flourish at the last moment before the encounter—for the consummate master, a spectacular hit would ensue; for lesser men, a shameful foul, such as striking the opponent’s saddle, his leg, or his horse, would be the end result. It is only out of sheer luck that enough jousting treatises (and art and artifacts) have survived the vicissitudes of time to enable the comparisons that provide such accurate definitions. Specialized wrestling moves, for example, have not fared so well. Although a list of techniques is provided by King Duarte of Portugal in his fifteenth-century Book of Horsemanship, his definitions lack consistency or clarity, with the result that techniques such as the “forsaken traverse” (travessa desemparada) and the “technique of the dog” (erro do cam) remain frustratingly opaque (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 140–4). Although the Book of Horsemanship is often referred to by modern scholars as a “book of instruction,” it in fact exists in a single untitled manuscript that was probably the king’s personal copy (for a detailed description of this codex, see Pedro 2012). It would have been shelved in his library in the royal chancery and may well have been written as a personal diary or memoir for Duarte’s eyes only. Certainly the style of the work supports this idea, in which case he would have had no incentive to define terminologies with which he was already intimately familiar. The problem with the issue of terminology is that what Duarte called the forsaken traverse (to cite but one example) was quite possibly a wrestling technique that was well known to other practitioners within and outside Portugal, but ascribed an entirely different explanatory label. Wrestling techniques are further described by Duarte’s near contemporary, the Spanish martial arts and sports expert Pietro Monte (Forgeng 2018a: 99–110), in his wide-ranging Exercitiorum Atque Artis Militaris Collectanea (“Collected Works on Military Training and the Art of War”). Monte drafted this work originally in Spanish in the late fifteenth century, subsequently translated the draft into an expanded version in Latin, and had it published in 1509 by a German printer residing in Italy. Monte’s wrestling terminology does not corroborate Duarte’s with any degree of accuracy or assurance and is equally impenetrable. While the taxonomies of medieval sports can at times be frustrating, this lack of clarity and our own lack of understanding should not be interpreted to mean that there were no sports to speak of. On the contrary, the descriptors used at the time are an intriguing impetus for further research and for the quest to unravel and accurately define the knotty terminologies of medieval sports literature and culture. In addition to technical terminologies, to continue the cricket analogy, cricket was “invented” in England and rapidly spread throughout the British Empire, with the result that the inventors of the game are no longer necessarily always the best players internationally. I mention this because confusion can arise about the origins of certain sports which requires an interdisciplinary, panEuropean approach to decipher correctly. For example, medieval passages of

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arms are often associated with the Burgundian court, but the first passage of arms in a long chronology documented by Sébastien Nadot (2012: 11–31 and 335–7) actually took place in Valladolid, Castile, in 1428. This activity also spread throughout the international chivalric conglomerate with the result that it is often thought to have Burgundian origins, when in fact the court of Burgundy appropriated it from the Castilians, outclassing them in the process. Over time, nation states such as Burgundy with its elaborate passages of arms would be epitomized and branded by their citizens’ skills at specific sports. Writing in 1528, Baldesar Castiglione ([1528] 2005: 26) states that the ideal courtier should be able to joust like an Italian, tourney like a Frenchman, and excel at cane games and mounted bullfighting like a Spaniard. Returning now to the joust between Pedro de Nava and Francisco de Faces at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, fast forward twenty-three days, from July 15th to August 6th, and a sense of tension and urgency emerges as the event continues to unfold and it now becomes abundantly clear to the judges that it is not going to be possible for 300 lances to be broken within the allocated time frame. This is tantamount to what today would be called a teachable moment in this evolutionary phase of sports timing. In the modern era, many professional sporting events follow a regular schedule, often during a specific season, and have dedicated spaces that are also often used for no other purpose than the pursuit of one particular sport. Sporting events in the Middle Ages, on the other hand, may have taken place at a single location for a specified period of time, never to be repeated again at the same time or in the same space. Sport in the Middle Ages was also primarily a daylight activity; only the wealthiest souls could afford to defy nature and play their games by torchlight after darkness had fallen (for examples, see Barber and Barker 1989: 35, 58, 98–9, and 102). The notion of suspending a sporting activity temporarily, often because night was falling and it was difficult to see, and resuming the same activity with the same players at a later day or time, was something new in the medieval period, and depended in large part on the whim of the judges. By way of an example, on Friday, August 6, 1434, Gómez de Villacorta and Luis de Aversa run an initial five courses, four of which are complete misses (versus the nineteen misses in the joust between Nava and Faces discussed above) and one a foul stroke by Aversa on the arçon, or saddle bow, of Villacorta. The chronicle states abruptly: Later that Friday, August 6th, before lunchtime and after the previous deeds of arms . . . the aforenamed Gómez de Villacorta, one of the ten tenans at that Pass, entered the field and lists to perform deeds of arms, armed and on horseback. And on the other side, opposite him, stood Lord Luis de Aversa, from Italy, likewise armed and on horseback. And now that they were in the field and lists where the deeds of arms were customarily performed, they placed their lances in the rests and each charged against the other with great composure.

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And they ran two courses in which they did not encounter, except that in one they barricaded the lances. In the third course Lord Luis struck Gómez de Villacorta on the saddle steel and the wing of the front arçon of the saddle, on the left-hand side, and pierced the saddle steel, and he broke his lance on him, and the lance-head and a piece of the stave bit onto the saddle steel. And they ran another two courses in which they did not encounter. And the judges declared their deeds of arms completed because it was by now getting late and time for lunch, and there was not going to be enough time to conclude the passage of arms, as there were so many knights and gentlemen who still needed to be delivered that they were not sure that they all could be. And the aforenamed Gómez de Villacorta and Lord Luis complained bitterly, saying that the judges were doing them a great injustice and they would not leave the field without completing their deeds of arms. And the judges still declared them completed and emphatically ordered them to leave the field. And since they had to obey their command, they had to do so. —Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 369 Neither man is described as wearing white armor, from which we can infer that they were not novices and were just jousting poorly. In this case the judges simply call a halt to a disastrous joust on the trifling and most likely insulting and humiliating pretext of a lunch break. Could there be anything more banal and pedestrian about the Western world’s supposedly most dangerous and heroic sport? Patience had obviously run out as the end of the passage of arms rapidly approached, and these two contestants were not given an opportunity to resume their joust that same afternoon or any other day. While it is often assumed that jousts were glamorous, chromatic, exciting, or even dangerous affairs, this was only the case to the extent that the jousters themselves were actually able to hit each other.

SPORTING TECHNOLOGIES The most sophisticated sportsmen in the Middle Ages, the jousters (in collusion with the armorers, lance-makers, and farriers who equipped them), were not dull and simple people. On the contrary, they were, much like their modern counterparts in the world of professional sports, technocrats. Armor surely would not have been worn for as long as it was had it not served its intended purpose, to protect the wearer while at the same time allowing for flexibility and agility. By comparing written accounts of jousts and tournaments to extant armors we can see how innovations were introduced to enhance performance, and how some worked while others did not.

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The example of Amadis of Gaul discussed above shows how a description in a text clarifies the hidden meaning of white armor. The written text can also sometimes shed new light on practical details about the way in which the armor actually worked that would otherwise be unknowable; what one scholar has called reverse engineering (Forgeng 2014: 107). Such is the case in the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones with a little-known accouterment which quickly disappeared from the chivalric panoply. It is clear from Rodríguez de Lena’s chronicle that some of the contestants had a thin bar riveted to the front of their breastplates just below the neck, known as a stop-rib in English, and referred to in the Castilian chronicle as el borde (Figure 6). Although el borde is mentioned repeatedly in the text, its meaning is not defined by the chronicler, nor is it immediately obvious which piece of armor it describes. It is here that text and artifact have a mutually compensatory relationship that connects a blurred past to the present and provides a sharper focus and visual clarity to that past. As stated above, the stop-rib is also an example of an accouterment that identifies the knight as he is seldom represented: a technocrat. Stop-ribs made their first appearance on breastplates between 1380 and 1390. The first known examples from surviving breastplates are Y-shaped; with the passage of time they shrank to the shape of a letter V (or arcuated V). They were typically secured to the breastplate by three rivets—two at either end and one in the middle. Stop-ribs fell into disuse around the year 1455 (Blair 1958: 61 and 82) and therefore had a life span of approximately 65–75 years. The bars can also be found riveted to pauldrons and vambraces (armor for the shoulder and forearm, respectively). If extant armor is a silent witness to the past, it is thanks to the chronicle of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones that the fortune of this piece of sports equipment is explained in great detail. It is obvious from surviving armor that the intended purpose of these stop-ribs was to deflect the lance-head away from the chest in order to avoid injuries, but what can be extrapolated from the chronicle is that in fact the stop-rib guided the skating lance dangerously up toward the neck or into the armpit, with the possibility of inflicting serious wounds. The following is but one example concerning this experimental piece, which in the final analysis was clumsy and inefficient: In the fifth course Antón de Deza struck Pedro de Nava in the middle of the plackart, and glanced off there and went up into the stop-rib of the breastplate, and ripped it off him, and the spearhead stuck through his right arm, near the shoulder joint next to the armpit, in such a way that the spearhead poked through to the other side, which caused a gaping wound, and a lot of blood flowed out of it, from which wound the surgeons said that he was at present in danger, though he did subsequently recover from it. —Fallows 2010: 471

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FIGURE 6: Helmet and breastplate with stop-rib, which belonged to a count of Matsch then known as Urs, made by the masters O and T, c. 1370–1410. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

This interface of text and artifact reinvigorates the past in ways that would be restricted through a single theoretical approach to sports history. As a case study of medieval sporting activity, an event such as the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones would be isolated and understood exclusively in the moment were it not for surviving artifacts of the period that can be alloyed to the main body of the chronicle narrative, thereby shedding light on what would otherwise remain obscure. It is this multifaceted interface which allows for a more nuanced and complete understanding of the knights who encapsulated, informed, performed, and essentially owned elite medieval sporting culture, thus enabling them to demonstrate, prove, reveal, or conceal their identity and abilities to others as well as to themselves, as much in our own times as the times in which they lived.

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One of the issues with our understanding and interpretation of the joust and other medieval sporting activities is how the sports themselves were represented by contemporaries. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, knights were accustomed to wielding lances in battle, and in this scenario the staves were always made of hard woods such as ash and beech. The joust, on the other hand, was deceptive in that the lances may have looked like they were made of hard woods, when in fact they were almost always made of pine, a light wood that shatters easily with spectacular effect. At high impact these pine lances had a consistency analogous to a stick of dry spaghetti and typically shattered into three or four pieces that would fly into the air, much to the delight of the spectators. It was not unknown for fans to squabble over the pieces so that they could keep them as souvenirs or relics of the event. Shattering the lance on the opponent’s armor was the goal of the most popular type of joust in England, France, Italy, and Iberia, called the joust royal, though in German lands it was associated exclusively with Italy and called “the Italian joust of peace over the tilt” (Welschgestech über die Planken), recalling in turn Castiglione’s remarks about the Italians being the best jousters. In this popular class of joust there were two main types of hits that were considered praiseworthy: one was called an attaint, that is, a palpable hit to the head or body, but that did not shatter the stave; the other was a hit in the same areas that also caused the stave to break. In other classes of jousts called the Gestech and Scharfrennen that were staged exclusively in German lands, the main objective was not to shatter the lance but to knock the opponent out of a purpose-built saddle constructed with a low cantle. The Catalonian jouster Ponç de Menaguerra published a book in 1493 with a deceptive title: Lo Cavaller (“The Knight”). While it may appear from this title that it is a theoretical treatise on the institution of chivalry and knighthood, the book in fact focuses exclusively on jousting, in which case the author is quite deliberately casting the knight as a creature of sport. A champion jouster himself, Menaguerra’s main concern is how to earn points in jousting competitions. As a purist, he admonishes knights who strive to strike sparks at the moment of the encounter, for example, because making sparks fly counts for no points. At this point I return to Guttmann (2004: 12) who notes in the context of modern sports: “The athlete who displaces his attention from the activity to the audience, who performs for the fans, violates the code of sports and frequently suffers under the mockery of purists.” Hence it could be said that the human condition is yet another connecting thread from the medieval through the modern period in the area of sports. Striking sparks was a popular thing to do as a means of pandering to the audience, otherwise Menaguerra would not have drawn attention to it. Jousters often rode with elaborate caparisons on their horses, and bright red caparisons richly embroidered with gold bullion flames of fire were particularly popular. Although there was no inherent danger of riding down the

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lists with glowing flames on the horse’s trappings and striking in such a way that sparks flew, this surely would have looked dangerous, perhaps frightening, and even hellish to some spectators. The striking of sparks is also and not coincidentally a leitmotiv in the combats that saturate medieval romance fiction. Scholars whose research focuses on the study of arms and armor have tended to shy away from the analysis of literary texts as points of comparison or clarification, and scholars of knighthood in literature have likewise tended to shy away from archaeological analyses of arms, armor, and the material culture of the past. This disconnect can be remedied through interdisciplinary approaches to the full materiality of medieval sports culture. The armored knight, while he can of course be studied from a single angle, is complex enough that the confluence of seemingly disparate approaches to the study of sport and chivalric sporting identity can yield results that present a more balanced overall view of what it meant to be a knight in the medieval age. Even in the case of the joust of war, for example, by studying what might seem like minutiae—the extant lanceheads for this class of joust—we now know that some had the dangerous pointed tip of the distal taper cut off and the smith then made wedge-shaped cuts around the perimeter of what was left of the tip, reshaping it into a safety coronel, though this would not have been visible to any of the spectators, who may have believed that they were watching an activity that was much more dangerous than it really was (Capwell 2018: 66–71). These simulated jousts of war are also mentioned by Ponç de Menaguerra, who talks of jousters being “counted as dead,” but not actually dead (Fallows 2010: 335). It is tempting to think that these “dead” knights could have lain quite still and were removed from the field on stretchers with all the theatricality and solemnity of a real death, to add to the mystique of the event. At its height in the fifteenth century, with full plate armor fitted with lancerests, plus the tilt separating the competitors, jousting was indeed far less dangerous than it looked. A seldom-cited comment by King Duarte of Portugal explains this phenomenon, though the sport would ultimately remain shrouded in a mystical cloak of risk and danger. In Duarte’s own words: As to the first error, because it is born entirely of will, which deliberately chooses not to encounter because of fear, we should consider what I have written about the things that make us lose fear, and help ourselves with those that most benefit us in this respect. And I think that if you desire to joust and encounter, you will there find examples and advice that will be of considerable help, if you practice it. Among the things I have said make us lose fear, one is understanding and good reason, which can be a great help as follows: consider that initial good intention that you have of encountering when you come to the tilt, and keep it in mind, and do not consent to shift from it when the opportunity arises. Also consider how few risks arise from

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encounters, and how many more happen in playing at cane games, hunting, or wrestling, and that generally men take part in these sports without fear, and that we should do the same in jousting. —Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 121 Constant practice and a supremely well-fitted, bespoke kit were the keys to survival, in addition to overcoming spontaneous reactions such as closing the eyes or veering at the moment of impact. By the fifteenth century jousting was not necessarily an attempt to recreate an obsolete type of warfare, nor an occasion to recreate an obsolete past. As the equipment evolved in complexity the game looked forward rather than backward, and emerged as a true sport in the modern sense, with a purpose unto itself, including a carefully crafted regulatory system and a highly specialized and iconic kit. Just one death occurred during the hundreds of courses run at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones in 1434, a freak accident whereby the metal spearhead pushed through the eye-slit of the visor directly into the unfortunate jouster’s eye, killing him instantly. There were plenty of other sight piercings at this tournament that resulted only in minor gashes. This fatal accident was blamed by the experienced jousters who were attending the event, not on a level of skill or ill fortune, but on the fact that the fatally injured knight, Asbert Claramunt, was wearing an armor that he had borrowed from someone else and that did not fit properly (Fallows 2010: 481–6). On the importance of the bespoke kit and sufficient interior padding, lest we forget, centuries after the demise of jousting it is only in the first decades of the new millennium that neuropathologist Bennet Omalu has spearheaded the case that chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE—a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated percussion to the head—is a condition that affects fully armored football players in addition to more vulnerable boxers. Many a jouster must have succumbed to this same condition, given that the highest amounts of points were always awarded for blows directly to the head. The condition does not arise in the moment, however, and insidiously affects patients at a later date, perhaps long after their sporting careers have ended. In this sense McClelland’s statement about the game of death rings true, but as the collateral consequence of a career as a jouster, which at the time neither the retired jouster nor his physicians would have understood or necessarily thought of recording in writing. As is evident from Ponç de Menaguerra’s book and Duarte’s comment quoted above, the knights saw themselves as sportsmen, and so should we. Another sport mentioned by Duarte as potentially more dangerous than jousting is the cane game. The cane games were uniquely Iberian, though they did make a brief appearance in England when Philip II of Spain became jure uxoris King of England from 1554–8 during his marriage to Queen Mary I. The game was

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FIGURE 7: A cane game in Valladolid, Spain, July 19, 1506. Photo by Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images.

at its core a supreme test of equestrian skill. No armor was involved; hence it was accessible to a broad spectrum of society, beyond just the aristocracy. In order to play the game, ranks of two to four riders—often dressed as “Moors”— would run parallel to each other in opposite directions around a plaza, bearing a large bivalve shield on the left arm, called an adarga, and carrying a wood or bamboo cane in the right hand. They would hurl the canes at each other as they passed with the intention of deflecting them with the adarga shields (Figure 7). As popular a game as this was in the medieval age and Renaissance, it is perhaps not surprising that re-enactments have never been attempted in the modern era, as they have with jousting, precisely because this was a game that looked innocuous, but was in fact extremely dangerous. Numerous accounts exist of serious injuries to man and horse, as well as fatalities caused by collision at high speed. Sometimes instead of canes the teams lobbed grenade-like clay vessels at each other filled with fireworks or flowers, called alcancías, reflecting the continued attraction to sparks and flames. The cane games were always preceded or followed by bullfights on horseback and the bulls would often have explosive fireworks attached to their horns. At these bullfights the bull of course always died a horrific death, and we thus see a movement toward spectacle rather than sport, as with hunting, which stood at the intersection of sport and spectacle. Philip’s attempt to introduce the cane game in England failed dismally (see Anglo 1997: 340; Fallows 2010: 285–6), and there was absolutely no interest in the bullfight in England. Bullfighting did gain traction in southern France, but as a stand-alone activity without any

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connection to cane games. Once sports started to cross international borders, even with monarchical support and a formal introduction, there was as much of a chance that they would be rejected instead of embraced by those who were exposed to them, which makes the cane games one of the first truly national sports.

BEYOND TECHNOLOGY: THE SPORTING AESTHETIC In modern sports, a seasoned golfer (to cite but one example) might be known as much for his flamboyant outfits as for the grace, power, and accuracy of his swing. Bespoke clothing and apparel are also often the most potent symbols of sporting achievement, from the maillot jaune of the Tour de France to the green jacket of the PGA Masters Tournament. This facet of certain modern sports is one of the most distinctly medieval vestiges of sports culture. The sportsmen of the Middle Ages were not just technocrats, but also aesthetes who saw, and sought to promote through a process of constant, regulated experimentation in sporting activities, an ideal of beauty in their arms and armor, their horses, and the entire heroic image that they themselves tried to encapsulate. Physical sports, such as jousts, the horse-racing competitions in Florence and Siena, and the calcio matches in Florence, came to be considered by the players themselves as much an artistic as a competitive process, perhaps in some cases a particularly violent form of what today would be called performance art, yet an art form that was guided and informed by increasingly nuanced kits and regulatory processes. As technocrats and aesthetes medieval sportsmen such as the mounted knights were at one and the same time a projectile weapon—le projectile homme-cheval to quote François Buttin (1965: 90)—and a type of living, breathing sculpture. Ponç de Menaguerra forces home the point that: “The knight who wears the best, most expensive, magnificent armour should be expected to win” (Fallows 2010: 326). The meaning of this assertion can be taken at face value, or it could also be a warning which points to the increasing professionalization of sports by the end of the fifteenth century: the more money spent on the kit, the greater the expectation for a high-quality performance; hence wealthy amateurs and poseurs beware. The largely unregulated mayhem of the early mêlée tournaments would be the evolutionary stimulus for increasingly sophisticated games in the Middle Ages underpinned by high-quality kits and equipment, rules, regulations, and intellectual codes of conduct which would ultimately protect and preserve the integrity of an emerging sports culture and inform and guarantee the future of organized sports for centuries to come.

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NOTES 1. For a general history and defense of medieval sport, see Merdrignac 2002. The historiography of medieval sport has typically focused on individual countries, e.g., Strutt 1801, Jusserand 1901, and Mehl 1990. On the multiple attempts to regulate play and sport, see especially Rizzi 2009 and 2012, whose focus is on Italy. 2. The best collection of medieval (and later) images of ball games is found in Flannery and Leech 2004. 3. Thanks are due to John McClelland for providing additional material and valuable suggestions for the development of this section of the Introduction.

CHAPTER ONE

The Purpose of Sport ROBERT A. MECHIKOFF, NOEL FALLOWS, AND KEN MONDSCHEIN

As the Duke of Wellington is held to have said: “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” No matter how apocryphal the quotation, in the sporting and martial arena we may say the same truth holds for the Crusades, the Drang nach Osten, or the Wars of the Roses. Just as it has throughout history, sport served a myriad of purposes in the medieval age: physical fitness, military training, spectacle entertainment, group definition and cohesion, pedagogy and socialization, and status-seeking and definition. Similarly, sport in all ages has been subject to internal and external tensions, influences, and circumstances that have often been in conflict with each other (Bourdieu 1978, Elias and Dunning 1986). The tournament—to cite but one example—could at one and the same time be conceived as training for war, exalted as a means for a dashing knight to achieve fame and fortune, organized as a lavish display to attract tourists, used as a surrogate for battle, and condemned by churchmen as a vicious distraction that would lead to damnation. In this chapter I shall consider sport from the perspectives of: recreation, sociopolitical maneuvering, and training and exercise. These categorizations are not discrete or monolithic, and interface kaleidoscopically across cultures, genders, and social strata. Together, they would help define the characteristics of medieval culture.

RECREATION Sport with no other purpose than recreation, entertainment, and an escape from the rigors of daily life is perhaps the least complicated form of sporting activity— though it rarely exists in isolation from other social spheres. Such play may 35

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involve running, leaping, striking balls with bats, kicking or throwing balls for sheer pleasure and without any specific objective in mind, throwing various objects such as stones and metal bars (also used as military strength training), as well as other impromptu activities based on the ingenuity of the players. William Fitz Stephen ([c. 1170–83] 1990: 56), in his late-twelfth-century panegyrical “Description of the Most Noble City of London,” puts it best when he observes that “it is not meet that a city should only be useful and sober, unless it also be pleasant and merry,” and sports recreation is one of the keys to this happiness. Thus, on Shrove Tuesday young Londoners would bring their fighting cocks to school to set them against each other. In the afternoon, after the cock fights, the same youths played an unspecified ball game, probably some type of football or volleyball, as older men watched, nostalgically reflecting upon their own halcyon days as mischievous and spirited schoolboys. Every Sunday afternoon in Lent, observes Fitz Stephen, teenage boys engaged in hastiludes, or mock battles with blunted wooden spears without metal tips, with some on foot and others on horseback. In this instance the youngsters of London were not officially training, but rather playing innocuously at war, with the intention of throwing spears at each other or trying to knock each other off their horses. Except for the fact that some groups occasionally of their own accord split into teams, Fitz Stephen mentions no rules or scoring systems, which strongly suggests that this activity was play for the sake of play, regulated only by the annual date at which the event would take place—something that a teenager could look forward to with glee and anticipation. A similar game was played on the River Thames at Easter, when a quintain was placed on a mast in the river, and a young man standing in the prow of a small boat rowed by his friends had to strike it with a lance without falling down in the boat or being thrown into the river. In order to accommodate a quintain this game was played in the shallows and perhaps also restricted to those who knew how to swim, though Fitz Stephen does mention that for safety reasons two boats holding several young men stood by to pluck any fallen contestant out of the river. It bears pointing out here that even a competent swimmer may not have fared well from a health standpoint if he swallowed a mouthful of medieval Thames, though this consequence is not mentioned by Fitz Stephen, perhaps because it would spoil the fun, or because the potentially deleterious effects of polluted water were not well known and understood at the time. These types of youthful jousts took place beyond London as well, wherever there was a sufficient body of water, such as a lake or a river, and are further corroborated in marginal illuminations in the fourteenth-century French Romance of Alexander manuscript currently preserved at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Ms. 264. The game as described by Fitz Stephen seems to have had no other purpose than the enjoyment of playing on the river. In the Romance of Alexander marginalia, however, the game is part of a series of illuminations

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FIGURE 1.1: Boys jousting on water, fourteenth century. Handcolored lithograph by Joseph Strutt from his own Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, London, Chatto and Windus, 1876. Photo by Florilegius/SSPL/Getty Images.

(Figure 1.1; see also Krieg 2014) in which young noblemen are clearly being trained how to joust. In this case the purpose would have been a practical implementation of the rhetorical trope of prodesse et delectare (“to be useful and enjoyable”), where the boys are being taught in an appealing way to maintain balance while coordinating lance, eye, and target. Making a mistake and falling into the water out of a small boat would have been memorable but also more amusing than humiliating, and would certainly have been less painful and dangerous than falling to the ground from a horse. Fitz Stephen notes that wrestling was one of the most popular recreational sports in the summer months. Of all medieval sports, wrestling was the most broadly accessible to all social classes, particularly because no special kit, equipment, or defined sporting spaces were required (Figure 1.2). Fitz Stephen’s young men of London wrestled purely for recreational purposes. Chaucer’s tradesman, the miller, also wrestled in competitions where the prize was a ram. The poet’s description of him emphasizes the wrestler’s weight and physique: “The Miller was a chap of sixteen stone, / A great stout fellow big in brawn and bone. / He did well out of them, for he could go / And win the ram at any wrestling show” (Chaucer ([c. 1400] 1982: 34). And finally, at the opposite end of the medieval social spectrum, King Duarte of Portugal ([c. 1430] 2016: 143), the highest ranking nobleman in the realm, also extols the virtues of wrestling, while incidentally inferring that by the fifteenth century in Portugal it was— sadly, in his view—not as widely practiced among the nobility as it once was: You should not suppose that this is not an art for great lords, because my lord the king, may God have his soul, used it very well; and the princes, captains,

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and good men-at-arms around him were so outstanding in it that one could find few of any station who were their equals. In my own court, when I praised and practiced it, there were such good wrestlers that I did not believe one could find their equals in the household of any other prince. Today it is not used the same way, but I hold this for a great failing: it would greatly please me to see a return to that good state of affairs. . . . May it please our Lord that even yet in my time we may correct this, as it once was when we practiced these things well in these realms. Wrestling was similarly praised as martial training by Pietro Monte ([1509]; see Forgeng 2018a) and Baldesar Castiglione ([1528] 2005) as fundamental to all

FIGURE 1.2: Miniature of two young men wrestling, from The Rich Hours of the Duke of Guise, Musée Condé in Chantilly. Photo by Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images.

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fighting on foot, and wrestling techniques were depicted in numerous medieval and early modern martial arts books. This will be explained more in detail below, in the section on training and exercise. In the winter months Fitz Stephen’s Londoners engage in impromptu recreational skating, some simply wearing their regular footwear and sliding on the ice, and others engaging in a primitive mix of skiing and skating by attaching an animal’s shinbone to their shoes and using handheld poles reinforced with metal tips to thrust against the ice and gain momentum. Centuries later, in the 1460s, the members of a Czech embassy led by Leo of Rozmital to the courts of western Europe were treated to, and astonished by, an ice-skating race arranged for their benefit at the court of the Duke of Burgundy in Brussels. The skaters were so fleet of foot that it was remarked that “no horse could have kept up with them” (Letts 1957: 39; see also McClelland 2013: 163–4). Speed was as much a thrill in the medieval period as it is today. Beyond the various recreational activities described by Fitz Stephen, the greatest sport for recreational purposes was the hunt. For members of the aristocratic caste, hunting during the medieval age was a popular sport that was frequently included as an integral component, ceremony, or ritual within a broader event or happening. For the peasantry, on the other hand, hunting was a means of survival, and often entailed physically grueling days and nights with the sole purpose of eating and surviving for yet another day. Furthermore, if the peasantry were trespassing they were technically poaching, which added a level of risk that was absent when the great landowners hunted on their own estates. Beyond survival, even for the peasantry hunting and poaching could be a politically charged activity. Throughout medieval Europe, and especially in England, where seigneurial parks abounded with the express purpose of keeping the animals in and the riffraff out, during times of civil unrest breaking in to these parks could sometimes be a quite deliberate act of disobedience designed to target, desecrate, and scar aristocratic identity by engaging in a kind of inversion of the hunt, uprooting or otherwise damaging trees, randomly killing or stealing animals, and in consequence upsetting what the aristocracy themselves perceived as the natural social order and status quo that they dominated. It is not too fanciful to suggest that civil disobedience when conjoined with wanton vandalism in the woods is a kind of desultory recreational activity, perhaps an early example of the volatile and toxic relationship between sports and hooliganism. In the world of the nobility, however, hunting and killing were never random, always civilized (at least for the humans, if not the animals), and every aspect of the hunt had a distinct purpose; even after game such as stags and harts had been dispatched, the butchered meat was separated ritualistically and hierarchically into the best cuts, down to the last remaining offal.

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Some of the instruments or tools used in hunting were the same weapons used in war. Spears, swords, lances, bow and arrow, and on rare occasions, the crossbow were employed by hunters who had access to them. Needless to say, a significant psychological and physical leap would have been required between killing a terrified, exhausted, and cornered animal, and slaying a heavily armed and highly skilled human being at close quarters in the midst of a battle. While it cannot realistically be said that hunting in any profound way emulated war or battle, it was certainly a testing ground for the quality and effectiveness of weaponry and allowed the nobility to hone their skill set without being too concerned about losing their lives in the process. There were a number of approaches or methods that were employed by hunters. Among the more prestigious of aristocratic hunts were the game drives, where beaters—sometimes with dogs, sometimes without—would drive the prey into nets or within the range of archers who would shoot them with their bows and arrows. During this hunt, the hunters rode their horses and used dogs to find the quarry with the result that it was killed in relative safety for the hunters. Those who stalked large and dangerous beasts with a view to killing them in single combat were highly respected by their peers. Hunts of this type served the purpose of testing the courage and composure of the hunter as well as his skill with weapons. That hunting was one of the most popular medieval sports among the nobility there can be no doubt. A vast corpus of literature has survived in the form of technical manuals on the subject (see the extensive bibliographical guides by Souhart 1886 and Abeele 1996). Written in both Latin and vernacular languages by and for high-status males, the challenge was to develop a technical vocabulary and commit the complexities of the sport to writing, with the desire of legitimizing it as a truly aristocratic sport imbued with authority and with its own dedicated literature (itself the exclusive purview of the educated noble class). On the understanding that the literature is too exhaustive to be covered in full here, among the most successful authors to have accomplished this arduous task are Gaston III Phœbus ([1389] 1998), Count of Foix and Viscount of Béarn, whose Livre de chasse (translated into English in the fifteenth century with the title The Master of Game) has survived in multiple manuscript copies and early printed editions, including a lavishly illuminated fifteenth-century manuscript currently preserved at the French National Library, Ms. fr. 616 (Figure 1.3). Gaston dedicated the book to a noble patron, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who himself was an avid hunter. The treatise focuses on the habits of wild game animals and how best to maintain the hounds, and even includes a section on the not so glamorous activity of setting traps. King Duarte of Portugal ([c. 1430] 2016: 123-9) also includes several chapters concerning the hunt on foot and on horseback in his Book of Horsemanship, following in the footsteps of his father King João I, who wrote an extensive treatise with the title Livro da Montaria (Book of the Hunt, c. 1415 [1918]).

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FIGURE 1.3: King Philip VI of Valois and the queen Blanche of Navarre going hunting. Miniature from the Book of the Hunt by Gaston III Phœbus, Count of Foix, Lord of Béarn (1331–91), 1387–8. Condé Museum, Chantilly, France. Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images.

One of the most prestigious types of hunt practiced by the aristocracy was falconry. As is the case with other types of hunting activity, the surviving literature on the subject is vast and is especially robust during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Among the most famous treatises are Dancus Rex, believed to have been composed in Norman-occupied Sicily in the mid twelfth century. Written originally in Latin (though influenced by Arabic falconry traditions), the treatise was subsequently translated into Castilian, Catalan, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Swedish, underscoring its popularity and influence. Linked to this treatise as a possible continuation is another widely diffused work known by the name of its author, Guillelmus Falconarius. Guillelmus was one of the royal falconers at the court of either King Roger II of Sicily (1095–1154) or his son, William I “the Wicked” (1120 or 1121–66; see Abeele 1994: 24, and Fradejas Rueda 1998: 17–19). This work was also translated from the original Latin to Castilian, Catalan, French, and Italian. And finally, while acknowledging that I am limiting the discussion here to the most famous treatises, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (“On The Art of

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Hunting with Birds”), written in Latin in the 1240s by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II ([early thirteenth century] 1943), also enjoyed a broad readership and wide diffusion throughout the Middle Ages. Like João I and Duarte, Frederick will have written this treatise during his otiose moments, keeping in mind that for ruling monarchs there was always a thin line between engaging in play, reading about play, writing about play, and neglecting affairs of state. In the case of hunting and hawking, caution must be exercised when drawing conclusions about these activities exclusively from the extant literature, which despite its technical sophistication is something of a rustic cudgel unless it is compared to and corroborated by other evidence of equal importance. By way of example, women are silent, if not completely absent in the male-oriented hunting treatises, but that certainly does not mean that women did not hunt. As far back as the reign of Charlemagne (768–814), his swain the future empress Hildegarde, was said to have melted the Holy Roman Emperor’s heart because she had mastered the art of delivering the coup de grâce to the wild boar (Bord and Mugg 2008: 52, Richardson 2012: 259). Richard Almond (2003 and 2009) and Amanda Richardson (2012) have researched much other archival, material, and archaeological evidence beyond the technical treatises and argue persuasively that, much like the legendary Hildegarde, courtly women were indeed taught hunting procedures, and, as well as spectating, enjoyed robust participation in the hunt, though the full extent of their participation has been challenged by Robin S. Oggins (2004). Future research will doubtless continue to shed new light on this facet of medieval hunting culture. Modern scholars do agree unequivocally that extant material evidence when considered holistically supports the fact that seigneurial women were often skilled hawkers and falconers, and typically used goshawks and merlins as their favored birds of prey. Sport for recreation did have a dark side in the form of gambling, which is now considered to be a bona fide addiction. It seems to have been endemic in the medieval period and captivated men and women of all social classes. Of course, after the bets had been placed more fortunes were lost than won. The French knight Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1300–56), in his Livre de chevalerie (“Book of Chivalry”), for example, observed in a masterful understatement that: “There is also a game called real tennis (gieux de la paume) at which many people have lost some of their chattels and their inheritance” (Kaeuper and Kennedy 1996: 113). Jean-Michel Mehl (1990: 270, and 2010: 248–50) records small and large sums of money lost and won by members of the French royalty and nobility in bets they placed on tennis and dice in the late fourteenth century. For those of limited financial means, the fantasy of getting rich quickly had the same seductive allure in the medieval age as it does today; for the wealthy, the sheer pleasure derived from weighing the odds and hazarding a bet was equally difficult to resist.

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SOCIOPOLITICAL MANEUVERING Sociopolitical considerations percolate into many dimensions of sporting culture, especially the elite martial sports, such as mêlée tournaments, tourneys, and jousts, as well as hunting and hawking. All of these types of sports appealed throughout their long history to the nobility across western Europe and, especially in the martial arena, are among the first tangible manifestations of what today would be called preparation to compete in a global society. By the fifteenth century, as Évelyne van den Neste (1996) has shown, tourneys and jousts were also emulated by the rising merchant classes in the most prosperous towns of France, Germany, and the Low Countries. The burghers had their own jousts, but they did not live chivalry like the elite knightly caste, and had a separate professional life that ran parallel to their sports and recreations, and paid the bills. Walther Marx of Donauwörth in Bavaria (1456–1511), for example, was a wealthy Augsburg merchant who made a name for himself as a consummate jouster against his peers, and even paid to have his deeds memorialized in his very own Turnierbuch (“Tournament Book”; see Huber 2014). Walther is always identifiable by his trademark crest of a skewer of sausages. The sausage crest was clearly a satire of the elaborate crests worn by noble knights on their helmets, and it could also have been a self-deprecating joke about diet and exercise and the fact that Walther could never hope to achieve the same level of physical fitness as the knights who had trained since boyhood to perform in the lists. For him jousting was an occasional recreational activity rather than a lifestyle—the wealthy merchant had the luxury of enjoying sports just as much as eating hearty plates of sausages, without any guilt. Fencing competitions were gaining in popularity with urban workers who formed confraternities and guilds to pursue these ends and often sought social advancement through noble patronage as teachers of swordsmanship. Daniel Jaquet (2013: 52 n. 18) has noted that a number of Fechtbuch (“Fight Book”) authors, and authors mentioned in Fight Books, were clearly in noble service. In the fencing guilds townsmen imitated their betters in a number of ways. Professional fencing masters are documented on the thirteenth-century tax rolls of Philip Augustus, and the first surviving fencing book, dated to c. 1325, shows a monk, a priest, and a woman named Walpurga fencing—apparently for pleasure—with sword and buckler (Forgeng 2018b, Eads and Garber 2014). Later administrative records and didactic works in both the German and Italian traditions point to a small but thriving culture of fencing in the towns. However, records of organized sportive fencing societies are scant until the later fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. The German Marxbrüder, first attested in 1474 but quite possibly predating this, were granted a monopoly on awarding the title “Master of the Longsword” by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III in 1487. Town councils of sixteenth-century Germany would grant individual

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masters the right to hold Fechtschulen, or fencing schools, in courtyards and innyards. Here, fencers would compete for cash prizes in bouts scored by bleeding wounds (not unlike the later mensur; see Tlusty 2011). Of course, fencing activity was relatively small-scale compared to the safer, more martially realistic, and officially encouraged practice of shooting bows, crossbows, and firearms (Crombie 2011). The effectiveness of the English longbowman, encouraged by royal decree to practice with his bow, is proverbial (see Mehl 2010: 253–63); shooting competitions were also an important pastime in German-speaking lands, were transported to the Americas by immigrants, and continue today in Switzerland and Austria. Such shooting sports combined military training and social distinction, with rich prizes awarded to the best shots. In the realm of large-scale group activities, the twelfth century was the apogee of the great mêlée tournament, after which it fell into a period of decline, gradually to be replaced by other martial activities by the middle of the fourteenth century and then being revived by the German nobility in the later fifteenth century (Barber 1982: 159–82, Barber and Barker 1989: 13–44, Barker 1986: 4 and 13–16, Crouch 2005: 1, Norman 1992: 304–10, Rühl 1990a and 2009). The sociopolitical dimension of the mêlée tournament has been widely recognized and studied by modern scholars (Barber 1982: 183–92, Barker 1986: 45–69, Barker and Keen 1985, Flori 2010: 131–52, Keen 2005: 83–101, Vale 1981: 63–87). The high medieval mêlée tournament brought hundreds—sometimes thousands—of combatants together in the open countryside and involved all of the standard weapons of war. Georges Duby (1985: 93) has estimated that the tournament fought on the outskirts of Lagny-sur-Marne in 1179, for example, attracted about 3,000 knights plus their retinues and other mercenary bands, making for a dizzying 10,000 participants and perhaps another 10,000 horses, not to mention what Duby calls the “parasites”—horse dealers, moneychangers, and prostitutes—who went to harvest what they could from the event. The tournament field was above all a political arena in which knights had the option of becoming fully engaged as a means of enhancing honor or reputation, or they could loiter at the periphery, being seen, but avoiding the dangers as much as possible. With regard to the notion of purpose, however, even standing on the sidelines could have a nefarious objective behind it, and not all who loitered were necessarily loiterers. Some participants would use this position as a cunning tactic, pretending to be at rest until the opportunity arose to pounce on an unsuspecting combatant who let his guard down as he passed by, and capture him for ransom. The History of William Marshal notes that this was a favorite ruse of Philip, Count of Flanders, and adds, not without some admiration: “Great prowess needs to be combined with guile!” (Bryant [1220] 2016: 55; see also Guttmann 2016: 96). Because of the expansive terrain, it was also possible for those who aspired to great wealth to target, pursue, and

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isolate certain high-ranking participants with a view to ensuring their capture for a handsome ransom. Some tourneyers were good; others were better than good. William Marshal (1146 or 1147–1219) is the closest the Middle Ages would come to producing a professional sportsman-athlete. The quintessential “Flower of Chivalry,” he was one of the most celebrated knights of the Middle Ages.1 Marshal started his career at the lowest echelons of noble society due to the fact that he was not the firstborn son and did not receive much of an inheritance from his father John Marshal, who was also a knight. However, his athletic ability and skill as a champion tourneyer enabled him to amass wealth, and ascend the aristocratic ladder. Prior to his death he had served five English monarchs, earned a stellar reputation, and was proclaimed Regent of England during the first years of the reign of King Henry III (1216–72). He is one of the earliest examples in the medieval period of a sportsman who became a professional athlete and earned his living as a freelance tourneying knight and a consummate warrior-athlete. Cities and towns also became aware of the revenue potential of hosting tournaments, despite the potential perils of doing so, and competed with each other to host these events. This facet of the medieval sporting culture would evolve in complexity over the centuries, reaching a pinnacle in our own times when events such as the Super Bowl, the Olympics, and the Pan-Am Games are all underpinned by complex and competing bids from the cities that strive to host them. Mêlée tournaments were governed by rudimentary customary rules, very few original examples of which have survived. Of the German tournament, for example, Joachim Rühl (1990a: 163) remarks: “Regulations in Germany did not obey a central code. They were in the hands of the well-off nobility, issued randomly, proclaimed in public for just one single event, and therefore rather short-lived and soon forgotten.” The same was most likely true for other countries as well, with the exception of the Iberian Christian kingdoms where large-scale tournaments failed to gain traction, and perhaps were unnecessary, given the possibility of engaging in real combat with a formidable Muslim foe during the Reconquista. Despite the paucity of documentation for the early German tournaments, by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a genre known as the Turnierbuch (“Tournament Book”) proliferated in German-speaking lands. These books constitute a unique and largely unexplored genre by modern scholars (see Jackson 1986, Krause 2017, Stamm 1986, Watanabe-O’Kelly 2007: 641–4), and pose certain problems of interpretation due to the motivations of their authors. Georg Rüxner in his Turnierbuch of 1530, for example, includes sets of customary rules for tournaments that allegedly took place in the tenth and eleventh centuries, but they are apocryphal, due to the fact that Rüxner’s purpose for writing the book was entirely sociopolitical. In collusion with the knights, this early modern spin doctor’s aim was nothing less

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than to forge (in the dual sense of bringing into being and committing forgery) an early documentary history of the tournament in order to extend its history and increase its importance for the highest echelons of the nobility. Among the principal differences between the earlier type of mêlée tournament and the later tourney such as that described by René d’Anjou ([c. 1460] 2018) were scale and permitted weapons. The tourney was fought between smaller groups within a limited, fenced-in ground, using only wooden clubs and blunted swords. Again we can turn for an example to the Germanic lands where, by the fifteenth century, the tourney had become a carefully orchestrated sociopolitical event as much as a martial contest, with distinct phases (Jezler 2014 and 2017). The first event was the Helmschau, which roughly translates to the “inspection of the helms” (Figure 1.4). Before the fighting commenced, all the participants’ helms were placed prominently on display and the heraldic devices on their crests were checked for accuracy, as well as their lineage and ancestry, to be certain that each contestant qualified to fight in the tourney; crucially, each individual’s chivalric conduct in the recent past was also evaluated. This ritual was followed by the Kolbenturnier, or “club tourney,” in which the contestants wore full armor and a specialized tourney helmet, heavily padded on the inside and with a barred visor which allowed for excellent vision and ventilation while also providing solid protection against the clubs of this contest (Figure 1.5). During the tourney, any knight who had been judged during the Helmschau to have recently committed a chivalric transgression could be punished by being assaulted and thoroughly beaten by all of the other participants simultaneously. This seems to be the case in Figure 1.5 where an armored knight in scarlet hosen is leaning against the barrier—his hands appear to be tied in order to prevent resistance, and the fact that he still has his helm on suggests that people are allowed to hit him. When the club tourney was over, there was also room, if necessary, for an even more solemn event known as the Schrankensetzen, or “mounting on the lists” (Figure 1.6). This was a particularly devastating activity for whomever was targeted, and was reserved for any contestants proven to have provided false evidence of their lineage in order to participate. Their saddle was mounted on the barrier that surrounded the enclosure and they were then made to sit on it without wearing their helm for the rest of the event. The impostors were now at the mercy of both the players and the spectators, all of whom were expected to shower them with insults. Finally the conclusion came in the form of a slightly more lighthearted activity called the Nachturnier, or “end tourney,” in which the contestants, armed with swords, attempted to batter the elaborate crests off of their opponents’ helmets, displaying their fighting and riding skill while also providing an element of light relief from the more somber judicial elements that had preceded it (Figure 1.7). The purpose of this final phase of the tourney can be interpreted as a self-deprecating literal and symbolic

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FIGURE 1.4: The Helmschau, or inspection of the helms at a German tourney. Konrad Grünenberg, Das Wappenbuch Conrads von Grünenberg, Ritters und Bürgers zu Constanz, c. 1480, fol. 238. Munich, Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, Cgm 145. Reproduced with permission.

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FIGURE 1.5: The Kolbenturnier, or tourney with clubs. Konrad Grünenberg, Das Wappenbuch Conrads von Grünenberg, Ritters und Bürgers zu Constanz, c. 1480, fol. 242. Munich, Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, Cgm 145. Reproduced with permission.

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FIGURE 1.6: A German knight is shamed in the Schrankensetzen, or mounting on the lists. Art Collection 4/Alamy Stock Photo. Image ID: J0836J.

deconstruction of the ritualistic Helmschau of the first phase. This type of tourney occurred throughout German-speaking lands and was particularly popular in Schaffhausen (in what is now Switzerland), which was at the time an important focal point for the culture. Various German tournament books illustrate these types of tourney scenes as well as detailed portraits of all the combatants’ crests and heraldic devices as a means of asserting their lineage, and cementing and memorializing it forever in written and pictorial form. The event itself married ancestral prestige to more tangible evidence of physical prowess. Lest we forget, the knights themselves were not only skillful athletes, but also cunning self-promoters (often in symbiosis with chroniclers such as Georg Rüxner), and their exploits in such tourneys served multiple purposes, one of which was to inspire the very manuals, poems, and songs that entertained and encouraged readers and listeners to hold these warrior athletes of the medieval age in such high esteem.

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FIGURE 1.7: Battering crests at the Nachturnier, or end tourney. Konrad Grünenberg, Das Wappenbuch Conrads von Grünenberg, Ritters und Bürgers zu Constanz, c. 1480, fol. 244. Munich, Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, Cgm 145. Reproduced with permission.

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The most cynical purpose for the medieval tournament was politically motivated, and simply concerned the host’s desire to show off or upstage a competitor, always at great expense. Such political posturing was the case, for example, when King Richard II of England mounted a lavish display of jousting in London in September 1390, because his rival, King Charles VI of France, had done so in Paris earlier that same year. Richard’s event also included a lavish banquet at Windsor Castle, where the French knight Guillaume de Haynau, wooed by the opulence and the outrageous flattery of the English court, allowed himself to be inducted into the Order of the Garter, much to Charles’ chagrin, as this now meant that Guillaume was formally a political ally of the English. The events are recorded by the French chronicler Jean Froissart ([c. 1400] 1867–77: 14:253–69). The weaponry and high-performance, bespoke armor that was then subjected to wanton destruction in tournaments, jousts, and tourneys were a luxury that only the wealthiest could afford. The full materiality of these sports served to reinforce the emphasis on impeccable lineage, the combatants’ beliefs in their own significance, and their ability and desire to convince others of their significance, and were one of the cornerstones of the construction of elite masculine identity. This same sociopolitical purpose was also mirrored in the ubiquitous hunt, which at its core was an example of aristocratic consumption and consumerism, staged at great expense as a means of constructing and asserting elite masculinity and, beyond the male-oriented technical treatises, femininity as well. Like the martial sports, hunting permeated the narrative courtly fiction that ran parallel to it, and was often manipulated as a literary device. Chrétien de Troyes’ twelfth-century romance Erec and Enide, for example, is predicated upon the hunt. The narrative begins on Easter Day at Cardigan Castle with the hunt for the white stag led by King Arthur. Erec, however, makes his entrance in the narrative not as an active huntsman, but rather as the passive companion of Queen Guinevere and one of her maidens. He is depicted as a static observer and listener, as follows: “All three had stopped in a clearing beside the road in order to listen attentively to see whether they could hear a human voice or the cry of a hound from any side” (Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1160–70] 2004: 38). Such inactivity at the hunt is symbolic of his recreance as a knight, and Erec’s personal quest for the restoration of his honor is the salient theme of the work. The legend of Tristan and Isolde has likewise been described appropriately as a veritable “hunt of love” (Anson 1970), and in Gottfried von Strassburg’s early-thirteenth-century version of the story, as a well-bred newcomer to Cornwall, Tristan not only expresses his dismay at the crude Cornish method of breaking up the hart, but also beguiles his audience with his own sophisticated techniques for excoriating and quartering the animal without getting so much as a single drop of blood on himself (Gottfried von Strassburg [fl. 1210] 1967:

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78–82). Tristan always moved with a purpose, and in this case his procedural skills were so impressive that he was able to fabricate a story around them as a means of achieving his main objective to gain access to the royal court. Tristan’s and Erec’s stories are very much cautionary tales, and underscore the fact that, like other noble sports, the purpose of hunting was recreational only on the surface, and rich layers of hidden meaning often lay beneath. Recalling Chrétien’s Erec, from both a physical and a symbolic point of view the formal competitions in the arena of the chivalric martial arts offered concrete evidence of a man’s prowess, and gave meaning to the role that he fulfilled as an active and productive citizen. Chrétien summarizes this ethos in The Knight with the Lion (Yvain) as follows: “No one gains a reputation by idleness” (Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1160–70] 2004: 358). At the highest political level, that of the monarchy and titled nobility, the masculine active life asserted itself during times of peace not only in the form of participation in sporting activities, but also in the construction of buildings such as churches, monasteries, and palaces, in the ability to dance and play musical instruments, and even in arduous—and not necessarily monogamous—love-making (see Fallows 2010: 8–9). Among the various purposes of competing in martial sports, the possibility of sex in the context of what was tantamount to a medieval groupie–rock star dynamic must have been motivating. Reputations were important, and an underlying purpose of the tournament in particular was the opportunity for a knight to enshrine his legendary sexual exploits publicly. As noted by Geoffrey Chaucer ([c. 1400] 1982: 91) in The Knight’s Tale: “Women, speaking generally, are prone / to follow Fortune’s favours, once they’re known,” the meaning here being that winners were always more attractive than losers. One of the earliest medieval commentaries about sexual exploits in the context of tournaments is that of the knight and troubadour Duke William IX of Aquitaine (1071–1127), who claimed of his own encounter with two women in the immediate wake of a tournament: Nor would I have done that if someone had killed me— Until I had screwed them enough, Both of them (for so I was possessed), Just as I wanted— I would rather suffer longer the pain And the grievous torment. I screwed them as often as you will hear: One hundred and eighty-eight times; I almost broke my tackle And my harness;

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And great sickness came over me from it, It hurt so much. — William of Aquitaine [1071–1127] 1982: 51 This particular autobiographical assertion sets a literary precedent in that the author creates sexual innuendo out of the kit and the sport itself, a metaphor of which other writers independently and inevitably became conscious and that would inform many future literary references to male sexual prowess. The metaphor encapsulates the desired synergy between sexual libido and sporting distinction, as well as the right of the socially dominant male to multiple partners (in William’s case, two at the same time). However truthful or exaggerated William’s boast may be, it also helps to explain why serious contemporary chivalric theorists such as peripatetic scholar and theologian, and former practicing knight and erstwhile troubadour, Ramon Llull ([c. 1274–6] 2013: 10–11, and 62), who knew tournament culture inside and out, despised jongleurs and troubadours for the baleful influence they had on the knightly caste, and he strongly urges aspiring knights to steer as far away from them as possible in both his Book of Contemplation, composed c. 1273–4, and Book of the Order of Chivalry, composed c. 1274–6. Royalty were not immune from sexual shenanigans, and although they did not stoop so low as to engage in unchivalric haughtiness themselves, they were often extolled by their official biographers in the same paragraph for their athletic and sexual prowess in the jousting enclosure and within and outside the uxorial bedchamber, respectively. King Ferdinand of Aragon (as Ferdinand II) and Castile (as Ferdinand V) is described as follows: “He jousted agilely and with such skill, that no-one in all his Kingdoms could do it better . . . And even though he loved the Queen, his wife, a lot, he still surrendered himself to other women”; his son-in-law King Philip I “the Handsome” (jure uxoris King of Castile, 1504–6) was regaled in a similar fashion by his official biographer as a highly accomplished jouster, a prolific lover, and a loyal, loving husband (Fallows 2010: 9, 99). Such traditions had a long life: at the Westminster Tournament at the court of Henry VIII of England in 1511, Sir Thomas Knyvet made his grand entrance at an evening ball indicating that he was ready for action by sporting a prodigious codpiece emblazoned with the word “DESYR” in block capitals (Anglo 1968: 1:56). Medieval fiction, once again, also perceived the metaphoric connections between the martial arts and sexual prowess. The fictitious knight Tirant lo Blanc’s prowess in the jousting enclosure is compared to his prowess in the bedroom as follows: The queen bade goodnight to all of her damsels and led the valorous Tirant to the side of his lady, who received him far more eagerly than on

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the previous night. Having placed them in the lists together, where they prepared to wage delightful battle, the queen went to bed, trusting that the combat would never stop. Tirant, like a valiant knight, did not sleep the whole night long, since whoever is constant in battle should be equally constant in bed. —Martorell [1490] 1993: 755; also Fallows 2010: 8 If some members of the knightly caste had a keen sense of bawdy humor, in other respects, they also took prowess very seriously. Keeping in mind that not all who engaged in sports had an opportunity, or even a desire, to fight in real battle—the Bishop of Burgos, Don Alonso de Cartagena ([c. 1444] 2006: 266), waspishly remarked that “on occasion the good tourneyer is a timorous and cowardly warrior”—prowess was perhaps best achieved and asserted through success in both martial sports and real combat, without the one activity necessarily serving as training for the other. Nowhere is this more evident than on the frontier between the Iberian Christian Kingdoms and Muslim-occupied Granada. As mentioned above, the large-scale mêlées were never as popular in Iberia as they were in other European realms, in large part because the Christian kingdoms were engaged for centuries in a protracted war of skirmishes, pitched battles, and laborious sieges to reconquer lost territory. Frontier culture in particular was a zone where sport and warfare were indissolubly linked. In Iberia a particular riding style known as the jennet (Spanish jineta) style emerged as a result of contact with Arabic culture where this style was the preferred method of riding—a rare kind of intercultural interface. Unlike the northern European style, where knights rode on a high saddle which was raised slightly above the horse’s back, and with the legs straight and using a curb bit, the jennet style required a saddle that sat squarely on the horse’s back, thereby putting the rider more in tune with the ergonomics of his horse, and the mounted horseman rode with the legs bent at the knee, and used a specialized jineta bit. The jennet riding style was an essential style to master for frontier warfare, and reigned supreme in the Spanish subjugation of the indigenous peoples of Central and South America and parts of what is now North America. A jennet-specific game that evolved in tandem with this style of riding once it was embraced by young Spanish aristocrats was called the game of canes, or cane game. The game involved quadrilles, or teams of two, three, or four riders aligned horizontally in precise formation. Each quadrille would ride in opposite directions and as they passed would throw wooden canes at their opponents, who shielded themselves with a type of large bivalve shield called an adarga. These were usually made of hardened leather, though examples also exist that are made of iron.2 Although this style of riding was largely rejected at court throughout the Reconquista, its popularity among the nobility at the frontier

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and in their elaborate cane games ultimately could not be ignored, and by the fifteenth century it gained some traction and the Castilian monarchs even deployed retinues of Andalusian jennets (“Moorish knights”) as an elite corps of “foreign” bodyguards (Echevarría 2009: 47–138). This concept is an example of an incipient colonial mentalité whereby a former and now subjugated enemy is metamorphosed into an elite warrior force—in principle, not unlike the history of the French Zouaves or the modern British regiments of Welsh, Irish, and Scots Guards and other elite “foreign” units. Far south of the Castilian royal court, the jennet style of riding was quickly adopted by the Castilians who dwelt at and patrolled the amorphous southern frontier, as it lent itself to quick maneuvers and was ideal for incursions into enemy territory. The paradoxical playfulness and ruthlessness of the jennets is explicit in the fifteenth-century chronicle of the deeds of the Constable of Castile, Don Miguel Lucas de Iranzo (birth date unknown; assassinated in 1473), which juxtaposes to great effect innocuous jennet riding spectacles such as the cane games, referred to as “honest pleasures” (placeres honestos; see Hechos [1473] 1940: 36, 98, 259) and confined to pretty palace courtyards and town squares, with ruthless jennet incursions and raids into Muslim-occupied territory. In this instance, sport and sporting technique spilled over into murderous warfare. One such raid in the year 1467, involving a squadron of Iranzo’s jennets based in Jaén and captained by Knight Commander Fernando de Quesada, penetrated deep into the kingdom of Granada. Quesada was skilled at the favored sport of cane games and, like other knights who orbited around Iranzo, enjoyed dressing up as a Moor at the Constable’s palace banquets and in the games. Now he was dressed in Moorish garb not for ostentatious sporting display, but for the purpose of camouflage, to blend in and avoid detection. The 1467 raid, however, was far from an “honest pleasure,” and culminated in the ambush, pursuit, and slaughter of twelve Muslims and concluded with desecration and looting, as follows: And the aforesaid Knight Commander and the other knights who were with him took three or four heads off the Moors who died there, and five or six horses from those same Moors, and the ears of another three or four who died there, and weapons, and all the loot that the Moors left behind. —Hechos [1473] 1940: 355; see also Fallows 2010: 274 The sociopolitical purpose of sport in this case was as much utopian as it was dystopian, an extreme that other medieval sports would never hope or attempt to emulate: at one and the same time, it was a blithe assertion of equestrian skill and opulence within the palace courtyard, and a deadly assertion of dominance and subjugation without.

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TRAINING AND EXERCISE Turning now to life rather than death, a commendable purpose of sport is that it was and still is good for the health. Given the limited access to qualified physicians, and the limitations of medieval medicine, medieval men and women had every reason to stay fit and healthy. Exercise was also on occasion a training exercise for other activities. While it could be said that the mêlée tournaments strove to emulate real war and were therefore training grounds for wartime battle tactics, other sports such as the joust and tourney at best were callisthenic and promoted a sense of esprit de corps, but often the best jousters and tourneyers trained exclusively to joust and tourney, with no other intended objective beyond the lists or the enclosure. Having said that, the most accomplished jousters and tourneyers were only as good as their specialized kit, which had to be a perfect fit and required intellectual and physical stamina to master. Whatever the motivation, success at these sports required that the competitors and their horses be at the absolute pinnacle of physical fitness. Among the earliest medieval chivalric theorists, Ramon Llull urges prospective knights to pursue fit and healthy lives, lest they not be admitted to the Order of Chivalry. Although he does not say so explicitly, Llull recommends a gradual and sequential approach to exercise and training. First he recommends that aspiring knights practice their riding skills, participate in practice tournaments, or behourds (sometimes also called bohorts), and practice tilting against the quintain. Behourds were impromptu youthful games of the kind mentioned by William Fitz Stephen, where boys rode horses and tried to knock each other off with blunted wooden lances, without there being specific rules or formats to follow; and tilting at the quintain would have enabled the same young men to engage in more precise and coordinated target practice (Llull does not mention the boating version of this activity). Llull also advises participation in tournaments, which is perhaps an implicit recommendation to become a global citizen and travel to neighboring France, where tournaments were staged with much greater frequency than in Llull’s native Aragon-Catalonia. In addition to tournaments, he advocates participation in “Round Tables,” Arthurian-inspired social gatherings peppered with small-scale jousting competitions that involved more pageantry than the mêlée and were popular in Aragon-Catalonia around the time Llull was writing (see Crouch 2005: 116–21, Fallows 2020: 27–31, Fleckenstein 1985: 254–5, Nickel 1988: 231–2, and Riquer 1999). As we might expect, Llull includes fencing practice in his list of recommendations, and last but not least, hunting deer, bears, wild boar, and lions (Llull [c. 1276–8] 2013: 47). With regard to the notion of sport as promoting health, Heiner Gillmeister (1997: 1–34) has argued that tennis (jeu de paume) originated in the middle of the twelfth century as a means of healthful exercise for cloistered clerics. His argument has been challenged by Roger Morgan (1995: 1–4), whose architectural research led him to the conclusion that monastic cloisters were

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not well suited to this particular game. Morgan suggests instead that tennis evolved out of a popular medieval ball game played in the streets of Tuscan villages. As the case may be, it was and still is a sport well suited to physical exercise and a healthy workout, and at the same time requires intellectual acumen for optimal success. Tennis appealed to men and women of all social classes. Wrestling, as noted above, was perennially popular, and both King Duarte of Portugal and the fifteenth-century Ibero-Italian martial arts expert Pietro Monte recommend wrestling as exercise. Monte calls wrestling the “mistress” of all sports, by which he means it is the foundation upon which everything else is built, and adds that: “No other skill—neither throwing, nor acrobatics, nor play of arms, nor equitation—teaches us to temper and control our bodies like wrestling” (Forgeng 2018a: 99). Between the two, Monte and Duarte discuss a large number of moves (Duarte 2016: 140–4, Forgeng 2018a: 99–110). Duarte (2016: 76) also recommends six precepts for grappling on horseback. With so many precepts and techniques coming into play, Spanish martial arts expert Juan Quijada de Reayo, writing in 1548, and probably echoing a long tradition, strongly recommends that young boys be trained by one master only, “for since we have different opinions, each will explain in his own way and you could end up learning nothing from anyone” (Fallows 2010: 368). Wrestling purely for exercise and a good workout may have been the main purpose of this particular sport, and not as training for war per se, useful though some moves could be in the press of the mêlée or as a general means of selfdefense. Sydney Anglo’s (2000: 176–86) analysis of the extant medieval treatises emphasizes wrestling as a sound way for developing strength, agility, and dexterity, as well as learning the best ways to fall, if knocked down. As an aside, Pietro Monte also says that older men should preferably not wrestle and instead play ball games, to preserve health. Wrestling techniques such as the arm-twist and takedown by headlock, among others, were malleable in that they could be combined with other sports or applied to them; this was especially true of dagger-, sword-, and axeplay. Illustrations of mêlée tournaments often depict knights choking their opponents in headlocks as they prepare to bash them on the skull with their swords or clubs—wrestling was fun! (Figure 1.8) Explanatory images of wrestling moves combined with weaponry are also illustrated in medieval manuals, where particularly rich traditions flourished in Italy and German-speaking lands. Two of the great masterpieces are Il Fior di Battaglia (“The Flower of Battle”), composed in 1409 by Fiore dei Liberi da Premariacco (Mondschein 2011), and the magnificent Freydal made for the Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519) in southern Germany in 1512–15 (Leitner 1880–2; also Krause 2014). These types of richly illuminated books, while instructive from a modern perspective, were most likely originally intended as

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FIGURE 1.8: The Duke of Anhalt in a tournament. Miniature from the Codex Manesse, c. 1300. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Pal. Cod. germ 848, fol. 17 recto. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

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much as celebrations of sport (and in Maximilian’s case, of a single sports hero) as explanatory manuals, for the eyes of a very limited and select readership. As with the body, so with the mind. Ever the proto-psychologist, King Duarte of Portugal goes a step beyond Ramon Llull and recommends equestrian training from a young age as a means of overcoming fear. In Duarte’s own words ([c. 1430] 2016: 89): “Being fearless in riding gives us great cause to be confident in will and comportment, and to know how to show our confidence.” Fractious jousting stallions in particular were large and potentially intimidating animals, so one can understand the fear that a young noble would have had to overcome as one of his first lessons. Duarte was a pioneer in that he recognized that the psychology of training was equally as important as the physicality. Knights were trained to be combat athletes, and overcoming fear was essential if they were to develop confidence and control. There was a distinct purpose in educating nobles to be fit, healthy, and fearless; in sports and war, the combination of physical skill and intellectual acumen—or, recalling the exploits of the Count of Flanders described in the 1220 History of William Marshal, of “prowess” and “guile”—could mean the difference between winning and losing, between life and death.

CONCLUSION With all of the paradoxes, tensions, and contradictions encapsulated in sporting culture, it could be argued that, while much has changed since the medieval age, there are some purposes consigned to sport that have, for better or for worse, stood the test of time and will likely prevail for a long time to come.

NOTES 1. On William Marshal’s life and career, see especially Crouch 1990, Asbridge 2015, and Bryant 2016. 2. On the adarga shield, see Buttin 1960 and Nickel 2014. On the jennet riding style and relevant bibliography, see Fallows 2010: 267–304.

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CHAPTER TWO

Sporting Time and Sporting Space THOMAS C. DEVANEY

When, of a Sunday afternoon in December, the monks of Marienstatt Abbey or the clerics at Notre-Dame in Reims played at their so-called devil’s game of jeu de paume, they did so in the cloisters, those arcades and courtyards adjoining the church that were enclosed in order to separate the monks’ world from that of laypeople.1 Having (somewhat) more freedom of movement, the students and tradesmen of twelfth-century London went to the fields after lunch for their Shrove Tuesday ball games. Each school and guild had its own ball and, according to William Fitz Stephen ([c. 1170–83] 1990: 56), their strenuous contests drew quite an audience, as older, wealthier men watched the games “and after their fashion are young again with the young.” At roughly the same time, William Marshal, perhaps the nearest thing to a sports superstar that the medieval world could boast, was making his name on the tournament circuit (Figure 2.1). He had plenty of opportunities; as Marshal’s biographer exclaimed in his History of William Marshal, composed in 1220: “There was a tourney somewhere nearly every fortnight!” Upon hearing word of an upcoming event, Marshal, like many other knights, both noble and not, would travel to a place that often was not much of a place at all. And when they arrived at the chosen site, somewhere between Saint-Brice and Bouère or between Gournay and Ressons, they found everything needed for the serious business of pretend war: pavilions, fenced-in safe zones, and plenty of room to fight (Bryant [1220] 2016: 42, 53, 79).

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FIGURE 2.1: William Marshal unhorses Baldwin de Guisnes at a tournament. From Matthew Paris’ Chronica Majora, thirteenth century. Art Collection 2/Alamy Stock Photo. Image ID: HN28HF.

In the Middle Ages, as today, people fit sports into the patterns of their lives. It has long been a cliché to describe the medieval world as one of farms and churches that moved to the rhythms of sacred and natural time. This is an exaggeration; there were always cities and towns, even in the so-called “Dark Ages,” and, though the annual cycle of seasons and holy days did structure life in significant ways, conceptions of time were always more sophisticated than that.2 Even so, medieval senses of, and practices related to, time and space were profoundly influenced both by Christianity and by the realities of an economy heavily reliant on agriculture. Sports could reinforce these understandings; annual events such as the Shrovetide ball games helped to give meaning to the very events they commemorated, and Sunday afternoons were for play just as much as Sunday mornings were for worship. Even Easter was, at Auxerre, Vienne, Poitiers, Reims, and elsewhere, an occasion for ball games. And what was the churchyard, the cloisters, or the common field if not also the site for weekly or holiday sports? Today we tend to think of sports as existing largely outside of normal space and time. We have dedicated spaces for competitions and practices, spaces that are often useless for any other purpose. Events are either governed by clocks with a precision unthinkable in our daily lives or have no time at all. But there were few places explicitly dedicated to sport in the medieval age; they played, as we have just seen, in everyday spaces. Medieval people, moreover, preferred to order their world in relation to personal experience, rather than in abstract terms. Measures akin to miles and feet and inches certainly existed, as did the division of time into days, months, and hours, but people mostly used more

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concrete forms. They described dates in terms of the seasons or the great festivals of the year—the Monday after Martinmas next, for instance—and times of day by church bells, canonical hours, and the sun; they referred to distances in similarly practical terms, as a crossbow-shot or a number of paces. Linguistically, time and space intruded upon one another. Time could be measured by space, and so one might describe a period of time by describing how far one might move in that time, “for such space of time that he could run a mile.” Space could be measured by time; one town might be “three days’ journey” from another. Indeed the Latin term spatium, which originally referred to a racetrack, came eventually to mean “a distance” and then “a space of time” (Bartlett 2004: 63–7). Modern languages in fact retain this relationship between space and time. In addition to the English “length (or span) of time,” there is the Spanish espacio de tiempo, the German Zeitspanne, and so on. All of which is to say that medieval people tended to think of space and time in experiential terms. In their sports, they competed against each other, not against the clock or the measuring stick. Of course, to speak of the medieval age as if it were a unified period of time is not only misleading, but wrong. The centuries between 600 and 1450 were ones of constant, often dramatic, change. Even if we limit the discussion to Europe (or, as people from the later part of this period might have called it, “Christendom”) we must still engage an immense range of local and regional practices, beliefs, natural and built environments, and sporting traditions. This diversity encompassed nearly all aspects of life: even the length of an hour depended on where one lived. This is not to say that there were no broad commonalities. There were many, in fact, and processes of integration throughout the period fostered the development, at least in western and central Europe, of a widely shared set of material, social, and cultural norms (Bartlett 1994), though exceptions abounded and there were many distinct sporting cultures. The dissolution of the Western Roman Empire led—although its extent is hotly debated—to de-urbanization and an end to the athletic spectacles that had played a key role in Roman urban life throughout much of what we now think of as western Europe (Ward-Perkins 2005). Although this was an extended process, the amphitheaters and circuses had fallen into disuse by 600 or so. But such was not the case in the Eastern Empire. While Christian objections put an end to gladiatorial combats, equestrian events remained popular. Successive Byzantine emperors built on the Roman tradition of “bread and circus” to link themselves closely to the chariot races held in the Hippodrome of Constantinople.3 This massive edifice was arranged in concentric ovals; the track surrounded a central island, or spina, with the tiers of seats (able to accommodate perhaps 60,000 spectators) encompassing all. Impressive as it was, the Hippodrome did not stand alone, as might a modern stadium with its seemingly endless expanse of parking lots. The Hippodrome’s imperial box, or kathisma, connected directly to the adjacent palace; the

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cathedral of Hagia Sophia was close by. The spatial associations between these supreme Byzantine monuments to sport, state, and God reflected the political and religious functions of the races and the Hippodrome itself. For these were occasions not only for competition, but also for elaborate ceremonials that portrayed the emperor as God’s representative on earth. The coronations, triumphs, ritualized distributions of food, and executions that also took place in the Hippodrome made clear that chariot races were part of an ongoing liturgy of imperial power. The spectators were central to all this. The circus factions—the Blues and the Greens, the Reds and the Whites—each had their designated seating areas facing the emperor’s box. From there, they could perform the prescribed chants, acclamations, and hymns that were their part in the race-day ceremonies (Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus [c. 956] 2012: 1:341). In times of trouble, the Hippodrome, the gathering place of Constantinople, might also be the site of riots, a reminder that riots at sporting venues are not always or only about sports. It was not without good reason that the nineteenth-century historian Alfred Rambaud (1870: 19) described the spina as “the axis of the Byzantine world.” Though they had no such magnificent venues, rulers in northern and western Europe shared a similar appreciation for the ways in which they might time or site sporting events in order to reap political advantage. The Frankish ruler Chilperic I was, as late as 577, building sporting venues in Soissons and Paris “for he was keen to offer spectacles to the citizens” (Gregory of Tours [c. 594] 1974: 275). Although the connections between particular sporting venues and political power are less apparent in later generations, Chilperic’s successors were not blind to the political potential of sport. Charlemagne, according to his biographer Einhard ([c. 828] 1960: 51), was an accomplished swimmer—“no one could beat him at it”—and made a point of inviting as many people as possible to witness his prowess, “not only his sons but also his nobles and friends, and at times even a great number of his followers and bodyguards.” Charlemagne’s grandsons took the notion of playing before a crowd further still. While Charles the Bald and Louis the German negotiated the alliance later known as the Oaths of Strasbourg, their armies kept themselves amused and in fighting trim by pretending to meet in battle. First one side charged on foot while their opponents turned to run under the cover of their shields. They then switched roles, and so it went until the kingly brothers rode through and imposed a mock peace on the mock battle. This earliest of tournaments was as much political theater as sport, and its timing, on the occasion of an alliance between former rivals, was no accident. The game simulated an eleventh-hour turn away from violence and confirmed the authority of the rulers. The chronicler Nithard ([842–3] 1926: 110–13) repeatedly describes it as a “spectacle” while emphasizing how many people came to watch it.

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Charles and Louis were hardly alone in staging sporting events to mark political milestones. Further to the north, Norse leaders organized large-scale ball games or wrestling matches during assemblies, or þing, moments when people from different locations came together. The fictional Jarl Þorgnýr would, when the weather was fine (so perhaps not so often in Jutland!), gather his people near his wife’s grave mound which stood just outside his town. There, they would hold conferences or he would sit and watch them play games (Göngu-Hrolfs Saga [fourteenth century] 1980: 38–9, 50). As these examples show, their political utility meant that sporting events took place when and where people were gathered; they were communal events. Crowds had to see a victorious charioteer salute the emperor, see Charlemagne swim, see his sons quell their restive troops, or see Jarl Þorgnýr relax as younger men proved their mettle. Of course, success at sports mattered as well. One hardly gained any political advantage from losing. That, perhaps, is why Beowulf was so stung when Unferth challenged his prowess by pointing out that the great hero had lost a youthful swimming contest with Breca. Beowulf countered sharply that he had battled a host of sea monsters while Breca swam on, a deed greater than anything Breca, or Unferth himself, had ever done. This swimming contest, a lonely test of stamina in the open ocean, is rather unlike the spectacles described above. It also reveals a different kind of connection between space and sport, one highlighted elsewhere in Beowulf. Beowulf and Breca deliberately ventured into uncivilized, non-human space, the cold and windy ocean, far from the comforts of land. When Breca reached the beach, he “sought his own sweet land, / beloved by his people, the land of the Brondings, / the fair fortress, where he had his folk, / his castle and treasure” (Beowulf [c. 975–1010] 2000: ll. 520–3). Beowulf ’s struggles with the sea creatures, on the other hand, served to demonstrate his ability to overcome the forces of nature in a way that mere victory in the race never could have. The theme reappears throughout the poem. After Beowulf ’s initial victory over Grendel, for instance, his retainers followed the monster’s trail to his underwater lair. On their way back to Heorot, “the proud warriors let their horses prance, / their fallow mares fare in a contest, / wherever the footpaths seemed fair to them,” while a storyteller recounted Beowulf ’s deeds (ll. 864–6). Shortly thereafter, the author returned to these games, noting that, “sometimes, competing, the fallow paths / they measured on horseback” (ll. 916–17). We could view these impromptu races as simply a spontaneous expression of joy by people who were proud of their skills and from whom a great weight of anxiety had just been lifted, but, as the author’s repetition of “fallow” (fealwe) suggests, there was more to it than that. By merrily racing along paths that they had feared to traverse only the day before, the warriors were reclaiming the land. They erased, with hoofprints and shouts, the evil that had encroached upon

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their territory and, in doing so, made it fertile and civilized again (Edward 1959; Staver 2005: 56–7). However, the author used another sporting metaphor, this time of hunting, to emphasize that there were limits to this repossession. After Grendel’s mother took her revenge, Hrothgar addressed his followers. In describing the horrors of her watery lair, he noted that a deer pursued by hounds “will sooner lose / his life on the shore than save his head / and go in the lake—it is no good place!” (ll. 1368–72; see also Higley 1986). In those untamed wilds, the “joyless wood,” there were no races, no hunts. There was a land of sport, and there was a land of death. I have lingered so long on Beowulf because, given the scant documentation of the early medieval period, literature can often offer insights into the meanings of sporting events unavailable elsewhere. The literature of later centuries is useful also. As John McClelland (2007: 20) has noted, romances and epics were “a mirror of life around them,” reflecting the ways in which things were actually done. With this in mind, we might profitably tarry a bit longer in the world of fiction to consider three twelfth-century works, each of which show the meanings of where and when people engaged in sport. So, for instance, the Song of the Cid ([c. 1207] 2009: 113) relates not only that Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid, raced his horse before the gates of Valencia, but also that he chose that location because “he knew it was safe” and so that his family and the people of the city could watch. Geoffrey of Monmouth ([c. 1136] 1984: 206), in his fanciful history of Britain, described the intermingling of sport, politics, romance, and religion that marked Arthur’s Pentecost coronation at Caerleon. After a solemn church service and a lavish banquet, everyone went to the fields outside the city “and split up into groups to play various games.” There, some men conducted a mock battle on horseback while the ladies “watched from the top of the city walls and aroused them to passionate excitement by their flirtatious behavior.” Geoffrey catalogued the many other games Arthur’s guests played during that and the next two days, which ranged from archery to throwing heavy stones, commenting that everyone competed without quarreling (which begs the question: was that so unusual?) and that the king richly rewarded the winners. Similarly, Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec and Enide (Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1160–70] 2004: ll. 796–985 in the original old French) paints a vivid picture of a local tournament, with a sparrow hawk as prize. After the crowd had been pushed back by a count wielding a switch, Erec and his rival Ydier met on a “clear and open” field with “people on all sides” in a contest that lasted well into the evening. In all these instances, sports commemorated other events, from El Cid’s triumphant entry to Arthur’s Pentecost coronation to Chrétien’s imagined annual fête in Lalut. As such, all were celebrations of life, love, and victory. They all also involved violence; sports may have been a reprieve, an escape,

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from the world, but they did not stand completely apart from real life. This is most apparent in Erec and Enide. Seeking revenge for a prior insult, Erec saw the contest with Ydier as far more than a friendly bout and so the play battle quickly turned serious, with real injuries and real blood, and the equally real possibility of death. Here, too, art imitated life, for the knights who participated in the mêlée tournaments of the Middle Ages, men like William Marshal, also risked life and limb, and they too had serious purpose, such as honor, wealth, or advancement. It is perhaps surprising, then, that these high-stakes competitions took place in what, to modern eyes at least, seem to be rather informal settings. The tournaments of Chrétien’s and Marshal’s time were mêlées fought by scores or even hundreds of knights on horse and on foot over wide expanses of open country between two towns. Loosely defined and without clear boundaries, these playing fields included a variety of terrains—forests, rivers, farmland, and vineyards—with myriad possibilities for ambush and maneuver. The rules were straightforward: one had to capture opponents. But with no way to supervise such a space effectively, there was often little difference between these games and actual battles. Yet, by the late twelfth century, tournaments were in fact organized. Boundaries were defined, however loosely, safe zones demarcated, invitations sent, provisions made for food and lodgings. A century earlier, by contrast, Anna Comnena, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I, had recounted the story of an unnamed French knight of the First Crusade who presumed to sit on Alexius’s throne. When admonished, the knight haughtily responded that, “I am a pure Frank and of noble birth. One thing I know: at a crossroads in the country where I was born is an ancient shrine; to this anyone who wishes to engage in single combat goes, prepared to fight; there he prays to God for help and there he stays awaiting the man who will dare to answer his challenge” (Comnena [c. 1148] 2009: 291). As a tournament craze swept Europe in the ensuing decades, that aspiring paladin standing lonely guard by his crossroads was replaced by companies of young knights eager for fame and wealth. They flocked to northern France and the Low Countries, where tournaments flourished under the patronage of the Counts of Champagne and Flanders. These events could be orderly. The History of William Marshal’s career makes clear that the victors were typically those who were the most disciplined, maintained formation, and advanced in serried ranks—just as in actual battle. But there are just as many accounts of ad hoc tournaments which devolved into chaos—or actual battle (Barber and Barker 1989: 18–21; Duby 1964), and even the most genteel of tournaments was disorderly and destructive. Participants trampled fields and vineyards, did battle in village streets, dismantled buildings to create barricades. Yet repeated Church and secular attempts to ban or control the sport failed, as tourneyers flouted prohibitions

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by competing in borderlands where royal authority could not reach. In response, Richard I of England created a licensing system that legitimized tournaments while controlling where they might be held. Any English knight or noble wishing to compete had to pay a royal fee and then travel to one of the five areas deemed suitable for tournaments: between Salisbury and Wilton, between Warwick and Kenilworth, between Stamford and Warinford, between Brackley and Mixbury, and between Blyth and Tickhill (Foedera 1816: 1:65). These official tournament sites were conveniently apart from settled or cultivated lands and well-spaced throughout much of the country, except in the north and the west, the regions in which royal power was weakest. Richard thus made sure that tournaments imposed on neither his power nor his convenience. The preamble of his decree made clear that the restrictions on tournaments were “so that the peace of our land not be broken, the power of the justiciar not be diminished, and our forests not be damaged” (Foedera 1816: 1:65). But why the emphasis on forests? Though often imagined as vast tracts of unspoiled wilderness, medieval forests were actively, often intensively, managed for human purposes, the most exalted of which was hunting. While the ostensible purpose was food, people hunted wild game for sport, for military training, and for social interaction. Control of hunting grounds thus soon became a key marker of social status. In England, royal rights of vert and venison centered on William the Conqueror’s eleventh-century creation of seventy or so hunting preserves, the most famous of which was the New Forest in Hampshire.4 These forests, together with an array of chases, parks, and warrens for the use of nobles and landowners, imposed a veritable geography of hunting on the landscape. Staffed by an array of wardens, foresters, rangers, and keepers, and harshly defended by a system of forest courts, their preservation also required a degree of administration that cannot be explained by economics alone and has some parallels to modern conservationism (Savage 1933). Rather, it was a passion for hunting, a passion chronicled by historians, celebrated by poets, but also often condemned as well, that led English kings to partition the land, mutilate poachers, and devote so much of their lives to hunting, thinking about hunting, or preparing to go hunting. John of Salisbury ([1159] 1993: 29–42) noted, unsympathetically, that nobles spent more time on hunting than on war. This is perhaps not such a terrible thing; it is also not surprising. Hunting, done properly (at least as most nobles would have thought proper) took an immense amount of time: to train dogs and hawks, to organize a hunting party, and to conduct the hunt itself. Such time was available only to nobles or to their retainers. It was not just the English who hunted; aristocrats across Europe hunted for sport. The Piast rulers of Poland, to give one further example, maintained restricted hunting areas carefully managed by dedicated servants. These included gaje (groves), knieje (forests), and łowiska (hunting grounds). As in England,

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rulers responded to local resistance to such restrictions with ever more elaborate laws and harsh punishments (Samsonowicz 2009: 65–9; Berend et al. 2013: 284–5). Such apportioning of land had ancient roots; Roman emperors had claimed hunting rights on public land, and their Germanic successors continued the practice. Merovingian and later Carolingian land grants mention the ius forestis (“right of the chase”) or note that lands were bestowed cum venatione (“with hunting privileges”). Indeed, the very word “forest” derives from these early charters, as forests were foris or “outside;” that is, lands not privately owned (Saunders 1993: 5–6; Rollason 2016: 148–9). In these forests, nobles practiced venery, or hunting with hounds, in which they pursued prestigious game including stag and boar according to a precise, even ritualized, set of rules.5 Particularly large and elaborate hunts would commemorate significant events, such as weddings or the arrival of prominent visitors, or mark the major annual festivals. When Princess Urraca of Castile married García Ramírez of Navarre in June 1144, the gathered guests engaged in a variety of hunting activities, concluding with a contrived chase of a pig let loose in the middle of a field (Chronica Adelfonsi [c. 1157] 1990: 191–4). A typical hunt, however, followed a predictable rhythm that took participants deep into the forest. Prior to the event itself, a huntsman would track the quarry, a stag for instance, and pass his information at dawn to the gathered hunting party. After an often extensive process of tracking and chasing, a hunt reached its culmination when the stag was brought to bay. At this point the master of the party (or his most prominent guest) would kill the quarry.6 Not all hunts were so scripted. When, for instance, King Fulk of Jerusalem accompanied his wife Melisende on a day trip late in 1143, one of the servants riding ahead accidently roused a hare. All gave chase, including the king, who was thrown from his horse and suffered a fatal injury; the hare, presumably, escaped in the ensuing chaos (William of Tyre [c. 1184] 1943: 134–5). Though the results in this instance were tragic, the circumstances of Fulk’s fall were not unusual. Medieval nobles and royals were often on the move, and these journeys, which might last days or even weeks, could be boring indeed (think of how travelers told each other stories in the Decameron or the Canterbury Tales in order to entertain themselves). So, welcoming some sport to relieve the drudgery, travelers like Fulk would eagerly seize the chance for an impromptu chase. The rituals of hunting with birds could be as elaborate as a boar hunt. But since falconry and hawking were pursuits best conducted in open spaces, on plains or especially near watercourses, many a lord and lady traveled with a raptor close to hand. Spring was the ideal season both for travel and for hunting with birds; indeed, medieval calendars often illustrated the month of May with images of young men riding out with a falcon. People not only took their birds when out riding; they took them everywhere. The Good Wife’s Guide ([late

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FIGURE 2.2: Detail from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries showing hawking. Made in Tournai, fifteenth century. Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images.

fourteenth century] 2009: 240), an anonymous fourteenth-century book of advice addressed to a young bride, advised her to carry her hawk even “at church or in other assemblies” (Figure 2.2). As this might suggest, medieval people took their falconry seriously, and perhaps none did so more than Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, whose comprehensive and scientifically-minded Art of Hunting with Birds shows the degree to which ambitious hunters had to adapt themselves to the habits of birds. To hunt the crane, that most prestigious of prey, for example, one needed to know their daily habits, their feeding grounds, their responses to danger, their migratory patterns. The list goes on and on, and Frederick provided detailed advice regarding every eventuality. Cranes, moreover, required the use of gyrfalcons or another large, powerful raptor (Frederick II [early thirteenth

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century] 1943: 273ff.). The rarity and expense of such birds led rulers like Frederick or Henry II of England to seek them from far and wide; the resulting networks of bird exchange and gifting provided crucial diplomatic, intellectual, and economic links across Europe and into Asia and North Africa. Though most lacked the noble gyrfalcon or the purebred hounds, the lymers and alaunts, of the aristocracy, people of all social strata hunted. While simple economics loomed large for most hunters—fresh game was tempting and often necessary in a time when meat was a rare delicacy—sporting motives played a role as well. Poaching was a sport in itself, in which one had to track and kill the quarry while at the same time avoiding the king’s foresters. In the Middle English Parlement of the Thre Ages, a poacher revels in the joy of a spring dawn: “In the month of May when joys are many / And in the season of summer when the breezes are mild / I went to the woods to try my luck / Into the thickets a shot me to get.” After he later brings down a great stag, the poem’s detailed account of the ritualized dressing and butchering of the deer is reminiscent of similar scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other tales of noble hunts (Ginsberg 1992: 43).7 Even urban dwellers might hunt. William Fitz Stephen ([c. 1170–83] 1990: 59) noted that many Londoners “delight in taking their sport with birds of the air, merlins and falcons and the like, and with dogs that wage warfare in the woods.” And, for residents of that city at least, royal and noble hunting prerogatives were not overly restrictive, “for they have the special privilege of hunting in Middlesex, Hertfordshire and all Chiltern, and in Kent as far as the river Cray.” As these examples suggest, nobles were not the only ones who found the leisure to engage in sport. Fitz Stephen’s account of pastimes in twelfth-century London—with a level of detail found in almost no other sources from the time—presents a virtual calendar of sports, one that shows how Londoners took advantage of the seasons and any available spaces in their play. Every Sunday in Lent, for example, young men, both noble and not, went out to the fields to “make war’s semblance” so that each could prove his mettle. But not all London sports were so serious. At Easter, these same young men jousted in the water. Having mounted a shield on a pole in the Thames, they rode a boat with lance at the ready, hoping to strike the shield without falling as the force of the current and the oarsmen carried them headlong toward it. Spectators lined the bridges and wharves, laughing at those who failed. Summer, Fitz Stephen continued, was the time for all manner of sports: running, jumping, archery, wrestling, shot put, and so on. In winter, when the fens froze, they played on the ice; in addition to the ubiquitous jousting (now on skates), youths raced about on icy sleds (Fitz Stephen [c. 1170–83] 1990: 57–9). So the commoners of London, at least, engaged in many of the same activities—tournaments and hunting—beloved by the nobility. We should not imagine, however, that medieval people were so obsessed with war that they

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played only martial sports. Serious military or economic purposes underlay the jousts, the mêlées, and the stag hunts, but sometimes play was just that, play. In the twelfth century, for instance, the Byzantine chronicler John Kinnamos described a game that sounds much like polo. Players, including Emperor Manuel Comnenus, would find “some level space which seems right to them when they measure it out.” Subsequently, with a small leather ball and sticks with netted ends, they vied to score goals by getting the ball to the end of the pitch (Kinnamos [c. 1206] 1976: 198). For the most part, though, ball sports were the province of non-nobles, both commoners and clergy, and the spaces in which each competed reflected their respective vocation. Ball games had a long history; Greek and Roman authors, for instance, had lauded such sports as valuable exercise for cultivated practitioners (McClelland 2007: 30–2). In one of the earliest medieval mentions of ball, Nennius’s ninthcentury Historia Brittonum, the messengers searching for a boy, a member of the consular class foretold to threaten King Vortigern’s rule, found him playing ball with other children (Nennius [c. 796–830] 1985: 92–5). It is not known what game he played, but the most common sorts involved opposed teams who vied to carry, kick, throw, or hit a ball to a designated goal. The specific rules of early forms of such games—which would eventually come to be known in the post-medieval period as football in England, la soule in parts of France, calcio in Italy, a rather generic juego de pelota in Castile, and so on—varied, as did the character of the playing fields. Londoners played at Smithfields, just outside the city, and it seems that, as with tournaments, most ball games had a rural setting. Any open space might do: a pasture or fallow field, the village common, or the churchyard, though the Synod of Exeter did ban “unseemly” sports from churchyards in 1287 (Quivil [1287] 1731: 1037). At Derby, football games took place across three miles of countryside between the parishes of St. Peter’s and All Saints, and the players had to negotiate the River Derwent, which crossed the field of play. Urbanites played ball as well. In March of 1303, Adam of Salisbury was killed after playing ball in the High Street of Oxford. Similarly, the Castilian Cantigas de Santa María (“Songs of Holy Mary”) tell of a young man worried that the ring his lover had given would be damaged while playing ball, “the favorite game of all young men”; their game took place on a grassy area in the town square (Alfonso X [thirteenth century] 2000: 55–6). People did not, of course, only play ball games. In Italian cities, mock battles known variously as gioco della ponte, mazzascudo, or gioco della pugna pitted residents of different neighborhoods against each other in mass contests of stone-throwing, wrestling, or simple brawling. Archery butts were a common feature on the outskirts of English towns and villages; whether they were actually popular, though, is arguable, given that successive monarchs had to decree their regular use. Nonetheless, shooting contests of various kinds occurred throughout

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Europe and the widespread practice of “roving,” or wandering in a group through the countryside and challenging others to shoot at random targets, likely proved far more enjoyable than enforced practice. Contests of individual strength, speed, or agility were popular everywhere. Wrestlers wrestled near Clerkenwell in London or, when the Londoners challenged residents of outlying towns, at St. Giles-in-the-Fields. The prize for wrestling, as Chaucer ([c. 1400] 1982: 34) noted in his description of the Miller, was often a ram. And no market day or fair would be complete without running, leaping, or shot-putting competitions, all of which required open spaces. Though the sources are not often clear about participants, it is likely that many such contests were open to both men and women. In 1263, to give one example, King Stephen V of Hungary awarded Jolanta, a falconer’s daughter, three bolts of velvet and one of linen after she defeated Princess Mary in jumping and running. In Verona, the corsa del drappo verde, or foot races for the green cloth, included, at least from 1393, separate events for men and women. Like most other sporting events, though, this one was held not inside the city, but nearby. Dante, in his Inferno ([c. 1300] 1996–2005: 1:145), described Brunetto Latini as “like one of those / who run Verona’s race across its fields / to win the green cloth prize.” When did the people play at sports? The Verona corsa took place on the first Sunday of Lent each year and thus, like nearly all other major sporting events, reinforced an annual cycle of seasons, holidays, and festivals. In Derby and elsewhere, the biggest matches were held on Shrove Tuesday, as part of the general exuberance which preceded Lent. Other holidays—Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter especially, but also May Day and various saints’ days—were times for games throughout Europe. Of course, one might also engage in sports whenever the opportunity, or even the necessity, arose. During the winter of 1423, when the Seine froze over, Parisians “left aside their labors to play soule, croquet, handball, and other games, in order to stay warm” (Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris [1449] 1929: 182). It may seem odd to us, with our spacious, well-heated homes and our enclosed stadiums, that people would play outdoors sports in winter, but we should remember that the typical medieval residence was small and poorly ventilated and that wood for heating was expensive. There were good reasons to get outside and, as a bonus and unlike in summer, spaces were available for all kinds of games, for fields were not under cultivation during the cold months. It made sense, then, to play outside in winter. Even so, holidays were the most popular time for games. The wrestling matches in London typically commemorated St. Bartholomew’s Day, but could occur on other feast days. In 1222 the Londoners defeated their opponents from nearby towns on St. James’s Day. In a pique, the seneschal of Westminster Abbey sponsored another contest, this one to be held on St. Peter’s day (Hendricks 1991: 32), but it had to be on a saint’s day. Feast days were often

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fair days, when organizers could count on a crowd, and moments when the usual social restraints were relaxed, but they were also times of respite from work, when laborers had the leisure to play or watch others play. For that same reason, people often played ball games on Sundays, (perhaps) after attending church services. They played also at weddings. If lords would stage a tournament to celebrate their vows, peasants or townsfolk would have a rousing game of ball or contests of strength. Over the course of a week, a year, or a lifetime, then, sports were part of a rhythmic cycle that gave order and meaning to people’s lives. The concordance of leisure, sport, and religious obligation led, perhaps inevitably, to tensions. Sundays and saints’ days, at least according to the clergy, were for rest and the celebration of mass. Sports diverted attention from such holy contemplation. Many sporting events were raucous, even violent. Much of what we know of popular sports comes from legal records, for there were numerous instances of injury or death during games. On at least two occasions, for instance, English men died while playing ball after impaling themselves on the sheathed knife of a competitor (Carter 1988b). Beyond fatal accidents, ball games, wrestling matches, and other such contests could be violent and dangerous, which led authorities to attempt prohibitions. Ironically, the first mention of the word “football” in English comes from a 1314 decree banning the game in London, as “there is a great uproar in the City through certain tumults arising from the striking of great foot-balls in the fields of the public” (Magoun 1929: 36). In 1365, Edward III was less concerned with public safety or morality, and ordered that: “Every able bodied man of the said city on feast days when he has leisure, shall in his sport use bows and arrows or pellets or bolts, and shall learn and practice the art of shooting, forbidding them under pain of imprisonment to meddle in the hurling of stones, loggats and quoits, handball, football, club ball, canbue, cock fighting or other vain games of no value” (Calendar of the Close Rolls [1364–8] 1910: 181–2, emphasis added). In this decree, we have both the acknowledgment that feast days were the time for sport, and the admonition that such sports should have (for Edward) a valid purpose. If the English would not keep the Sabbath day holy, then at least they might practice for war. Were the clergy so much better, though? Keeping monks and priests away from frivolous sports seems to have been a constant problem. As early as the seventh century, Bede could recount the story of Heribald who, as a young priest and “not having yet altogether withdrawn my heart from youthful pleasures,” found himself traveling with St. John of Beverly and a mixed company of clergy and laypeople. On coming to a “level open road,” the laymen began to race their horses back and forth. Though John forbade him, Herebald could not restrain himself and joined the races. Of course, his horse almost immediately threw him and he cracked his head on a stone. Though allegedly healed by John’s prayers, what happened to Herebald became a

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cautionary tale (Bede [c. 731] 1968: 276–9). Yet, though monks and priests were banned, from at least the twelfth century, from engaging in popular ball sports like football or soule, they still had to move, to get exercise (Mehl 1986: 61–7). Some resorted to jogging to keep fit, but far more played ball. In the relatively confined spaces of the monastery, this called for imagination. And so jeu de paume was born from necessity. Though the forerunner of modern tennis, jeu de paume looked little like its successor. Monks played in the inner courtyards of the monastery, the cloisters, which were typically bordered by an arcaded walkway covered by a slanted roof. These cloisters provided space, light, and privacy while still secluding residents from the outside world. In the cloisters, where no outsider could see those devoted to God laughing and racing about, monks would first serve the ball underhanded off the slanted roof and then volley until one team or the other had scored by hitting the ball past the defenders and through the arches on the far side of the cloisters. Complicating matters was the grille, the barred window through which monks might sometimes speak to those outside. Jeu de paume transformed this aperture into a favored target that garnered extra points (Gillmeister 1997: 8–9, 12–16, 32). Monasteries were not, of course, completely isolated from the world and jeu de paume soon escaped their confines. Lay students who came to be educated also learned the monks’ game and, when they later returned home, built their own courts. Jeu de paume thus moved from the monastery to noble manors and royal palaces. Townsfolk took to jeu de paume as well and, as they could not build their own courts so easily, they sometimes made use of the cloisters. This could lead to tensions, as happened in Exeter in the 1440s when the mayor sued the dean and chapter of the cathedral. At the time, a public right-of-way crossed the cloisters, giving the public access to the cathedral, but the chapter had locked the doors to the cloisters, citing the damage done to the walls and windows by those playing “unlawful games” such as “tenys.” At the collegiate church of Ottery St. Mary, also in Exeter, another scandal arose when Bishop Edmund Lacy condemned unnamed persons “both clergy and lay,” who had played tennis in the churchyard “on feast days as well as other days.” They had, he continued, profaned the holy spaces with their raucous behavior, distracting the pious from their prayers and dismantling a ridge turret on the cathedral’s roof that had obstructed their play.8 Elsewhere, however, townspeople did build their own tennis courts. In 1427, a Parisian diarist noted that a female tennis player, Margot, had burst onto the scene with an impressive forehand and backhand game, beating all but the most talented men. He concluded his discussion of tennis by expressing his opinion that the best court in Paris was that at the Rue Saint-Grenier-Lazare, known as the “Little Temple,” implying that there were so many that one needed such guidance (Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris [1449] 1929: 101). This was not a

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new development; urban courts were in place in Valencia by 1285 and Paris by 1308. In Paris, most of those of which we know were located in clay or plaster pits, likely because these offered open spaces near the crowded city center. The construction of courts expressly dedicated to tennis marks a departure from the general practice we have seen thus far of people making use of whatever spaces were available for their games. The sloping roof typical of the cloister was the key issue; one could not play jeu de paume or tennis properly without such a surface (Morgan 1995: 28; McClelland 2007: 123–4; Gillmeister 1997: 72), so people either went to the dedicated courts or improvised their own. Adélaïde of Savoy’s Book of Hours, from the mid fifteenth century, offers a rare glimpse of what such informal urban courts may have looked like (Figure 2.3). Here we

FIGURE 2.3: An informal urban tennis court. From the Book of Hours of Adélaïde of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy (miniature). Chantilly, Musée Condé. Photo by Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images.

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can see a sloped roof attached to a fine house adjacent to the open space of a small square. The game is underway and residents watch from their windows or from seats under the roof. This image decorated the page of Adélaïde’s book detailing the month of June, suggesting that tennis, unlike some other ball games, was primarily a warm-weather sport. The spatial organization of jeu de paume and other medieval ball sports may suggest that they, like tournaments or hunts, had military implications. Let us return to the unnamed boaster of the First Crusade who caught Anna Comnena’s attention. His solitary challenge to the world had all the elements of what would later be called the passage of arms, a style of tournament in which a knight or group of knights pledged to defend a particular location against all comers.9 The passage of arms was, at its core, a symbolic representation of the defense of, or attack on, a castle gate. Heiner Gillmeister has noted that many ball games of European origin involve a similar attack on, and defense of, a set location. In jeu de paume, these were the arches at the end of the cloisters (and later dedans), in soule or the Byzantines’ game of polo or early forms of football, they were the pre-arranged goals. The fields of play, moreover, are arranged so that the goals (or, as Gillmeister would have it, the castle gates) lie beyond an open space, representing the cleared “killing grounds” that abutted a castle. If ball games really were the tournaments of peasants and monks, then we may, as Gillmeister (1997: 10–12, 89–95) suggests, imagine the peaceable monk preparing to serve his ball while all the time fancying himself as a heroic warrior, a Roland or Fernando III or Richard Lionheart holding the gate and defending Christendom from the infidels. William Henderson ([1947] 2001) has suggested a different interpretation of medieval ball games. Noting the coincidence of sports and wedding celebrations, he argues that they originated in ancient Egyptian fertility rites and, as they subsequently evolved in various cultural contexts, gradually lost their ritual meanings. If combined with Gillmeister’s spatial and military interpretation, this reading could suggest that sports at weddings represented a different kind of penetration, that of a wife instead of a castle. However, Henderson’s arguments are speculative at best and a more convincing explanation for the ubiquity of sports and games at weddings (and a host of other events, including funerals, royal entries, treaty signings, and so on) is that—in addition to being fun—they indelibly imprinted the occasion in the memories of attendees. Especially before the advent and widespread adoption of written records, these memories ensured the preservation of the details of marriage contracts or other agreements over time. Miguel Lucas de Iranzo’s attempt to settle a territorial dispute between the towns of Jaén and Andújar illustrates the persistence of such meanings. On May 7, 1470, he gathered all the interested parties to walk the newly-agreed-upon boundaries, also inviting a large band of children “so that they might see it [the

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boundary line] and retain the memory for all time.” Along the route, they built cairns and engaged in various activities, including javelin-throwing, a water fight, a game of “mares in the field,” and, at the conclusion, a bullfight (Hechos [1473] 1940: 424–31). Iranzo’s version of “beating the bounds” linked space, time, and memory with sports and games. So, too, had Dante done nearly two centuries earlier. In the Paradiso, Dante encountered his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida. When the poet, curious about his own origins, pressed him for details, Cacciaguida responded that: “My ancestors and I were born just where / the runner in your yearly games first comes / upon the boundary of the final ward” (Dante [c. 1300] 1996–2005: 3:155). This passing reference to Florence’s annual horse race, which commemorated the Feast of John the Baptist (June 24th), assumes additional weight when we consider the central role Cacciaguida plays in the Paradiso as both a metaphorical father figure and the one who tells Dante that he will never return to Florence. In a significant way, then, Dante defined himself and his beloved Florence through sport. Sports marked key events, such as weddings, within one’s life; they also defined the stages of life in other ways. Then, as now, sports were for the young. William Fitz Stephen emphasized that it was “the young men” who played various games. Sports were central to the education of young Byzantine princes, who played polo, hunted, practiced archery, discus, and more (Kinnamos [c. 1206] 1976: 192; Angelov 2009: 108–11). In the northern and western kingdoms, the training of nobles revolved around military pursuits, partly in the form of tournaments and hunts, but those boys also played tennis as part of their education. Giles of Rome, tutor to Philip the Fair, cited Aristotle in his claim that ball games “are a proper pastime of children.” Philippe de Mézières, who educated Charles VI, concurred, but limited the dauphin’s play to short games to avoid exhaustion. Christine de Pizan, in a guidebook for Louis de Guienne, agreed on the importance of both ball sports and moderation (Gillmeister 1997: 21). It was not all work, though. In John Lydgate’s loose fifteenth-century translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (“The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man”), Youth describes herself as a merry gamester, listing no less than eighteen pastimes and sports, including hunting, fishing, bowling, camp-ball (similar to football), a form of field hockey, and others. The point, she concluded, was “to spendë my yonge age / In merthe only, & in solace” (Lydgate [1426] 1899–1904: 2:306, ll. 1181–205). It was Charles d’Orleans, however, who offered the most extended reflection on age and sport. After his capture at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, Charles spent the next twenty-four years living in exile in England and, shortly before he was finally released in 1440, celebrated his forty-fifth birthday. Forty-five loomed large in medieval thought as the boundary between youth and old age, and Charles, since he often played jeu de paume with his jailers, thought of this milestone in terms of the game. Forty-five was also a key number in jeu de

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paume, for scores were calculated in multiples of fifteen, with sixty as the winning score. Charles envisioned a game with himself, Hope, and Good Fortune on one side, and Age, Anxiety, and Fortune on the other, with his life as the stakes. He has played well to this point, but now, at forty-five, at match point, Anxiety has emerged as a powerful adversary. The poem concludes with the game in the balance, and Charles still alive (Charles d’Orleans [1439] 1923: 1.144; Putter 2012: 396–9; Gillmeister 1997: 130–3). Charles did not play out his life in monastic cloisters; in all likelihood, he competed on courts specifically intended for jeu de paume, and that highlights a contrast between the sports of the late Middle Ages and most of those which had come before. All of these earlier games made use, to varying degrees, of already extant spaces. While they certainly served to redefine or to expand the meanings of those spaces, they did not involve the remaking of the spaces in any significant way. But now we begin to see spaces dedicated exclusively to sport as well as the migration of sports to the city. Jeu de paume or tennis was, as we have seen, an early example of this, but the rough-and-tumble crosscountry contests like football, soule, or calcio also moved to the city. The latter, for instance, became a specifically urban game on the piazzas of Florence and elsewhere, with play that symbolically represented the community and playing fields whose features replicated civic defenses (McClelland 2007: 77–9 and 126–9). Still more dramatic was the transformation of the tournament. The open-ended mock battles of William Marshal’s time had required a lot of space (and caused no little trouble) and so took place in open country, but dangers of the tournament meant that the chaotic mêlée became a rarity while the passage of arms developed into a contest of jousting, in which contenders took turns in carefully delineated lists and according to strict rules. Such was the way of things when three knights, including the famous Jean Le Maingre, or Boucicaut, challenged all comers to a thirty-day tournament near Calais in 1389. All this took place not actually in, but near Calais; the actual site was a grassy field at the monastery of Saint Inglevert. This was a time of truce between England and France, and so the tournament inevitably bore political import. Boucicaut and his colleagues intended, perhaps, to promote the idea of a brotherhood of knights that transcended national boundaries and allegiances. But they needed it to be orderly; a perceived or real insult or, worse still, a suspicious death in the lists, could have dire ramifications (Froissart [c. 1400] 1849: 2:434–46; Gaucher 1996). As cities and towns came to play ever larger roles in medieval society, many knights and nobles, though they retained their landed estates, adopted the urban life so as to be near these developing centers of power, and they made their mark on this new environment. The tournament had always been an ideal means for a knight to prove his prowess, and thus his military and social utility. As late medieval European nobles saw their various social roles challenged by

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university-trained administrators, by archers (and later harquebusiers), and by the rising urban middle classes, the public confirmation of this prowess only increased in importance. Urban competitions, however, added a new element: an audience. Where once they had vied for honor and the respect of their peers (as well as for the prospect of loot), now knights played for the crowd and sport became spectacle. City streets were not the ideal setting for a clash of mounted warriors, even the more sedate joust, and so required extensive preparations. The Rue St. Antoine in Paris, for instance, and especially its wide western end, had been used for tournaments since the fourteenth century. This was a major thoroughfare and so, for a tournament, traffic had to be diverted, cobblestones removed, viewing stands constructed. At Venice in 1332, the whole of the Piazza San Marco was cleared for a tournament, “lest men should be injured by the horses and that the game might be better performed.” In 1428, “there was jousting in the Rua Nova in Lisbon, which was spread with a great deal of sand. There was a fence of stakes fixed into the ground at intervals, to joust along, which was hung with blue and vermillion cloths.” Here we see that the playing field itself is now carefully defined; as opposed to the early tournament, in which only “safe zones” were delineated, fifteenth-century knights jousted along a prescribed and often carefully-measured course, or list. The tilt, or barrier between the jousters, was another innovation, one meant to protect the combatants from inadvertent (or sometimes deliberate) collision (Barber and Barker 1989: 193, 196; McClelland 2007: 81, 119; Fallows 2010: 92–4). The knights also required protection from spectators, and spectators from participants or each other. René d’Anjou, in his treatise on the proper organization of a tournament, explained in great detail how one should partition the field with fences. For the mounted mêlée, he suggested a stoutlybuilt enclosure with a double fence and a rope divider separating the opposed sides until the start of the event. Between the two rows of fences stood foot soldiers and squires, ready to jump in and rescue their master should he get into trouble. These soldiers also, of course, could prevent any overcurious onlooker from getting too close. The common spectators, who René dismissed as la foule du peuple, would mingle around the outer fence and, hopefully, stay out of the way. Onlookers of a more exalted sort, especially noblewomen and older knights, could sit on raised and covered viewing platforms, which offered excellent views and distanced them from the crowd (Figure 2.4). The tournament thus established spatial hierarchies in which access to privileged spaces defined the event as primarily among and for the nobility, but also as a public event that ordinary folk could see. None of this would have surprised people of the time, and spatial access had long been a hallmark of power. Commoners would expect to sit on the covered viewing stands about as much as they might expect an invitation to dinner at a royal palace. Urban tournaments imposed these

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FIGURE 2.4: The Tournament Book of René d’Anjou, c. 1447, in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

spatial hierarchies, however briefly, on streets and squares that were normally more, if not completely, egalitarian. For the creative host, the necessity of altering or disrupting urban spaces to hold a tournament might offer the opportunity to create a world of fantasy. As Johan Huizinga (1921; trans. 1996: 85) noted, the medieval world was one in which theatrical performances focused mostly on religious matters. Sport filled this void. Tournaments particularly were “overladen with embellishments and heavily elaborated, in which the dramatic and romantic element was so deliberately worked out that it virtually came to serve the function of drama itself.” To get a sense of the possibilities, we might turn to the festivities which marked the passage of Princess Leonor and assorted other royals through Valladolid in May, 1428. For the event, and to upstage some of his relatives, Prince Enrique of Aragon organized a splendid passage of arms centered on a castle of wood and cloth in Valladolid’s main square. Boasting a high tower and twelve smaller towers, a belfry, and a gilded griffon bearing his standard, this edifice formed one end of the list. The other was an arch flanked by two towers, which bore the title, “This is the arch of the perilous pass at the fortress of fortune.” Nearby stood a golden wheel, the wheel of fortune. With Valladolid

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now temporarily made into a storybook setting, the tournament unfolded as if it were indeed a story. After feasting and dancing, and with a group of young women and a “goddess” sitting by the wheel of fortune, the knights appeared to the sound of horns and trumpets and the tolling of the castle’s bell. A lady met them, giving the challenge: they could not pass without jousting. And joust they did, with ever more elaborate costumes (culminating with twelve knights sporting windmill-shaped crests on their helmets) until they retired to feast again. Not to be outdone, King Juan II of Castile held his own tournament soon after. After installing a great rock on the same plaza, he appeared as God the Father, surrounded by a phalanx of knightly “saints.” In all, the various events lasted nearly a month (Barrientos [1450] 1946: 56–67; Carrillo de Huete [1441] 1946: 19–27; Barber and Barker 1989: 98–9; Ruiz 1988, 1991, and 2012: 225–30, 335–8). No doubt the people of Valladolid enjoyed the shows. Still, one might wonder how they managed to go about their necessary business during this month of play. The chroniclers, unsurprisingly, have nothing to say about that. Their omission indicates how much sporting practices had changed since Charlemagne’s grandsons organized their impromptu tournament or Fitz Stephen watched Londoners at their games. For much of the Middle Ages, people had fit their sport into the rhythms and patterns of daily life and into available spaces and convenient times. Fallow fields or empty cloisters, holidays or Sunday afternoons: these were the sporting spaces and sporting times of the period. Direct links between sports and the practices of everyday life, however, began to fade in the late Middle Ages—as tournaments, for instance, became less about practicing essential military skills and more a spectacle of obsolete tactics—and sports became more and more an alternative to that quotidian world. This is readily apparent in the timing and siting of events. Even as the Valladolid jousters appropriated the main public places of that city for an extended time, Europeans were adapting urban piazzas for calcio matches or building sporting venues ranging from tennis courts to ball fields to horseracing courses. In turn, the availability of spaces dedicated to athletics began to free sports from the demands of the agricultural and even the church calendar. In 1456, Philip the Good of Burgundy could still compare his life to a tennis match when, the day after his sixtieth birthday, he remarked that, though he had lost his first game, he was now beginning another (Gillmeister 1997: 133). But that was a departure from a growing sense that the field of sport was not the field of life.

NOTES 1. Caesarius of Heisterbach ([1223] 2009: 1:292) relates the story, passed to him by the Abbot of Marienstatt, of Pierre, who made a pact with the devil for improved

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

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memory. When he fell down seemingly dead one day, he had a vision in which demons dragged his soul to a sulfurous valley. There, the demons divided into teams and used his soul as their ball. Johannes Beleth ([1162] 1976: 1:30–2 and 2:223) wondered why so many churchmen played at ball games, particularly citing the canons of Reims. For discussion of both accounts, see Gillmeister 1997: 1–2. On notions of time in the Middle Ages, see Le Goff 1980: 29–42, 43–52; Morrison 1990: 196–244; and Spiegel 2016. The sporting culture of medieval Byzantium has received little attention, while the late antique period is well studied. For studies of Byzantine sports, see Schrodt 1981; Cameron 1973; and Cameron 1976. For a discussion of hunting rights in England, see Hendricks 1991: 16–22. For an overview of hunting practices and a guide to primary sources, see Smets and Abeele 2007; and Almond 2003. Among the many hunting manuals detailing the process of the hunt, the training of hounds, and innumerable other details is Gaston III Phœbus (1389) 1998. On poaching as sport, see Hanawalt 1998. Gillmeister 1997: 27–30 includes the full text of Lacy’s decree. For a detailed discussion of the medieval passage of arms, see Barber 2020: 224–32, and Barber and Barker 1989: 107–37.

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CHAPTER THREE

Products, Training, and Technology JONATHAN TAVARES AND LISA W. TOM

The primary investigative emphasis of this chapter addresses the sport wherein the most products have survived and the most technological change is evident: tournaments. Ball sports and hunting must also be addressed in this context. On the other hand, the matter of training and the evolution of sporting equipment is of considerably less importance to activities such as wrestling, swimming, and racing.

PRODUCTS The evaluation of medieval sports equipment necessitates piecing together a variety of material and textual sources. The earliest extant objects in museum collections and those that have been found in archaeological excavations form a timeline that can only be described as patchy. Among the very earliest examples, scattered archaeological excavations yield stray balls from the twelfth century (Egan 2010; Doyle 2016), numerous animal bones that are still being sorted (Cherryson 2002; Cox et al. 2007; Gersmann and Grimm 2018), and a handful of rare and fragmented tournament artifacts from the late thirteenth century (Trapp 1929; Peine and Breiding 2007; Breiding 2017: 24–5). More pieces survive from the following century and allow a certain degree of conjecture, bolstered by contemporaneous images in manuscripts, funerary effigies, and coins or medals. Chronicles are invaluable for dating events or confirming the very existence of certain objects and sports. However, as Angela Gleason (2017) points out, 85

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these are often fleeting mentions in larger narratives, gathered up by historians like needles in a haystack and often interpreted with overreaching generalizations. Moreover, medieval writers prioritized vivid narratives as, for example, when a competitor was injured or died, and technical aspects of sports are simply mentioned in passing (Anglo 2000: 229–30; Fallows 2010: 12). Some accounts— like the famous tournament in 1179 during which William Marshal’s helm became so dented, its removal required an armorer and his anvil (Bryant [1220] 2016: 59–60)—are dramatically embellished but provide functional insights. Inventories and payment receipts from as early as the late thirteenth century confirm early arms and armor made for tournaments, but often state only the intent and the objects, omitting any further description that distinguishes it as gear that is meant for sport rather than war. Exploring these expenditures and the people associated with them, scholars have focused on the inferred material and social culture (Dillon 1897; Mann 1939; Richardson 2011). The perspective of craftsmen has been considered through trade regulations that were recorded by Étienne Boileau in the Livre des métiers (“Book of Crafts”; see Lespinasse and Bonnardot 1879) in the thirteenth century and later civic records concerning their enforcement (Neste 1996). Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte (“The Craftsman’s Handbook” [c. 1400] 1933) meticulously describes some of the processes used to decorate certain arms and armor. Unfortunately, no such treatise exists for armorers, who would produce weapons used for war, hunting, and tournaments. From the point of view of participants in sporting activities, one of the earliest treatises on hunting and hawking was written by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II that extensively described the care and training of raptor birds (Frederick II [early thirteenth century] 1943). An even more popular treatise was Gaston III Phœbus’s Hunting Book, completed in 1389 and which survives through some forty-four manuscript copies from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Klemettilä 2015; also Gaston III Phœbus [1389] 1998). He details several kinds of prey and different species of hunting dogs. Regarding tournaments, an earlyfourteenth-century arming treatise was compiled alongside unrelated documents by William Herbert of Hereford, a Franciscan theologian (Moffat 2010: 6). More formal and detailed treatises regarding tournaments and the training of related skills began to appear in the following century, notably a book from the 1430s on horsemanship and jousting by Duarte I of Portugal and a lavishly illustrated tournament treatise by René d’Anjou (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016; René d’Anjou [c. 1460] 2018). Treatises concerning ball sports appear comparatively late. One of the earliest was written by the Italian priest Antonio Scaino on tennis in 1555, a century after the game was known to have been popularized in Italian courts (Bondt 2006). These treatises are the culmination of centuries of practice, and without them our knowledge of the intricacies of ball sports, hunting, and tournaments would be uneven at best.

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Social class and the alleged prioritization of military preparedness determined much of the impetus for technological developments in medieval sports equipment, as indeed many sports were evaluated relative to training for war (Hendricks 1982; Gleason 2017: 104). Tournaments emerged directly from military exercises, and long before that, hunting was considered suitable practice for developing martial skills. While various ball sports enjoyed by the lower classes were morally censured as distracting from more practical archery exercises, when the nobility and urban elites in the late fifteenth century began to engage in certain ball games, these activities were considered appropriate for maintaining physical fitness. The earliest mêlée tournaments, by their nature of simulating battle, utilized equipment that would have been used on the battlefield. The craftsmen who made these weapons gradually developed specialized equipment for sports tournaments in symbiosis with the general trends of battlefield gear (Blair 1958; Capwell 2018). The latter majority of this chapter examines the emergent forms of tournament equipment as interrelated parts within a larger technological system of defensive and offensive functions for sport and for war, from the twelfth century, when little distinction existed, to the fifteenth century, when dedicated tournament apparatuses flourished. As battlefield innovations were increasingly utilized in tournaments, the mediated environment of these events as a sport undoubtedly provided a testing and training ground for new forms of arms and armor. This early symbiosis linked warfare and tournaments together in the popular imagination, even when tournaments became staged and controlled sporting spectacles in the fifteenth century, and some equipment became so specific as to have no intended use in actual combat. The Anglo-Norman chronicler William Fitz Stephen ([c. 1170–83] 1990: 56–9) provides remarkably detailed information about the games played by the youth of London in the twelfth century. He describes young boys engaging in lance play, “with shafts forked at the end, but with steel point removed,” and skilled ice skaters “who fit to their feet the shin-bones of beasts, lashing them beneath their ankles” (Figure 3.1). Fitz Stephen also comments on ball games, but in this case he stops short of describing precisely how these games were played, or the types of balls used, or what they were made of. A number of first-century CE Roman poets mention various balls made of stitched cloth or leather, stuffed with feathers, hair, or something harder, and soft balls made of inflated animal bladders, as does Suetonius in his Life of Augustus ([121 CE] 2014: 480–1). For centuries, these materials did not significantly change. The oldest extant hair hurling balls from the Middle Ages date to the twelfth century, and were discovered in peat bogs in Ireland (Doyle 2016). Intricately plaited animal hair was wound around cores of materials and apparently chosen for their acoustic effects. This included animal dung, small stones, grains, lead, cork, wood, feathers, and roots. Evidence of late medieval

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FIGURE 3.1: Bone ice skates, twelfth century? The undersides of these skates, found in the Moorfields area, are polished from use on ice. They are of the type described by William Fitz Stephen in his description of London which forms the preface to his account of the life of St. Thomas Becket. Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

leather balls were excavated at Winchester and London (Egan and Bayley 2010: 295–6). The oldest extant bladder ball dates to 1540 and was found in the rafter of Stirling Castle in Scotland (Hanson and Harland 2012). The pig bladder was covered with cow hide to increase its durability. At the end of the fifteenth century, rubber balls were introduced to Europe from Mesoamerica, where the long tradition of ritual ball sports stretches back as far as the sixteenth century BCE (Filloy Nadal 2001; Fox 2012).

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Early tennis was enjoyed across much of Europe but with distinct regional differences. French players allegedly preferred balls stuffed with hair or woolen scraps in cloth, while Flemish tennis balls were sewn together from eight patches of sheep leather (Gillmeister 1997: 77). These balls were apparently harder than those used in Spain. Italian cloth- or wool-covered tennis balls weighed one ounce and had a diameter of one and three-fifth inches (Bondt 2006). Balls were commonly hit with bare or gloved hands, feet, or variably shaped wooden sticks or mallets. A curved wooden hurling stick dated to about 1500 was discovered in one of the peat bogs in Ireland (Doyle 2016). Specialized club shapes and rackets for specific sports began to emerge in the mid fifteenth century (Flannery and Leech 2004). More standardized forms began to appear in the sixteenth century, owing perhaps to the proliferation of treatises distributed more widely than before through the medium of print (Leibs 2004: 59–60). In the early sixteenth century, the complex stringed tennis racket was developed. Antonio Scaino illustrates it in his treatise and likens the strings to that of musical instruments, but the actual origins of the innovative design remain unclear (Gillmeister 1997: 74). A hoop of wood was perforated all around with holes, through which strings were passed through to form a taught net. The hoop tapered into a handle that was wound with leather. It would have measured ten inches wide and one and a half feet in length. An Italian account from the Gonzaga court notes that their rackets were strung with silk strings rather than the usual sheep gut (Bondt 2006: 67–8, 113). Hunting, disputably categorized as a recreational and ritualized sport for elite society (Judkins 2013: 71; Hendricks 1982), made use of swords, spears, bows, and crossbows to wound and kill prey (Blackmore 1971). Slain animals were field-dressed with hunting knives. Firearms were not widely used in hunts until the seventeenth century, when designs improved speed and accuracy (Hall 2010). Varying calls on a horn signaled to other hunters and sometimes dogs the progress of the hunt (Monelle 2006: 35–7). Horses were necessary for chasing down prey, and hunting was often justified as useful practice for gaining proficiency in riding or the coordination of actions. Dogs assisted in tracking, downing, and retrieving animals. Unlike ball sports, hunting was the subject of a large number of specialist treatises throughout the medieval age (see the bibliographical guides by Souhart 1886 and Abeele 1996). Among the most famous treatises, Gaston III Phœbus’s Hunting Book ([1389] 1998; see also Klemettilä 2015) devotes much attention to the different types of dogs (alaunts, greyhounds, running hounds, spaniels, mastiffs), their daily care and training, and ailments. The most specialized form of hunting involved highly trained raptors, which complemented the expertise of their handlers. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen ([early thirteenth century] 1943) emphasizes the exclusivity of hunting with raptors by distinguishing species appropriate to certain social ranks: the eagle, gyrfalcon, and peregrine for royalty and nobility; merlin goshawk, sparrow hawk, and kestrel for those of lesser status.

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In addition to the very expense of certain birds and special diets, the extensive training required of raptors was an exercise in incredible prudence and patience. Frederick II meticulously describes how to sensitize raptors gradually to sights and sounds by limiting their early exposure to outside spaces and using a leather hood that would only be removed during hunts or related training exercises. The birds were tethered with a leather jess tied to their leg and taught to perch on a hunter’s gloved hand. For falconry, the raptor worked in concert with trained dogs that marked small birds, and spectating hunters who followed the chase on horseback. Hawking involved throwing the raptor directly at ground quarry, small furred animals, or pheasants. A small bell was sometimes attached to their leg to track the bird’s location. Some early archaeological discoveries mistook the bones tied with leather and a bell as talismans before realizing they were evidence of hunting raptors (Cherryson 2002). Recent zooarchaeological studies and excavations have extensively examined the sport across time and the globe (Gersmann and Grimm 2018). Rather incidental records were kept of different birds’ hunting successes in inventories that noted the intake and distribution of food to other households (Grassby 1997: 47). Some scholars have explored the psychological connection formed between bird and handler, which continues to fascinate and be practiced to this day (Mountjoy et al. 1969; Gersmann and Grimm 2018). Turning now to the product-oriented world of the tournament, according to medieval regulations, the division of labor for the fabrication of arms and armor was partitioned into such distinctions as mail, plate, leather reinforced with plate, helmets, and gauntlets (Bernard 2015). Similarly, the following paragraphs focus on the evolution of tournament gear in particularized categories, including protection for the head, body armor, shields, the lance and the tilt, and gear for horses. The helm is one of the most distinctive pieces of armor and has a long visual tradition as a symbol of a knight and his identity. From its earliest pot-shaped form in the late twelfth century, the helm developed into a flat series of riveted steel plates with a face guard into the contour of an inverted pail that fully encompassed the head, down to the jawline, with vision slits and holes for ventilation (Southwick 2006; Breiding 2013). In the late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries, the helm became more pointed on top with long rhomboid sides that nearly rested over the shoulders. The angled glancing surface deflected the impact of heavy blows from edged weapons, including lance-points. One of the few surviving helms from this early stage, about 1275–1300, was excavated at Dargen Castle in Germany (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, inv. no. W1003). As the helm increasingly covered the head and neck, the ornamental crest atop the helm and the mantel covering the back became essential elements for recognizing an individual on the battlefield or in the midst of the tournament. The versatility of early helms gradually gave way to more rigid and specialized

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designs for the tourney or mêlée and for the joust, in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Function would dictate form; as tournament helms adopted more protective features, the visibility, breathability, and range of motion became more limited, making later helms more suitable for sport than battle. The purchase roll for the 1278 Windsor Park tournament lists a number of gilt and silvered leather helms, which most likely refers to hardened leather known as cuir bouilli. This is perhaps the earliest known source to mention specialized leather equipment, and such objects were probably in use long before this textual record (Richardson 2011). The twelve gilt helms presumably equipped high lords or barons, while the silvered helms went to their knights and retinue. This simple display of social hierarchy would have also aided in the objective of taking participants captive for ransom by singling out the more lucrative bounties on the field. The Windsor Park tournament was probably a training behourd, an event that used clubs or blunted mace-like weapons. Gilding and silvering would give the leather helms the appearance of metal, alongside similarly decorated whale baleen weapons or bone clubs in the form of swords. The leather tournament helms would have been appreciably lighter and more mobile than steel, but vulnerable against the sharp edges of battle-ready swords, or easily pierced by lances.

FIGURE 3.2: Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, mounted, being assisted by Beatrice Le Scrope. From the Luttrell Psalter. Found in the Collection of British Library. Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

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According to the early-fourteenth-century arming treatise compiled by Herbert, a knight preparing for a tourney would don a coif (possibly of cloth), then a basin or bascinet with cloth lining, and lastly a helm (Moffat 2010: 6). The coif was meant to keep hair in place and to help regulate sweat. The bascinet was initially a rounded steel skullcap that was lighter than the helm. The treatise also briefly notes the use of both the bascinet and helm for the joust. This double helmet system is demonstrated in an illuminated miniature in the psalter of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell from about 1320–40 (Figure 3.2). Astride his mount, in all his tournament finery, Luttrell wears an early form of a bascinet, and receives from his wife a helm with a pivoting visor. This type of helm survives only through images (Breiding 2013: 28). Depictions of the twohelmet system continue to appear well into the following century in funerary effigies of armored knights, who may be equipped for either war or tournament. The miniature of Luttrell also demonstrates the full flowering of the elaborate use of heraldry as an exclusive visual system of identification authorized to noble families that was used in both battle and tournaments. Participation in the latter, in most countries, was restricted to noble participants and their entourage. From the thirteenth century onward, heraldic designs, including crests, blazons, and coats of arms became increasingly intricate, evolving with the regional influence of the noble class and creating a cottage industry of heralds and artisans. The display of heraldic achievements, a crested and mantled helmet atop a blazon shield, is inseparable from its associative role in combat. In Luttrell’s image, all of his equipment and even the dresses of his wife and daughter are adorned with his heraldry, six silver martlet birds divided by a diagonal strip against a blue ground (Coss 2003: 41). The large fan crest atop the helm and shaffron (defense for the horse’s head) would have been made of leather and gesso (combined animal skin, glue, and plaster), painted, gilt, or silvered, as described in Cennino Cennini’s Craftsman’s Handbook ([c. 1400] 1933: 108–9). Owing to the ephemeral nature of these materials, there are few surviving period crests. Among the earliest extant examples, from the mid to late fourteenth century, are a pair of leather horns attached to a cap for a member of the von Matsch family in the ancestral armory of Churburg Castle in Southern Tirol, and a leopard on a funerary achievement for Edward the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral (Trapp 1929: 32). Another early record of the bascinet appears in 1364 regulations for Parisian helmsmiths that stipulate, “none may equip a bascinet for the tourney lest it be varnished inside and out and equipped with two pairs of completely new linings, and covered with well-tanned white leather” (Moffat 2010: 13). The white leather cover would have softened the surface and muted the ringing of blows. The varnish layer acted as a protective barrier from the wearer’s corrosive sweat that would have absorbed through the lining and leather. No tournament bascinets are known to survive from as early as these regulations,

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though what is described is probably similar to the Kolbenturnierhelm (club tourney helm) in the collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art that dates to the second half of the fifteenth century. A large bulbous cage of iron wire and bars form a face grill that is riveted to a steel or iron bascinet. Iron slots on the front and back of the neck defense would have been used to fix the helm over a steel or leather cuirass (back and breastplate) (Nickel 2006: 117–19; LaRocca 2017: 85–6). At the very top, two large staples would have secured a crest and mantel with laces or points of cord or leather. The internal lining and a covering of textile and gesso remains intact on this example. In the gesso surface, on the back, survives the heraldic device of the von Stein family from Germany. Bascinets with the addition of hinged or pivoted visors would largely supplant helms on the battlefield in the latter part of the fourteenth century. In tournament mêlées, bascinets largely protected against blunted clubs and rebated swords. From the twelfth century onward, the helm gradually became larger, heavier, and more reinforced, providing suitable protection against lances in the controlled clashes of the joust, but dangerously hampering movement and vision that were essential on the battlefield. In the joust, as a sport, the knight focused entirely on striking a single opponent with a lance while riding the horse on a straight path with an assessing relief or pause after each pass. For such a brief encounter that was nevertheless potentially deadly, the abilities to see, to breath, or even to move freely were momentary handicaps worth sacrificing. One of the finest surviving examples of an early helm designed especially for the joust comes from the mid-fourteenth-century achievement of Albert von Prankh that hung over the family tomb in an abbey church. Now in the Vienna Kunsthistoriches Museum, the Prankh helm retains a possibly later fifteenthcentury crest, of a pair of curved leather horns (Figure 3.3; see also Breiding 2017: 22). The helm may have been worn with a bascinet underneath and has a deep shape with a pronounced domed cap and angled front to glance away lance-strikes. There are no ventilation holes on the lower half of the face plate, where it would have been common on war helms. Instead, a reinforced plate is riveted to the left side and partially over the right with a bridge over the vision slit. The reinforcing plate was an early-fourteenth-century development to strengthen the area just above the shield, where the head was most likely to be hit in a joust. For war or the tourney, most reinforces were removable so as to lessen the weight after the initial lance charge. On the Prankh helm, the plate is permanently fixed with rivets, further indicating its singular use for the joust (Breiding 2013: 27–31). Between the face plate and the reinforce, a layer of wadding, possibly of tow (raw flax fibers), would have acted as a buffer for shock absorption, to lessen the impact and the deafening sound of hits against the metal that would reverberate within the domed helm. The reinforce on the

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FIGURE 3.3: Jousting helm associated with the Prankh family, German or Austrian, mid fourteenth century. Vienna, Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, inv. B.74. Photograph courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien oder KHM, Vienna.

Prankh helm marks the beginning of asymmetrical armor design. All men-atarms were trained to attack from the right and to receive blows to the left. The strategic strengthening of specialized parts of armor would continue to evolve well into the seventeenth century, particularly in the development of plate armor. The 1397 list of arms belonging to Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, mentions bascinets for the joust of war and helms for the joust of peace (Dillon 1897: 305). By the late thirteenth century, the joust of war and the joust of peace were distinguished by the respective use of pointed lance-heads and blunted lanceheads called coronels (Capwell 2018: 57–63). Potentially lethal judiciary combat was also referred to as jousts of war, which one might assume involved typical combat gear. As a sport, the joust of war emulated battle conditions with lighter war harness and a great bascinet, which incorporated a hinged or pivoting visor and integral neck defense. In the early fifteenth century, heavier bascinets with integral neck defenses were produced with a thick prow-shaped

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visor, such as an example from about 1420–30 in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. no. 04.3.237). These types of bascinets were a specialty of the Milanese armorers became renowned for producing such bascinets, exported all over Europe, an early example of specialized products associated with a particular manufacturing center. The great bascinet was lighter than the two-helmet system and was less restrictive in vision and ventilation than the helm. Between passes in the joust, the wearer could open the visor for a reprieve. The helm for the joust of peace mentioned in the Duke of Gloucester’s inventory doubtless resembled the funerary helm of King Henry V of England preserved in Westminster Abbey. This headpiece, from about 1380–1420, represents the transition towards the frog-mouthed helm (as it is often called by modern scholars) or German Stechhelm of the fifteenth century. This highly specialized design was exclusively for jousts, as it ponderously weighs over 16 pounds (7.3 kilograms), and has a ship-prow form and molded shoulders. Considering the size and shape of Henry’s helm, it would have been worn alone, without an under helm. Similar to the Prankh helm, there is a fixed asymmetrical and padded reinforce that covers the front left side and part of the right. Loops on the front and the back would strap the Henry V helm to the breast and back plates, either better to withstand the force of a hit or to fix the eye slot in place. The angled opening offers wide frontal vision while the upper brow plate and jutting lower prow-shaped front provide full coverage. The edge of the lower plate was as thick as half an inch (13 millimeters) to hold its shape against impacting lances. In his fifteenth-century treatise, Duarte I of Portugal warns that a good jouster keeps his eye on the target throughout an entire run. The popular notion of the jouster straightening up in the last minute of the encounter to avoid injury is a fallacy and, as correctly pointed out by Duarte, such a movement would have meant that he blinded himself at the very moment when he needed to be able to see (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 108–9). Even if a lance-head were to hit the vision gap, the curvature of the thick plates would divert the blow. The frog-mouthed helm, adopted as the ideal jousting helm in the following century, is the culmination of defensive technology, a piece of sporting equipment solely for the joust. The symbiotic link between equipment for war and for tournament sports is perhaps strongest in the development of body armor from the twelfth-century mail-clad man-at-arms to the full plate harness of the mid fifteenth century. Thom Richardson (1997: 40–5) has conjectured that tournaments served as a breeding ground for experimentation and training in body armor, especially during the so-called transitional period from mail to plate in the early fourteenth century, as larger and more sophisticated forms of plate armor developed. This section will examine the unique forms and varied materials that were developed to protect the body in the sport of the tournament, and how some were less practical for the rigors of war.

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Several medieval textual sources indicate that specialized hauberks (mail shirts) for the tournament existed. An inventory from 1302 lists a haubert à tournoier, and the Tower of London armories records in 1344 make note of 173 mail shirts, three of which were “for the tournament and worn out” (Moffat 2010: 14). As with early listings of helms for the tournament, it is not known what differentiated these mail shirts from those for war. As defensive armor, mail has been in continuous use since its invention from the third century BCE to the present day, such as by divers in shark-infested waters and butchers. The mesh structure, one iron or steel ring fixed to four others, was fashioned and tailored into the shapes of cloth garments: hauberk (shirt), coif (hood), mufflers or gauntlets (gloves), or chausses (leggings) (Pfaffenbichler 1992: 56–62). Different-sized rings and varying density of rings could strengthen some areas, and larger rings of different gauge wire could alleviate weight in other areas that require less protection. Mail could stop the sharp edge or point of a weapon from delivering cuts or lacerations. Its mesh form also allowed the body to vent. The greatest disadvantage to mail is that it cannot stop blunt-force trauma, and the early medieval warrior and tourneyer used heavily padded garments to absorb the shock of blows and to protect from chafing. These were made of linen quilted up to 2–4 inches (5–10 centimeters) thick, the channels or pipes stuffed with tow (raw flax) or cotton imported from the eastern Mediterranean. Cotton was favored for its lightweight properties that supplied the ideal cushion under weighty mail shirts (up to 20 pounds or 9 kilograms). The term for this padded undergarment, “aketon,” derived from the Arabic word for cotton, alkotyn (Moffat 2010: 8). Other period terms for this garment were “pourpoint” or “gambeson,” which sometimes refer to a fine outer surcoat worn over body armor (Blair 1958: 33). Regarding mail prepared specifically for tournaments, Tobias Capwell (2018: 37–8) has suggested that the arrangement of ring sizes or the overall shape or pattern might have been denser, making for a heavier mail shirt capable of absorbing more impact from blows or lances. This may have made it heavier than ideal for battle. It is impossible to draw any definitive conclusions without further evidence, and the matter is further complicated by the fact that surviving fourteenth-century hauberks were often altered to suit later needs. The earliest reference to leather armor used for the tournament is the abovementioned description of gilt and silvered helms for the 1278 Windsor Park behourd. The hardened hide of oxen or other beasts is one of the most ancient forms of body armor and its use in battle was pervasive from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. It was an ideal product for its intended purpose: hard and light, easy to work, readily available, relatively inexpensive, and effective against clubs and blunted swords in the medieval mêlée. The term most often found in French documents is cuir bouilli (boiled leather), referring to the process of soaking the leather in hot or cold water, then molding it, and allowing

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it to dry hard. It was sometimes painted, gilded, or covered in fine textiles. In the fifteenth century, Cennini describes this method for producing helm crests. Modern experimentations have attempted to reproduce this hardened leather armor (Beabey and Richardson 1997). The most common hardened leather gear included the cuirass—a breast and back plate—and protection for the knees, legs, arms, and elbows. The term “cuirass” carried over to refer to later iron or steel versions. There have been some chance survivals of leather armor from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One mid-fourteenth-century English example in the British Museum is a defense for the upper right arm. The T-shaped piece would have wrapped around the upper arm and attached to the aketon by points or laces threaded through a pair of holes at the top, and an inner leather strap would have fixed it around the bicep. A well-preserved pair of late-fourteenth-century lower arm defenses were found at Tartu in Estonia (Town Museum of Tartu, A-115: 1209; A-115: 1265). In a common feature for the time, the leather is splinted, strengthened with strips of iron held by a series of rivet heads. Splinted vambraces (arm defenses) are illustrated and described in René d’Anjou’s mid-fifteenthcentury tournament book (Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. 2695 27v), although iron or steel plate armor was already more the norm by that time. The transition from mail to plate began in the thirteenth century with the use of leather and iron or steel to produce plates that protected the knees, elbows, and shins. The miniature of Luttrell demonstrates these early pieces strapped over his mail sleeves and leggings. Edward I’s Statuta Armorum (“Statute of Arms”), a set of tournament rules issued in 1292 dictated that: “No one except the great lords, that is earls and barons, may be armed with more than knee-pieces, leg armour, shoulder plates and helmet” (Crouch 2005: 201). Plate appears to have been restricted as a mark of rank in the tournament that was reserved only for the high lords. By the early fourteenth century, plate became more common, and men-at-arms would wear it to protect their joints and eventually their entire limbs. The evolutionary story of full plate armor can be focused broadly on two major technological developments: engineering movement through riveted articulation; and the ability to produce larger iron or steel plates. In the context of tournaments, that story weighs factors of mobility and the protection of thicker and heavier plates. In the late fourteenth century armorers discovered that using a system of overlapping plates called lames around joints in the elbows and knees would allow for a wide range of motion without presenting dangerous gaps in plates. Pivoting rivets, sliding rivets, and internal flexible leather strips, to which plates could be attached, extended the smooth glancing surfaces of the steel over movable sections, and eventually allowed skilled armorers to encase the body fully in steel plate. An example of this is illustrated in René d’Anjou’s treatise showing an encased steel vambrace with a system of overlapping lames covering

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the entire inside arm (Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. 2695 27v). It is not clear whether this image was pure fantasy or a record of a highly experimental piece. The other pieces of arms and armor in the manuscript seem to have been drawn from life, but the earliest known examples of the advanced riveted articulation of plates can only be found from the first quarter of the sixteenth century. This technology may well have been reserved for elite participants on the tournament grounds in its earliest stages. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when full plate armor was being phased out, this sophisticated method of articulation was more generally adopted for war harnesses. The first solid iron or steel breastplates may have emerged in the mid fourteenth century, as suggested by the 1337–41 wardrobe accounts of Edward III that list poitrines pour les joustes (breastplates for the joust; Blair 1958: 59). Pointing out similar inventory descriptions, Richardson (1997: 42) suggests that it may have been in the context of tournaments that “impulses towards the development of plate armor for war” evolved. Experimental plate armor like a breastplate would certainly have found favor as a piece of defensive equipment to offer protection from the serious dangers of a lance-thrust in the joust. However, the incredible amount of resources required to cover the entire torso in plate would have presented a great challenge. Modern research using period techniques and materials indicate that it could take up to 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of smelted iron to make 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) of plate to produce a cuirass.1 While the ancient Romans had the capability to smelt large plates of iron or steel, the infrastructure to procure the vast quantities of necessary iron ore and charcoal for furnaces vanished with the end of the Empire. In the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, it was only possible and more efficient to smelt in small batches, producing 5–10 pound plates (2.2–4.5 kilograms) at a time (Williams 2003: 53–9). Thus in the earliest phases of plate development, the defenses were small, and produced for knees, shins, and elbows, until the steady reintroduction of an iron smelting industry in western Europe. In the fourteenth century, armorers developed a coat of plates or pair of plates, a covering for the torso placed over mail hauberks and produced with a cloth or leather front, to which a series of iron or steel plates were riveted as overlapping plaques. These coats offered far better protection from blows and lance-strikes than either leather or mail. Some of the earliest surviving examples of breastplates are preserved in Churburg Castle. In a piece dated to 1370–90, a large rectangular center plate and four underlapping plates on each side are all riveted to internal leather. The plates were not large enough to cover the whole torso (Trapp 1929). The side plates wrap around only partially to the back and would have been fixed by cross straps. The wearer of this early form of breastplate would have had to rely on a mail hauberk worn underneath to complete protective coverage at the back.

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The Churburg breastplate, along with other early single-plate examples at Churburg (inv. no. 14), and one in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. no. 29.150.24) have a lance-rest (a hook on the right side of the breastplate, under the arm opening), or the holes or staples to fix one in place. As a sports product, the relatively inconspicuous lance-rest represents a major technological development that appears alongside the introduction of solid breastplates at the end of the fourteenth century. The simple feature essentially transfers the force and weight of the horse and rider to the point of the lance. Lances were outfitted with a ring-shaped grapper that passed through the stave and was fixed at the back end, behind the handle. Upon impact, the grapper would be arrested against the lance-rest, and transmit the majority of the force to the jouster’s core body and seat. The lance-rest on the early Churburg breastplate folds up, a common feature in breastplates made for combat. For jousts, lance-rests are more often made as steel brackets that can be adjusted only slightly on a series of four or more staples that pass through a plate at the base of the lance-rest. The lance-rest would be fixed into place and secured with a pin that passed through the staples. These staples allowed the force to transfer onto multiple points and made it possible to move the lance-rest up or down a few notches to couch the lance in a better position. At times, the forces of impact were so strong that the lance-rest was ripped off the breastplate, as relayed by Pero Rodríguez de Lena in the chronicle of a 1434 passage of arms in León (Fallows 2010: 13, 84–5). By the early fifteenth century, there are textual references to pieces of plate armor specially designed for use in the joust. The 1407 inventory of the Gonzaga family armory lists a great deal of equipment specified for tournaments and jousting, including various cuirasses, vambraces, and gauntlets, to name but a few (Mann 1939: 336). The vambraces and gauntlets likely refer to rigid and heavy defenses used on the left side of the body, which is most prone to being struck by a lance. Earlier mid-fourteenth-century inventories refer to manifers (iron hands), stiff plates that were buckled to typical field vambraces and gauntlets, in the event of a joust (Capwell 2018: 48, 73, 76). A contemporaneous jousting cuirass in the Real Armería in Madrid (illustrated in color in Fallows 2010: 80) has a doubly thick breastplate with a lower plate overlapped by an upper plackart, which attached to a backplate or padded arming coat with laces or straps. Four staples on the right are intended for securing a bracket-type lance-rest, while five staples on the left were for securing a hinged hasp or charnel (steel strap) that fixed the jousting helm in place. Five vacant holes beside these staples indicate that the helm fitting required adjustment and so the staples could be removed and moved slightly to the left armhole. In a feature found on Spanish and some Italian pieces, a ring at the lower left side of the breastplate would have been used to lash and immobilize the heavily armored left arm in place. The staple close to the left arm opening was

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for securing the targe (jousting shield) with braided cord that passed through a pair of holes in the targe. The many holes and rivets along the edges indicate that the breastplate was probably once covered with a rich textile that has long since disintegrated. Another early breastplate excavated from House Herbede was probably intended for use in the German Kolbenturnier, a type of mounted tourney with clubs (Peine and Breiding 2007: 1–5). Dated to the late fourteenth to early fifteenth centuries, the piece was also once covered in textile, edged in a series of small rivets. Thirty-one square holes crudely perforate the plate, a unique feature that does not appear in any other surviving breastplate. René d’Anjou’s treatise illustrates a similar cuirass covered in large gaping holes and describes the cuirass together with leather arm defenses typical of German and Flemish tournament equipment. The holes were probably intended to lend some relief to the one major drawback to plate armor: heat exhaustion. These holes must have aided in ventilation for the body, but also would have made the breastplate dangerously vulnerable in battle, which suggests its use as a product exclusively in the context of sport. Some plate reinforces were designed as modifying attachments for field armor or typical light war harness that were used for jousts of war, in the sport context, which were meant to test the participant’s performance in battle (Capwell 2018: 57–63). For the 1434 joust at León in Spain, the regulations stipulated that participants were to appear “in war harnesses, without shields or targes, nor any more than one reinforcing piece over each piece of armour” (Fallows 2010: 400). The gear used at this event would have resembled something similar to that of St. George in a panel painting from 1434–5 by the Catalonian artist Bernat Martorell (Figure 3.4). In the image, the reinforces are meticulously rendered, including a reinforcing piece called a gardbrace that is pinned over the left pauldron (shoulder defense), and a wrapper that covers the lower chin and is strapped on over the helmet to strengthen the visor. A midfifteenth-century field armor including these occasional reinforces might weigh up to 50 pounds (22.6 kilograms). When distributed over the entire body and with proper training, men-at-arms were capable of running and jumping just as they were without. Jean de Condé, in the early fourteenth century, stated that youths at tournament should be able to “carry their armor with stoicism” as if wearing their ordinary courtly attire (Crouch 2005: 131–7). In the later sixteenth century, specialized jousting armor would further develop new forms of reinforces and thickened plates that could weigh up to 80 or 90 pounds, providing fitting protection in a joust, as a sport, but dangerously impractical in actual battle (Williams 2003: 913–17). Shields continued to be used in tournaments long after they had been deemed too cumbersome in battle. This shift occurs in the early fourteenth century, as plate armor developed into the more effective means of protecting the body

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FIGURE 3.4: Bernat Martorell, St. George Killing the Dragon, Catalonia, c. 1434–5. Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago Open Access Images, 1933.786.

than a weighty piece of wood tethered to the left arm. Initially, the spadeshaped heater shield was designed principally for mounted use on horseback.2 The slight convex form of the shield wraps around the rider’s body and covers the left neck, shoulders, torso, thigh, and sometimes as far down as below the

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knee. The back of the shield had groupings of arm straps fixed by iron staples or rivets. The arrangements of these straps differed according to the perceived optimal angles to hold the shield. One or two cross straps might serve for the inside lower left arm to slide into, and another to be gripped in the left hand while holding the horse’s reins. A longer strap fixed to the center and tightened with a buckle was called a guige, which acted as a sling over the right neck and shoulder. The guige allowed the user to pivot the shield and to hold it in place, balancing it over the shoulders rather than the arms, to prevent it from being torn away when struck. The outer convex shape of the shield was designed to deflect blows and provide a hard shell protection to the flexible form of twelfthand thirteenth-century mail armor, though at times the force of the strike was simply too great for the shield to stop. Shields were prepared in a similar way as crests, with leather, gesso, and paint, but in collaboration between a wood worker and craftsman. The Windsor Park roll notes that wood worker “Stephen the joiner” provided wooden shields for the tournament (Lysons 1814: 300). The wooden shield would have been prepared from a single plank, or several, joined with skin glue. The painter would layer leather over the wood and then several layers of gesso, either flat or built up into a slight relief, over which was painted the heraldic blazon. Some of the earliest shields are preserved as a group in Marburg University Museum for Art and Cultural History, including the shield associated with the Landgraf Konrad von Turinger of about 1240. This heater-shaped shield has a raised rampant lion with holes in the head for glass eye inserts. In the second half of the fourteenth century, a new shield known as the targe was developed specifically for the joust. It had a rectangular form and a concave surface that was meant to deflect the lance away from the head or waist. The targe commonly featured a cut-away on the upper right side, called the bouche or mouth, into which the jouster lowered his lance. The jouster had to have practiced the difficult skill of lowering his lance into the bouche without looking, as his downward visibility would have been obstructed by the helm. The guige remained as a feature in the targe, though increasingly into the fifteenth century the targe was laced with braided cord and fixed to a staple on the left side of the breastplate. An early form of the jousting targe (without bouche) appears in early-fifteenth-century Bohemian manuscript illustrations for The Travels of Sir John Mandeville in the British Library (illustrated in color in Fallows 2010: 113). One figure is struck so hard by the lance that the cord that held the targe against the breast has broken, and it dangles back on the guige strap, revealing the inside with the remainder of the cord and a square patch of wadding. Another figure receives a crested helm and holds a targe while his attendant fixes the cord in the upper left of the shield. There are numerous surviving jousting targes known in German as Stechtarge, sometimes kept to memorialize noble families and often repainted or reused as

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decoration. One well-preserved example from the early fifteenth century in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art was made for a member of either the noble Austrian von Messan or Eglauder families, both of which bore versions of the blazon found painted on the center of the targe. It includes the guige and hand straps, and is strategically designed with a medial ridge and concave facing surface, to divert the thrust of a lance. The wooden core of this shield is layered with leather gesso, silver leaf, and oil glazes, which gives it a rich luster. A painted banderole around the coat of arms reads: IO HARR. LAS UBER GAN (“Just wait. You’ll be beaten”). This motto continues along the border, stating “just wait” repeatedly. In tournament sports, the wooden targe would remain in use well into the second quarter of the sixteenth century, when it was then supplanted by a steel reinforce called a grand guard, that bolted down over the left side of the breastplate.

TECHNOLOGY The evolution of arms and armor is a story of offensive and defensive technologies responding to one another. Much of the need for increasingly heavy protective gear, such as the jousting helm and reinforces, were responses to the incredible force of the lance. From the eleventh to the twelfth century, spears carried on horseback for battle were held overhand in a thrusting position to strike down. It was gradually realized that the strength of the blow increased when couching the spear against the torso with a parallel grip, and even more so with the butt end of the spear wedged under the armpit. These actions unified the force and weight of both horse and rider to the point of the spear, such that there was the ready potential to penetrate through both a wooden shield and a hauberk, especially with the development of the vamplate (a coneshaped guard to protect the hand), grapper, and lance-rest. Blunted spearheads were probably in use for tournaments well before the thirteenth century, when specialized blunted ploughshare-like heads became more common. By the end of the century, coronels (named for its open crownlike shape) began to appear in illustrations, such as the 1304 Manesse Codex at the University Library in Heidelberg. In one illumination, the coronel appears as three spread points or tines (Figure 3.5). This open form spread the area of impact, lessening it, and presented a wider point that could not lodge into the eye slits or vision gap of a helm. The three tines could also bite into the surface of a shield and help the lance break. In the fourteenth century, lances with coronels are described for jousts of peace, specifying their non-deadly intent for sport rather than for war. Blunted single-pointed spearheads continued to be used in the jousts of war (Capwell 2018: 27–31, 56–93). The earliest known examples of both coronel and blunted single-point lance-heads from the fourteenth century were excavated at House Herbede, now in the Westfälisches Museum für Archäologie in Munster (Peine and Breiding 2007: 19).

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FIGURE 3.5: Henry II von Frauenberg during a chivalry tournament, represented with his lance and shield. Codex Manesse, fol. 61v, c. 1300. Heidelberg, University Library. Photo by Photo 12/UIG via Getty Images.

The illuminations from the Manesse Codex evidence two other major lance innovations in the early fourteenth century: the vamplate and the grapper. These additions transform the simple spear into a lance meant solely for use on horseback, though the lance continued to be referred to as a “spear” throughout the Middle Ages. When used correctly, the grapper transfers the force of the blow to the jouster’s body and as much as doubles the impact force of the lance (Williams et al. 2016). This had the potential of injuring the bearer of the lance as well as the opponent. Thus, by the end of the fourteenth century, the lance-

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FIGURE 3.6: Lance-rest, grapper, coronel, and pointed lance-head excavated from House Herbede, probably German, early fifteenth century. LWL-Archäologie für Westfalen/S. Brentführer.

rest developed to help absorb the shock of impact and to further increase its strength, as described above. The only recognized surviving grapper from the fourteenth century was discovered at House Herbede (see Peine and Breiding 2007). It is forged in iron as a collar with a raised flange pierced and riveted with six short spikes that would have pointed toward the end of the lance. The grapper would have been fixed by nails onto the butt end of the lance, immediately behind the handle. Upon impact, the spikes on the grapper would grapple into the open recesses of the lance-rest bracket, an example of which was also discovered in the Herbede excavation (Figure 3.6). The concept of a tilt or barrier came very late as a safety precaution, to separate the mounted opponents, to prevent the horses from colliding during an encounter, and to provide a guide for charging (Capwell 2018: 78–81). Some sources place the convention to no earlier than about 1400, used in Iberia and Italy, and perhaps invented in Duarte’s kingdom of Portugal (Fallows 2010: 91–4). The earliest examples are believed to have been constructed of cloth and, later, made of more ridged planks, built up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) high (Blair 1958: 158–63; Capwell 2018: 81). France and England generally used the tilt

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by the mid fifteenth century. Germany only gradually adapted it by the turn of the sixteenth century and would always consider it foreign. By the second half of the sixteenth century jousting at the tilt was the general convention used by all; further evidence of jousting’s evolution toward becoming a sporting spectacle. The tilt protected both the participant as well as the horse, which was perhaps one of the single most valuable pieces of equipment in the joust. Poets and chroniclers would have readers believe that one of the greatest challenges and rewards of the mêlée tournament was the procurement of horses, either to participate in the games or to win as ransoms. As a midthirteenth-century disclaimer, Henry de Laon wrote: “Tournaments were not originally held as a way of capturing horses” (Crouch 2005: 189). Historians such as Jeffrey Forgeng in his introduction to King Duarte’s Book of Horsemanship (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 32) warn against oversentimentalizing the historical ownership of an expensive commodity and object of status. Horses represented a macrocosm of elite privilege and wealth that afforded various groomsmen for the beasts’ maintenance and the broad array of necessary equipment for riding, which were all the more extensive for tournaments (Davis 1983; Clark 2004). Yet, Duarte expresses as much concern for a broken bit as he did the proper care of a horse (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 111–13). From the perspective that the horse may be considered a mere extension of one’s gear, it bears mentioning that a number of later sixteenth-century military treatises instruct their readers to attack an opponent’s mount in the heat of battle (Anglo 2000: 229–30). In tournaments, hits to the horse were counted negatively but still commonly occurred. According to purchase accounts, the breeding and training of specialized destriers (also referred to as the Great Horse, a breed likened to the modern cob) to serve almost exclusively as warhorses was a thriving industry in select parts of Europe by the early fourteenth century (Davis 1983; Bennet 1995). As a whole, the general type of destrier deemed fit for war or tournament does not seem to have changed by much over time: a height of fifteen hands (five feet), strong, agile, and absolutely obedient. As evidenced by Duarte’s treatise, the mastery of horsemanship was essential for a mastery of arms, and the accompanying gear for the horse was as complex as that for the rider. From illustrations alone, there seems to have been as vast an array of saddle designs for tournament as for war, each marked by regional characteristics to suit different riding styles. Few saddles and elements of horse armor survive prior to 1400. Duarte describes five different kinds of saddles and emphasizes the importance of using the appropriate saddle for the precise occasion, in addition to being able to adapt comfortably to a variety of saddle forms (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 62–3). He advises that the one best suited to both joust and tourney allows the rider to stand firm in the stirrups with legs straight and not sitting in the saddle. The intent was not for long-term riding or comfort, but to

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FIGURE 3.7: Jousting Saddle for the Gestech im hohen Zeug (Joust of Peace in High Saddles). German, fifteenth century. Leeds, Royal Armouries, inv. VI.94. Asset Number DI 2018-0968. © Board of Trustees of the Armouries.

brace the tourneyer or jouster while he dealt and sustained blows from both sword and lance. The pommel at the front and the cantle at the back both protected the rider’s legs and groin and braced them from forward and backward movements. The cantle was partially designed to wrap around the hips of the rider to support him when hit and also to serve as a buttress when delivering a lance-stroke. It was open enough so that the saddle would not cause injury when a rider was hit, but allow him to be unhorsed and ejected safely. Such saddles appeared as early as the mid fourteenth century, as seen in the miniature of Luttrell sitting in a saddle that hugs his hips, while his straight legs engage the stirrups (Figure 3.2). Special high-seated saddles for tournament sports became common in German-speaking lands in the late fourteenth to early fifteenth century. The early-fifteenth-century Bohemian illustration of the joust of peace discussed above depicts such saddles with yokes at the cantle that encompass and secure the riders. The front of the saddle is built like a shield, covering the whole of the rider’s legs making armor for the lower half of the body unnecessary. A few examples of such high saddles survive (see Jezler 2014: 138; Breiding 2017:

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31), including one in the Royal Armouries in Leeds that is made of wood with skin over the front pommel plate and leg guards (Figure 3.7). The rear is made of a wooden hoop that the rider placed his legs through for complete stabilization. Dents and slashes over the front pommel plate are tell-tale signs of use. The ploughshare-like front of this saddle is designed to divert lance-thrusts. Saddles like this were entirely specialized for sport and would have been hazardous in war, as the rider could be caught and unable to exit the saddle quickly. At the 1434 joust of war in León, the judges debated the unfair advantage a rider had in a high saddle over his opponent in a war saddle (Fallows 2010: 426). A degree of equity across the participants’ equipment was a general concern for tournaments in this period throughout Europe. Leather horse armor was in existence for tournament use at least as early as the end of the thirteenth century and possibly earlier (Pyhrr et al. 2005). The Windsor Park tournament roll shows payments made for thirty-eight “headpieces of leather, resembling horses heads” and “pairs of little wings of leather” (Lysons 1814: 300). These most likely refer to shaffrons and perhaps fan-like crests, such as those depicted in the miniature of Luttrell. The illustration of the Bohemian joust of peace also shows the horses equipped with shaffrons and peytrals (defenses for the horses’ chests). The detail of the decoration over these plates and their forms suggests these were made of leather. One very similar example survives in silvered leather at the (acc. no. W 374) Salzburg Museum and dates to the late fourteenth to early fifteenth century. The feathershaped crest could have had a dual purpose as ornamentation and an added ridge to protect the horse’s head from downward blows. Judging from the continuity in tournament illustrations for nearly a century, this type of shaffron and peytral must have been a common form all across Europe. In the mid fifteenth century, René d’Anjou’s treatise describes a guard worn over the horse’s neck called a hourt, made of rods of long straw lashed together as hoops, over which is draped a blazoned cloth. Under this, a large sack was fitted around the horse’s neck and filled with straw, which added cushioning and stability to the hourt. It acted as a bumper between horses that were pressed together in a heavy mêlée, as seen in the illuminations in René’s treatise. Known as Stechsack in Germany, this padding was used in the jousts without tilt to protect horses from collision. Some early-sixteenth-century examples survive in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The additional bulk would not have been ideal for movement in battle, and the hourt was an exclusive piece of protective equipment for tournament sports. As seen in the Luttrell miniature, the blazoned horse trappings were part of a long tradition of heraldic tournament equipment that aided in the identification of participants. The fourteenth-century inventory of the Duke of Gloucester itemizes banners, pennons, and trappers (caparisons) emblazoned with his arms, and a headstall and reins that probably matched (Dillon 1897: 307).

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Caparisons with matched pennons and banners were a major expense for tournament participants. In addition to the elaborate crests, Cennini instructs on how to paint on linen and silk for banners and presumably also for horse trappings. Those of the highest expense were embroidered with silver and silver-gilt thread over fine silk velvet, as demonstrated from fragments believed to have formed part of a horse caparison for King Edward III of England (Musée de Cluny, acc. no. CL 20637). These fragments were perhaps given by the king to a convent at Altenberg in Hesse. It was common for nobles to bestow their fine textiles to churches and monasteries to be repurposed into liturgical vestments and the like. Remaining seed pearls and rock-crystal beads hint at the former glory of this rich caparison. Accouterments to riding, bits, spurs, and stirrups, though necessary for control of the horse, were also treated as luxury equipment. A mid-fourteenthcentury gilt copper-alloy and iron bit in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art was undoubtedly decorated to match a lavish caparison and other horse ornaments. The finely mounted champlevé enamel bosses display the arms of possibly the Ceva family, court officials in Salerno, Naples. The long parallel bars identify it as a curb bit, with a Y-shaped iron device suspended in the center of the bars that form the bit that rests on the toothless part of the horse’s jaw. With a slight pull on the reins attached to the ends of the bars, the Y-shaped piece would exert pressure on the sensitive roof of the inside of the horse’s mouth, and clamp up on the outside of their lower jaw with a chain. On this bit the pierced U-shaped bar preformed this function as it sat under the horse’s lower jaw. Curb bits, rather than the simple snaffle bit that did not have long bars for extra torque, were used to optimize control over the horse, which Duarte recommends for use in jousts (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 111). He also recommends that a slight tension should be kept on the bit at all times.

TRAINING The lance, coronel, vamplate, and grapper along with the lance-rest and breastplate together form a system that requires a high degree of training and skill to use effectively, while riding atop a moving horse, no less. The tricky maneuver of couching the lance must happen quickly and smoothly, taking into account armor that reduces the wearer’s sensitivity and limits vision, with no peripheral vision or visibility below the upper body, and the horse that must be directed straight ahead with the hopes of reaching a gallop. Before the fifteenth century, little is directly known of specific training exercises, and most scholarship in this area consists of conjecture based on images, equipment, and later sources (Malszecki 2009). Duarte’s treatise, which he asserts is the first of its kind, indeed appears to be the earliest written text to address training explicitly in terms of related games, repetitive exercises, coaching advice, and

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mental preparation, which may be understood as an early form of sports psychology. The quintain was a common piece of equipment for jousting practice that consisted of a board or shield mounted on a post that often revolved with a counterweight on the end. The simple device provided a target to train steady aim with a lance and to test the force of impact and speed. As early as the twelfth century, chronicles mentioned the quintain as a part of court festivities and amusements (Crouch 2005: 112–13). Marginalia in a fourteenth-century manuscript copy of the Romance of Alexander currently preseved at the Bodleian Library in Oxford depict a young boy charging at a revolving quintain on foot, and another image of a boy riding a wooden horse on wheels pulled by two other boys toward a quintain post (illustrated in Krieg 2014). Curiously, Duarte does not reference the quintain, but recommends cane games (a term that encompasses various activities, from jousts with hollow canes instead of lances, to throwing javelins), and hunting to develop a general fluidity in controlling one’s horse (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 132–5). Similar to the quintain, many of these activities were not exclusively for the purpose of training and were the focus of popular sporting excursions and spectacles unto themselves well into the following centuries (Fallows 2010: 283–92). On the matter of practice, Duarte writes at length throughout his treatise about the precise motions of mounting and vaulting with a horse, holding and knotting the reins with the limited visibility of a helmet, testing the horse, and trying the lists in advance of a joust. He meticulously describes how one might practice mounting, first with a wooden model, then a healthy horse, and then to gain experience with various breeds and different equipment. These actions are to gain familiarity and confidence, as well as purely as exercise to remain fit and ready for war (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 134–9). Moreover, alongside potential errors that might lead to a loss of control or a missed target, Duarte recommends bringing an observer to practice: “Since there are few jousters who know all their failings, it is a great advantage to have someone who serves in the joust to watch all these things and to identify mistakes whenever we make them” (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 113). Essentially describing a trainer or a coach, Duarte suggests that this observer could provide a clearer view of the action and make appropriate recommendations. He is surprisingly sensitive to how one might react to correction, writing, “This way, when our mistakes are forcefully pointed out, it will make us angry and unhappy with ourselves, which will help us force ourselves to change” (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 109). His concern for the emotional state of the jouster extends to his approach toward training young boys, emphasizing the effectiveness of positive reinforcement: Whatever he does wrong, you should not correct him much, but minimally and gently. If he does well, you should praise him generously—as much as

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you can without lying. You should continue this way with him for a time until you see that he is coming to enjoy learning and practicing, and wants to receive correction and teaching . . . more praise, less blame. —Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 84 This section about instructing boys appears within several chapters that address the importance of experience and knowledge to conquer fear. Although Duarte also dedicates a section of his book to wrestling, the focus is on techniques and he does not mention a trainer, from which we might deduce that wrestling and ball sports, for example, could either be taught by a trainer or were largely self-taught through constant practice. Just as in the twenty-first century in modern gyms some people work out on their own while others pay trainers to guide them through the workout, likewise it would have been easy for wrestlers to help each other perfect their moves in friendly, noncompetitive bouts, without necessarily requiring a formal trainer. For Duarte, training comprises of both physical ability and mental will, the latter of which he examines from the angle of both the desire to train and the resultant confidence from practice (Duarte [c. 1430] 2016: 78–95). His musings include the contemplation of the causes of fear through supposition and inhibitions, and how one might overcome fear by their inherent nature and the grace of God, desire or a sense of purpose and intent, ignorance to danger, proper reasoning, practice, or even simply anger. Duarte defines confidence as a mastery of self through continual correction and encourages one to demonstrate such assuredness through an artful display of skill. Thus, the discussion comes full circle with regard to both physical and mental training for battle and tournament sports. Duarte’s meticulous advice for the coaching of one’s self and youths echoes the methodical process by which Frederick II recommended training raptors. Indeed, young heirs and protégés were often referred to as young birds, metaphors for their grooming to assume positions in society. The processes of training laid down in these instructional treatises form a common theme in ball play, hunting, and tournaments. Even before their mass-produced proliferation in the age of mechanical printing, treatises were the major intellectual products of these sports that perpetuated engagement and fascination.

CONCLUSION Many literary scholars and historians would classify all tournaments as a sport of sorts, and many historical sources conversely frame all sports, including tournaments, tennis, or any exercise as useful for maintaining fitness and mental preparedness for the battlefield (Crouch 2005; Malszecki 2009). This chapter has sought in particular to nuance our understanding of tournaments as a sport through an examination of the specialized equipment developed and dedicated

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to the staging of jousts. Even then, the boundaries remain indistinct. Technological advancements in arms and armor had a profound effect on the actions made possible by particular design components, which in turn pushed the evolution of tournament sports toward highly staged encounters at the tilt. In a joust in the middle of the thirteenth century, Ernaut de Montigny died when his opponent’s lance slid under his helm and pierced his throat. A postmortem investigation, chronicled by Matthew Paris, revealed that Ernaut had neglected to wear a collar, and the lance had a dagger-like point rather than a blunted end, which violated the rules of the mêlée (Crouch 2005: 196). Although tournaments were regarded as practice for war, with injury and even the occasional death to be expected, regulatory precautions and protective equipment were meant to guard against severe wounds. It had been notably odd that Ernaut had forgone some collar of mail or leather. A century and a half later, such fatalities were significantly reduced by helms that had evolved to cover the neck and strap down over the jouster’s chest. As suggested by the sports treatises that continued to proliferate after the fifteenth century, command of one’s equipment was considered an elegantly demonstrable skill unto itself. Despite the extensive training and preparation that went into the fine-tuning and familiarity with all parts of the equipment, there still remained a wide margin for error. In the case of the tournament, complex harnesses developed to focus narrowly on the highly calibrated force of the lance-thrust in a jousting pass and, even as the full-body armor of a jouster sacrificed visibility, mobility, and breathability that divorced the equipment from functions on the battlefield for the sake of defense, the sport remained unpredictable and potentially deadly. Even with the continuing advances of these safety features in tournament sporting equipment, King Henry II of France met an untimely death after a freak accident in 1559 when a stray splinter from a shattered lance lodged just under his eye.

NOTES 1. These numbers are derived from unpublished smelting and forging experiments carried out by Jonathan Tavares with a team of blacksmiths, Michael Pikula and Richard Furrer, and armorer Jeffrey Wasson for the Art Institute of Chicago in the Fall of 2017. 2. Spade-shaped is meant to explain the form of the “heater” style shield, a general arms and armor term used for this specific traditional shape. The term was first used in nineteenth-century arms and armor scholarship, as it resembles the base of what was at that time called a heater (i.e., a clothes iron).

CHAPTER FOUR

Rules and Order NOEL FALLOWS

In this chapter I shall explore questions of rules and order with the goal of demonstrating that such concepts did exist in the medieval age, though primarily in knightly games, and they evolved in complexity as the sports that they framed and defined were also impacted by major technological innovations. Rules of varying degrees of sophistication governed all of the major medieval chivalric sporting activities, including the mêlée tournaments, mounted tourneys, jousts and passages of arms, and foot combats, though each was a distinct activity with its own history and evolution. Jean-Michel Mehl (2010: 10) has succinctly distilled the evolution of rules in medieval sports into three categories— diversification, codification, and “complication” (i.e., complexity and sophistication)—noting as well that rules were influenced at one and the same time by internal factors, such as the continual exploration of new possibilities and nuances, and external factors impacted primarily by sociocultural contexts. Mehl’s categorization dovetails neatly with the overview that I shall provide in the present chapter.

MÊLÉE TOURNAMENTS The earliest sporting activities in the medieval age that could be said to be organized as opposed to improvised were the mêlée tournaments. These were customary events where armored knights could display their prowess and even, as in the case of William Marshal, accumulate great wealth through capture and ransom of arms, horses, and men.1 Mêlée tournaments flourished in the twelfth century, eventually went out of style around the middle of the fourteenth century, and witnessed a limited resurgence in the late fifteenth century when 113

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knights in German-speaking lands revived what they imagined the high medieval mêlée to have been (Barber 1982: 159–82; Barker 1986: 4; Barber and Barker 1989: 13–44; Norman 1992; Crouch 2005: 1; Rühl 1990a and 2009). They took place over such a vast surface area that it would have been impossible to gauge or assess with a high level of precision or accuracy the performance of each and every contestant, or to determine if the rules were being properly followed. In fact, the mêlée tournament has been described as a political rather than a sporting arena, where at a basic level political agendas could be pushed and old scores could be settled, often by targeting a particular individual for revenge of some sort (Barber 1982: 183–92; Barker and Keen 1985; Barker 1986: 45–69). In the thick of a mêlée it would also not have been impossible to change sides during the event itself. The earliest mêlée tournaments were governed at best by sporadic and rudimentary customary rules (Barker 1986: 140–5). An early set of rules purportedly dating to 938 for a tournament held at Magdeburg, for example, focuses exclusively on protocol, with emphasis on proof of lineage and protection of private property. These rules were published by Georg Rüxner in his Turnierbuch of 1530, but were actually transcribed earlier (c. 1510) in an unpublished manuscript (see Stamm 1986: 52; also English trans. by Nickel 1988: 251–3). An added layer of complexity to these rules is that they were in fact part of a fabricated early history of the tournament designed by Rüxner’s creative imagination. In collusion with his patrons Rüxner intended to assign the German tournament a longer history and therefore more (or even more) importance for the nobility as a means of distinguishing themselves from the upwardly mobile citizens of rich merchant cities such as Augsburg and Nuremberg. In other words, the 938 Magdeburg rules are apocryphal. Enough disasters must have befallen the participants and local populations at tournaments that a genuine regulatory shift took place around the thirteenth century. In England, the Statuta Armorum (“Statute of Arms”) of King Edward I, which dates to 1292, not only focuses on lineage, but also contains clear caveats about personal safety, as in the following rule: “No knight or squire attending a tournament shall carry a pointed sword, nor a pointed knife, nor mace, nor sword with sharpened edge during the event. Those who carry the banners may be armed with a mail corselet, leggings, shoulder plates and helmet, but nothing else” (Crouch 2005: 201).2 High-ranking English earls and barons were allowed to wear even more sophisticated armor, possibly because they ran greater risks for being attacked, captured, and ransomed. This document further stipulates that those who violate the rules will be required to forfeit their horse or their arms, and serve time in prison. Juliet Barker (1986: 58–60) has argued convincingly that the Statute of Arms was an attempt to set ad hoc customary rules in stone by writing them into law, and David Crouch (2005: 129) has observed that it seems to have been strictly enforced and was

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therefore a regulatory success. This success would most likely have been due to the external factor of the law eliminating the possibility of the players deciding arbitrarily what counted and what did not, and the internal factor that, at the same time that the law was strictly enforced, it was also widely embraced as a common-sense best practice by the tourneyers themselves, the most levelheaded of whom may have long since been yearning for some sort of formal written codification to attenuate the dangers of their favored sport and thereby make it more palatable. As noted by Évelyne van den Neste (1996: 61), the very presence of rules, no matter how rudimentary, underscores a common thread that runs through all of the medieval chivalric sports, which is that they were never improvised, and were often informed not only by the rules, but also by complex and unwritten political considerations, dynastic tensions, and palace intrigue. This was particularly true at the large-scale mêlée tournaments which hinged upon capture and ransom, and therefore placed the wealthiest contestants in extreme jeopardy. In this type of sporting scenario the rules of combat were often incidental and tended to be overshadowed by other competing factors and tensions.

MOUNTED TOURNEYS The principal difference between the mêlée tournament and the tourney was one of spatial and numerical scale. Documentary evidence concerning the rules of the tourney in the medieval period is scarce and sometimes cryptic. For example, a series of questions about the interpretation of the rules and the types of issues that can arise at tourneys are posed by Geoffroi de Charny in his Questions Concerning the Joust, Tournaments and War, composed c. 1350, but no answers are provided, or if they were they are now lost.3 The most detailed set of practical rules for the medieval tourney on horseback is that contained in the statutes of the Order of the Band, a monarchical order of chivalry said to have been created by King Alfonso XI of Castile c. 1330. Statute XXIII, which concerns the Ordinance of the Tourney, reads as follows: The Ordinance of the Tourney concerns the oath that must be taken by the knights in the tourney, and all of the duties of the judges. 1. Firstly, the judges must check that the swords that the knights are carrying are not sharp along the cutting edge or at the point, but rather that they are blunt, and likewise they should check that the vervelles of the cervellieres have not been sharpened. 2. Moreover, they must make everyone swear an oath that they will under no circumstance strike at the face with the point or the edge of the blade.

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3. Moreover, if anyone’s cervelliere or helm should fall off, he must not be struck until he has put it back on. 4. Moreover, if anyone should fall to the ground, he must not be trampled. 5. Moreover, the judges must tell them to begin the tourney at the sound of the clarions and kettledrums, and when the knights hear the sound of the trumpet they should step out and take their places on each side. 6. Moreover, if the tourney is large with many knights, in which each side carries standards, and the knights have to grapple with each other in order to knock each other off their horses, the horses that are captured by the knights on each team and led to the area where the standards are kept shall not be returned to the knights who lost them until the tourney is over. 7. Moreover, after the tourney is over, all the judges must convene with each other and with the spectators, and after polling the knights, squires, ladies and damsels who had the best view they shall choose one knight from one team and another from the other—the ones who performed the best and carried the victory in that tourney—and give them the prize and the honor of the tourney, and as a token of this, two of the judges shall present a jewel each to the two chosen knights on behalf of the ladies and damsels who are there, as is stated. 8. And if it is a tourney of thirty knights or less, there shall be four judges, two for one side and another two judges for the other. 9. And if it is of fifty knights or there on up, there shall be eight judges for one side and another eight for the other. 10. And if the tourney is of a hundred knights or more, there shall be twelve judges for one side and another twelve for the other. —Ceballos-Escalera y Gila 1993: 67–8 Just over a century later, issues concerning planning, protocol, and the structure of tourneys are discussed by René d’Anjou, titular king of Jerusalem and Aragon, in his Forme et devis d’un tournoi (“Treatise on the Form and Organization of a Tournament,” c. 1460). The principal rule of tourney combat mentioned by King René ([c. 1460] 2018: 17) is that: “My lords the judges pray and require that none of you gentlemen tourneyers beat another with the point or back of the sword, nor below the belt, as you have promised, nor strike nor draw unless it is permitted; and also that none of you attack anyone whose helm falls off until he has put it on again.” As evinced from these sets of rules, the mounted tourney could take place between two contestants or two teams of contestants, and the combat was closely regulated. René’s rules do not specify numbers of participants, but the

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Order of the Band requires as many as twenty-four judges for tourneys that involve one hundred knights or more, doubtless in an effort to improve the regulatory process and enforcement of the rules, which was the major shortcoming of the mêlée. Both sets of rules also share a significant detail in common, in that they focus on what the combatants must not do, as opposed to what they should do. The tourney rules of the Order of the Band and those of René d’Anjou thus obliquely address the knotty issue of cheating. While we might not expect heroic, noble knights to cheat, the rules on this issue remind us that they were human, and underscore the flaws of human nature which often rise to the surface in competitive circumstances, and are often suppressed and concealed in the chivalric romance fiction of the time. That cheating is addressed in the very first rule of the Order of the Band’s statute on the tourney suggests its prevalence. The rule focuses on defensive and offensive tactics, noting that the swords that the knights are carrying must be blunt along the cutting edge and at the point (shades of Edward’s Statute of Arms), and that the vervelles of their cervellieres should not be sharpened. In the 1330s the helmet used for tourneys was a type of metal skullcap called a cervelliere, which had curved surfaces in order to deflect blows with swords or clubs (Blair 1958: 51–2 and 68; Fallows 2017: 69). A mail aventail could be attached to the cervelliere by means of a series of staples, called vervelles, that were riveted down the sides of the face-opening and along the lower edge (Figure 4.1). Over the cervelliere a helm could also sometimes be worn. In the context of tourneys, this particular rule as stated in the Order of the Band refers to the cervelliere or the helm falling off; hence the rules in this instance incidentally specify how the kit was to be worn, and clarify that some tourneys were fought with cervellieres only, and others with a helm as well. The fact that legislation was drafted in order to curb cheating indicates that sharpening the vervelles of cervellieres as a defense against opponents’ hands, and sharpening the edge of the sword blade as a cunning offensive strategy, were not uncommon cheating tactics. Both were subtle and would have been difficult for the judges to see from even a short distance, until someone got hurt. The tourney on horseback remained a popular sporting activity through the Renaissance, and the rules remained essentially the same as the sport’s medieval iteration, with emphasis on absolute equality across weaponry and armor, with a view to ensuring safety and fair play: “weapon for weapon, kind for kind,” in the words of one medieval source (Fallows 2013: 89). Complex rules on proof of ancestry and procedures for admission—what Joachim Rühl (2009: 16; see also Meyer 1985) has called “chivalric apartheid”—further dominated German tourneys throughout the Middle Ages, and they were taken very seriously by hosts and participants. By the fifteenth century, in German-speaking lands, those who violated these types of rules risked being publicly shamed, often by being made to sit on a saddle placed on the fence of the enclosure for the duration of

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FIGURE 4.1: Detail of a medieval bronze tomb effigy of Edward, the Black Prince, 1376. Photo by Angelo Hornak/Corbis via Getty Images.

the tourney, where spectators and fellow competitors could jeer at them (Jezler 2014: 18–19; and 2017: 53–6).

JOUSTS AND PASSAGES OF ARMS An offshoot of the mêlée tournament would become the greatest sport of the medieval age: the joust. This sport was limited to lance combat between two mounted contestants. Until the thirteenth century jousts with lances between two contestants served as preludes to or, in the words of one scholar, “sideshows” (Crouch 2005: 116) at the main event of the mêlée tournament. The thirteenth century marks the rise of the joust, for it is at this time that many knights disengaged from the madness that was the mêlée, preferring instead to compete with each other one on one. In the long term jousting superseded the mêlée tournament in popularity with the result that beyond the fourteenth century the tournament no longer focused primarily on the wide-ranging mêlée but was more of a “happening” consisting of a variety of contained chivalric martial arts. In this new context jousting became a central instead of a peripheral

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sporting activity. Like the small-scale tourneys and foot combats, jousts could be confined to much smaller sites than tournaments between teams, and they were much less disruptive to local communities than the mêlée tournaments (Barber and Barker 1989: 23; Vale 2000; Crouch 2005: 119). In this new context a kind of osmosis occurred whereby rules interfaced and intersected with technique. As John McClelland (1990: 61) puts it: “quantification is a code, a private language and system of thought, in which the athlete articulated his technique.” Some medieval games, such as the earliest iterations of tennis, were always more about skill and technique than sheer luck, especially where scoring was concerned. The players’ skills may have differed slightly on any given day, but generally a more skilled player would be destined to win every time they played against a less skilled player. If the two players were evenly matched some luck may have come into play as well as some outside factors such as wind or heat. Overall, however, tennis has always been a game of skill with luck playing very little into the outcome. Jousting was quite another matter. In the first prologue of the minutely detailed chronicle of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones (1434), a major jousting competition that I shall discuss further below, the main chronicler of the event, Pero Rodríguez de Lena, engages in a debate with a fellow writer who was either a competing chronicler of the event, or perhaps a scribe overseen by Rodríguez de Lena—the exact relationship is unclear— whose name is Robleda (Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 79–80). The two chroniclers have diametrically opposed views of why the contestants win or lose. Rodríguez de Lena is influenced by Aristotelian theory filtered through Brunetto Latini’s thirteenth-century Book of the Treasure, whereby outcomes are determined by strength, skill, strategy, and technique. He takes issue with Robleda, who believes that the winner is simply whoever is favored by Fortune, and outcomes are determined by sheer luck, in which case the rules hardly matter at all. At its core this is a debate about why rules are even needed, or why they should exist. Depending on the length of the tilt, a course run by two jousters would take only around five seconds in total, and the judges would have had to pay close attention to determine the scores. Given the timing, the debate about skill versus luck is at the very heart of the dynamic of the joust. Whether it is called luck, fate, or the will of God, the fact is that jousters had no control at all over much of what occurred in a joust course. On the other hand, they did have control over certain things, and skill, lance technique, physical fitness, and experience certainly counted—King Duarte of Portugal in his Book of Horsemanship ([c. 1430] 2016: 16, 98–101) refers to such qualities collectively as soltura, which is best translated as “fluidity” or “proficiency.” The jousters did their bit as well as they could, but ultimately they were in the hands of fate. Acceptance of this reality would at the time most likely have been a knightly virtue. In this

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sense Rodríguez de Lena and Robleda are both right. The debate between the two could also have arisen from differing viewpoints: that of the spectator versus that of the participant. The latter would have known full well that he worked hard in the lists, managing his horse, operating the armor, and wielding the weapon, all at the same time; while to an external observer, the whole thing could feasibly have looked like a random roll of the cosmic dice, where nobody was in charge of anything that happened. Both points of view are, paradoxically, true in the case of this exciting sport, though there can be little doubt that the rules did impose as much order as could be hoped for. A variety of technical developments also allowed for greater virtuosity with the lance which in turn allowed for, and led to, more nuanced rules and scoring systems. In particular lance-rests, which seem to have been introduced by the French in the last decade of the fourteenth century, and the tilt, which was first used in Iberia or Italy in the 1420s, enabled the contestants to joust in as straight a line as possible and deliver more powerful and precisely targeted strokes than they could by using the strength of the arm alone and riding at large in the open field.4 Although there were multiple permutations of specific types of jousts throughout western Europe, depending in large part on the type of armor and the type of lance-head used for the occasion, it is fair to say that in all cases individual performance was paramount, and every action and maneuver was closely scrutinized with a view to awarding points to, and on occasion deducting points from, each jouster, based on sets of rules which evolved in complexity in tandem with the technological innovations in the specialized kit that defined the sport. Attempts at cheating were seldom successful; loss of composure at the crucial moment of impact was always embarrassingly obvious. Indeed, it was because all actions and maneuvers were so visible—even more so in oneon-one jousts than in team events—that in order to accommodate protocol, special overtly biased rules had to be invented for royal contestants, stating simply that when royals jousted against non-royals they always had to win. Joachim Rühl (2001: 205) has observed that it was the English knight and courtier John Tiptoft who in 1466 “had laid down a method of scoring in the joust for the first time ever in written form.” In fact, for the first documented written rules for the joust we must turn once again to the c. 1330 statutes of the Order of the Band. I cite Rühl here not to impugn his scholarship, but rather to emphasize that new evidence continues to surface as scholars research previously untapped documentary sources, in this case one that provides a new chronology. The statute on the Ordinance of the Joust in the Book of the Order of the Band immediately follows the statute on the Ordinance of the Tourney, and is the final statute listed in the book (followed by a list of the members of the Order). These rules were formulated just under a century before the introduction of the lance-rest and tilt, and well over a century before the Tiptoft rules. Statute XXIV reads as follows:

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This is the Ordinance of the Joust, each time that they have occasion to joust. 1. Firstly, those who joust shall run four courses and no more, and if in these four courses one knight breaks a lance on the other knight, and the other knight does not break any lances, the one who breaks shall be the winner. 2. Moreover, if one breaks two lances and the other no more than one, the winner shall be the one who broke the two lances, but if the one who breaks the one lance knocks off his opponent’s helm with the blow that he dealt him, he shall be equalized with the one who broke the two lances. 3. Moreover, if one knight breaks two lances upon his opponent, and his opponent knocks him off his horse but without breaking his lance, the opponent shall be equalized with the knight who broke the two lances and in addition he shall be given more praise. 4. If one knight knocks down his opponent and his horse, and the opponent knocks him down but not the horse, the winner shall be the knight whose horse fell with him, because it seems that it was the horse’s fault and not the rider’s, and the one who fell but whose horse did not fall with him, it was the rider’s fault and not the horse’s. 5. Moreover, none of the broken lance staves shall be judged broken by breaking them crosswise, but only by breaking them from a direct blow. 6. Moreover, if in these four courses they break two staves, or one each, or they deliver equal blows, the knights shall be judged as equalized. And if in these four courses they never manage to hit each other, the judgment should be that they did not have a good event. 7. Moreover, if anyone should drop the lance while running the course prior to delivering the blows, the opposing knight shall raise his lance and not strike with it, for it would be unchivalric to strike a man who does not carry a lance. 8. And in order to judge all this, there shall be two judges there, and by polling the knights, squires, ladies and damsels who are there, and on the basis of what the judges themselves saw and what these other people tell them, they shall judge these things as is stated here. 9. Moreover, after the jousts are over, the judges who are present shall poll the knights, squires, ladies and damsels who had the best view, and with their approval the Challenger that they deem the winner of the joust shall be given a jewel as a guerdon from the Answerers. And likewise the Answerer that they deem the winner shall be given another jewel as a guerdon from the Challengers. —Ceballos-Escalera y Gila 1993: 68–9

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These rules for the joust are “metarules” in the sense that they are embedded in and framed by what is already a list of rules, regulations, and statutes on the general expectations for conduct and behavior after induction into the Order of the Band itself. The earliest clearly codified rules for medieval sports are always embedded in texts of broader scope, be it a book of statutes such as the Order of the Band, or occasionally in chronicles where the chronicler might include on a whim some or all of the rules for any given competition, or omit them altogether. By the 1430s, with the advent of mega tournaments such as the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones (1434) that were logistically complex and lasted for weeks, rules had become an essential and integral part of the tournament mosaic. They were affirmed, recited out loud, and circulated in multiple copies by itinerant heralds months before the event took place, and again at the opening ceremony, and an official copy was also often signed by the contestants as if they were signing a legally binding affidavit. Of note at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones are a number of proclamations made during the tournament called criees (gridas in Spanish). These were official statements prepared and issued by the judges as the event was unfolding and it became clear that certain rules needed to be clarified, refined, or more precisely nuanced. There were fewer such proclamations in later passages of arms as by then enough lessons had been learned that the rules could be articulated without further amendments. The statutes of the Order of the Band were a closely guarded secret among the members of the Order and therefore would have been shared exclusively among fellow members. There is no evidence to suggest that these rules were ever proclaimed publicly for the benefit of spectators who may not have been members of the Order, as was typically the case in German lands throughout the Middle Ages, for example (Rühl 1990a), as well as the later European passages of arms. Given the emphasis on secrecy, the final rule for the jousts of the Order of the Band is unique in that the spectators—including ladies and damsels who could never be admitted to the Order, but “who had the best view”—are polled by the judges for their opinions about the performances of the participants. As proto-democratic a process as this may seem, it is also clear that in the context of the jousts staged by the Order of the Band the judges have the final word. According to Rühl (1986–7; 1990b), ladies never single-handedly selected the winners at jousting competitions, though they did share an occasional opinion, and sometimes they presented the prizes. However, the documents that lead him to this conclusion are from late medieval English tournaments and it is misleading to claim that they represent a universal truth. Ladies often formed their own courts of chivalry, presiding over the martial competitions, regulating their progression, and even deciding as well as awarding the prizes (Figure 4.2). Women were also sometimes the chief organizers and sponsors of

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FIGURE 4.2: Duke Henry IV of Schlesien-Breslau, winner of the tournament. From the Codex Manesse, c. 1300. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Pal. Cod. germ 848, fol. 11 verso. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

such events, as was the case with Mary of Hungary (1505–58), for example, who was the architect of a most sophisticated and elaborate series of martial competitions and pastoral-themed festivals at the great tournament staged at Binche in 1549 during her tenure as Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands.5

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Evidence from Italy in the mid fifteenth century even depicts women as participants of sorts, as described in the following eyewitness account of a jousting tournament at Ferrara, c. 1435–9: I saw there one day a great festival in the palace to which came many nobles, both men and women, and there was a joust, and after it was finished all the ladies ran on foot in the lists. They had to run as far as a man could throw a stone. At the other end were three pieces of cloth, one of brocade, one of crimson velvet, and the third of cloth of scarlet. The first gained the brocade, the second the velvet, and the third the cloth of scarlet. But if Garandilla de Alcudia had been there she would have run the course three times over and won all the prizes. —Letts 1926: 178 It is not known who the redoubtable Garandilla de Alcudia is, but she must have been fast and famous in her time. As noted by Ian Macpherson and Angus MacKay (1998), textiles and fabrics at tournaments were imbued with symbolic sexual meaning, and although not stated explicitly it is tempting to imagine the male jousters awarding these prizes to the female sprinters as erotically charged love tokens. Another aspect of note at this sprinting competition is the convention of the runner-up, with a total of three prizes awarded, respectively, to the winner and two ladies who took second and third place. This was not unprecedented at jousts as well, especially the more ludic jousts of peace. A set of English regulations for the “Justus of Pees” dating to the 1440s, for example, offer a diamond valued at £40 as first prize, a ruby valued at £20 as second prize, and a sapphire valued at £10 as the third prize (Dillon 1900: 39),6 thus allowing for one champion and two runners-up who could aspire to be champions at some future competition. With advances in technology, the joust underwent its own evolution and was eventually the showcase at elaborate chivalric happenings called passages of arms. These lavish events were underpinned by a courtly theme or a literary conceit, which would then play itself out through the medium of jousting. The origin of the passage of arms can be traced to the city of Valladolid, where Prince Enrique of Castile, his father King Juan II of Castile, and the royal favorite Don Álvaro de Luna hosted the Pasaje peligroso de la fuerte ventura (“Perilous Pass at the Fortress of Fortune”), a series of jousting festivals that ran from Tuesday, May 18 through Tuesday, June 8, 1428 in front of a mock castle or fortress that had been specially constructed in the main square of the city. Although a detailed account has survived about the encounters at this passage of arms, the rules are not described at all. But perhaps written rules were not necessary at this particular event, the most surreal of all the medieval passages of arms. It is no coincidence that the adjective used to qualify this first passage

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of arms was “perilous.” After all, it was hosted by the three most powerful and dangerous men in Castile, and started in a shockingly violent way that no subsequent passage of arms attempted to emulate. On the Wednesday before the main festivities, the aspiring knight Don García de Guadalajara was publicly beheaded upon conviction of forgery in the same square that the jousts would take place. In context, the public execution was thus a sort of macabre theater, a live (and then dead) opening act, climaxing with a severed head and spurting blood. With this brutal assertion of royal power fresh in mind, just a few days later Prince Enrique—a mentally unstable and physically grotesque young man whose facial features, according to one contemporary chronicler, resembled those of an ape (Palencia [c. 1477] 1998: 1:6)—would perform a delicate dance with some ladies in the same bloodstained spot; and at the jousts performed on Sunday, June 6, King Juan II would enter the lists dressed as God. Although the jousting was taken seriously, and one of the prince’s squires, Álvaro de Sandoval, sustained a fatal injury to the chest (the lance did not pierce his armor, so he will have died from a secondary, collateral cause), it goes without saying that in the wake of the opening decapitation no one cheated, and the royals and their favorite always won.7 One of the earliest and best-documented passages of arms is chronologically the second one staged in western Europe, the eponymous Passo Honroso de Suero de Quiñones (“Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones”), sponsored, organized, and hosted by the Leónese knight Suero de Quiñones and written down for posterity in a chronicle composed by Pero Rodríguez de Lena and other scribes in 1434. In accordance with the rules that governed the event the participants were required to joust with sharp, leaf-shaped lance-heads like those used in real combat. The lance-heads had been manufactured in Milan specially for this event, which gives some idea of the great expense involved in staging a passage of arms. The rules further stipulated that the lances available were all of the same length, and had been made in three categories: light, medium, and heavy. These lances would be provided to the competitors by the organizers and no other lances would be allowed. Similarly, the rules required that the participants wear field armor as also used in real battle, and the organizers had extra harnesses made in different sizes for those who were unable to bring their own bespoke armors; yet another hint at the overall expense involved. The armor was primarily of Italian manufacture and design, over any piece of which each combatant was allowed to add one reinforcing piece of their choice, after seeking prior permission from the judges. No shields were allowed. Because of the type of lance-head used at this passage of arms, and the lack of a shield, the body armor itself became part of the official record of the score. This is because, depending on the angle at which the successful blow was delivered, the pointed tip of the lance-head either pierced the armor slightly upon impact, or blunted at the same time as it left an indentation

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in the opponent’s armor. One Iberian jousting master writing in 1548, but most likely reflecting a tradition that had begun much earlier, also recommends smearing the lance-heads with red ochre so that a visible mark will be left on the armor for the judges to examine and evaluate (Fallows 2010: 372). A similar set of rules regulated a joust between the English knight John Astley and his French opponent Pierre de Masse in Paris on August 29, 1438. As in the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, the contestants agreed to joust in reinforced armor equipped with lance-rests for maximum impact, without shields, and with lances with sharp points (Dillon 1900: 36). They also agreed to joust until each had broken six lances, or twelve total for the competition. This was a formidable set of rules designed to showcase the skill set of these two men. The rules of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones are sophisticated and carefully thought out, and they underscore the increasing involvement and intrusion of those who hosted and organized sporting events in the events themselves, primarily as a means of mitigating risk and liability. These rules brought a significant amount of order to a world that could quickly descend into chaos and in which not every knight could hope to emerge as a champion or paladin like the heroes who populated the worlds of contemporary fiction. In the real world there were losers as well as winners, but in this kind of structured and carefully regulated environment it was now at least possible to lose with grace and courtesy. Then as now, the rules that governed medieval sports were tactical, while technique was more strategic, and games could rapidly fall apart, experience lengthy delays, or be stopped altogether if the rules were not properly followed. There was an understanding or expectation that the players and the spectators would actually abide by the rules, and much time could be wasted if they did not. Unsportsmanlike behavior—not to be confused with cheating—has always existed alongside written rules and often involves deliberate and unpleasant interactions between those who play and those who judge. Such behavior may consist of flagrantly challenging the rules or the way in which they are applied, and for the most part it goes unnoticed or is unworthy of comment, until such time that it is so egregious as to be shocking in cultural and historical context. By way of example, Suero de Quiñones attempted to convince the judges at the Pass of Honor to allow him to remove three key pieces of body armor prior to one of his jousts, when the rules that Suero himself had conceived allowed for the possible removal of one piece maximum, and then only with special permission, depending on the piece. As suicidal and preposterous as this request was, Suero’s debate with the judges started at daybreak on Sunday, July 25, 1434, dragged on for several hours, and escalated in intensity. The judges became so irritated that they placed Suero under house arrest and called a halt to any further jousting that day, after which they repaired to their tents to calm down (Fallows 2010: 442–6).

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Any ladies of high social status, who either attended the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones or even passed by, were expected, according to the rules (though the ladies could not possibly have known this until they were so informed), to relinquish their right-hand gloves so that the gloves could then be returned to them by the winners of forthcoming competitions. One lady, Inés Álvarez de Biedma, complied without question and all was well (Fallows 2010: 472–3). Subsequently, however, a group of ladies—a certain Doña Mencía Téllez and her daughters Beatriz and Inés—contested this rule on the grounds that they were not aware of it, or even of the event, and were on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and they had no intention of relinquishing their (presumably expensive) gloves either on the way there or on the way back. This act of defiance and the wholly unpredicted crisis that it caused was manufactured directly by the rules, and from the perspective of the men who generated them was considered “unsportswomanlike.” It precipitated lengthy, heated discussions and a tedious exchange of letters from Monday, July 26 through Saturday, July 31, that once again froze the jousting competitions (Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 323–35). The jousts at this passage of arms were presided over by two elected judges, Pero Barba and Gómez Arias de Quiñones, in accordance with the twenty-two rules which regulated the jousts. Given that the jousts took place consecutively rather than concurrently, two judges, accompanied by a herald and king-ofarms as additional eyes and ears, plus the knowledgeable scribes, the jousters themselves, and their aiders, or assistants, were a sufficient team for ascertaining quality of performance, always on the understanding that the two designated judges had the last word. An important twist to the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones and some subsequent passages of arms is that the jousters were required by the rules to joust anonymously; hence they were not allowed to wear telltale crests or other devices that would betray their identity and lineage, and it was only at the end of each competition that the two opponents would raise the visors of their helmets to reveal their faces. The festive scene of revelation and recognition at the end of each jousting competition at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones culminated with an invitation to dinner issued by whichever one of the ten hosts the challenger happened to be jousting against. Such a schema, which encompassed revelations of identity, lineage, and genealogy, evoked the customary rules of the earlier mêlée tournaments. The final twist of revelation and recognition followed by dinner was the part of the festival that was intended to emulate medieval romance fiction, where revelation and recognition scenes would lead to a felicitous or euphoric culmination of events. There was also, however, a practical reason for this added twist designed to conserve the strength of the ten defenders of the pass, which is explained in the rules that frame the event, as follows:

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The eighth article is—because so many shall be able to challenge a single knight among those of us who are there, or two, that their body could not take it, or if they could take it they could break as many lances as those set by me [i.e., Suero de Quiñones] that the others would never get to perform any deeds of arms—, let all of the knights and gentlemen who shall come there to perform deeds of arms know that they could not challenge any of the knights who shall be chosen to guard the passage, nor shall they know with whom they are performing deeds of arms until they are completed, on the understanding that they may be certain that they shall perform deeds of arms with a knight or gentleman with a coat of arms beyond reproach. —Fallows 2010: 402 One of the complexities of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones is that the performances in the lists were on the one hand staged, in the sense that the participants could not reveal their identities until they had completed their jousts, which in turn were governed by strict rules, but on the other hand these same perfomances were not staged, in the sense that even within the parameters of the governing conventions, the outcome was never certain or predictable, thereby adding to the overall excitement and mystique of the event. The Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones is framed by twenty-two itemized rules for the jousting competitions, over twice as many as the rules for the joust listed in the statutes of the Order of the Band composed just over a century earlier. Two of the most salient are rule numbers three and ten, which read as follows: The third article is that they shall run courses against each knight or gentleman who should come there until three spears are broken at the shaft, counting the spear that knocks down a knight and the spear that draws blood as broken. The tenth article is that, if any knight or gentleman amongst those who come there to perform deeds of arms should wish to remove any of those pieces of the harness designated by me for running with said spears, or just one of them, he should send word of it to me, for he shall be answered to his liking if reason and time should permit. —Fallows 2010: 401–2 These two rules are in direct opposition to those postulated in the statutes of the Order of the Band, in that the number of courses run is unlimited, and the focus is instead on breaking three lances. Not stated in the jousting ordinance in the Order of the Band, but referenced elsewhere in the statutes of the Order, is the expectation that the knights make every effort to attend the jousts and tourneys sponsored and staged by the Order, with a concomitant list of penalties for those who fail to abide by this

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rule. Related to the absenteeism that seemed to plague the jousting competitions referenced in the Order of the Band was the desire to compel robust attendance at the event itself by including a statement to this effect in the rules of passages of arms. All of the rules, and the event itself, would be completely meaningless if few or no participants showed up. Thus, in the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, rule number fifteen reads as follows: The fifteenth article is that any knight or gentleman who, leaving the pilgrims’ route [to Santiago de Compostela], should arrive at the place of the passage that my men and I are guarding, shall not be allowed to depart from said passage without first performing pre-arranged deeds of arms, or leaving behind one of the arms that he is carrying, or the right spur, on his oath that he will never bear that arm or don the spur until he participates in a deed of arms as dangerous as, or more dangerous than, that at which he left it. —Fallows 2010: 403 Just nine years later, a similar rule would make its way into the Pas de l’Arbre Charlemagne (“Pass of Charlemagne’s Tree”) held near Dijon in 1443, as follows: “Item: All princes, barons, knights and squires who travel within a quarter league radius of the passage of arms shall be expected to perform and complete the deeds of arms outlined above, or they must leave pledges, namely, their sword or spurs, according to their pleasure” (Enguerrand de Monstrelet [c. 1400–53] 1857: 6:72). As we have seen, cheating had been addressed since the earliest documented rules for joust and tourney, and was a continued threat at passages of arms, as described in rule number twenty-one of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones: The twenty-first article is that—so that knights and gentlemen, for fear of being tricked, not be dissuaded from coming to the said passage—, let it be clear to all that there shall be present two old knights, proven in arms and worthy of trust, and two heralds, to whom the knights and gentlemen who shall come there to perform deeds of arms shall swear an apostolic oath and homage to submit to everything that they may order about said deeds of arms, to whom the said knights and heralds shall swear a similar oath to protect them from trickery, and that they will judge the truth, in accordance with reason and the law of arms. —Fallows 2010: 405 What remains unsaid about cheating in the earliest extant written rules for the joust is the penalty for such an offence. The chronicle of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones describes a number of incidents of cheating, all of them in the form of modified saddles which put the cheater’s opponent at a disadvantage.

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Still today, while the fundamentals of an existing policy document may remain essentially the same, subsequent iterations of that document may contain certain revised nuances as the rules and policies evolve in tandem with repeated experience, consistent implementation, application, and (mis)interpretation. It is always easier to revise an existing policy than it is to create one from scratch. This explains why in the wake of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones we find the following more direct rule concerning cheating with saddlery in the Rules for the Jousts drafted on the occasion of the marriage of Ippolita Sforza Visconti and Don Alfonso of Aragon in 1465: “And the said jousters shall not use any contrivance for cheating either in the saddles or in the weapons, such as hidden girths or other devices which would prevent their being thrown from the saddle” (Rühl 2001: 196). In the cheating incidents at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, it is the opponent or his aiders who reveal the trickery to the judges, and the chronicle states merely that the judges told the knights who were cheating not to do so again. The penalty goes no further than that (Fallows 2010: 424–8, 477–50). Once again, however, the 1465 Italian rules are more specific, indicating that the knight in question will not only have his horse confiscated, but will also be “expelled from the joust in disgrace” (Rühl 2001: 196). At the English royal court, the Ordinances for Justes of Peace Royal of John Tiptoft, which have been dated to 1466, focus on foul strokes with the lance rather than cheating per se, perhaps due to the presence of royalty at these particular competitions (Rühl 2001: 200–2). As one of the very earliest sets of rules for a passage of arms, those of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones are something of an anomalous experiment, which inadvertently point to the fact that rules are relevant only to the extent that they can realistically be enforced and followed. Jousting rules and scoring systems at passages of arms evolved in a more consistent manner after the 1430s, and took into account the fact that not all contestants who attended these events were champions who could successfully break a lance in each and every course. Beyond the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, another early passage of arms is the Pas du Chevalier du Pin aux Pommes d’Or (“Pass of the Knight of the Pine with Golden Apples”), which took place at the Passeig del Born in Barcelona in 1455. Given the proximity in dates and geographic location to the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, this passage of arms warrants further comment. It is described in valuable detail by the chronicler Guillaume Leseur. Although this passage of arms was on a much smaller scale than the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, the rules point to important lessons that had been learned during the twenty-one years between these two events. The conceit of the Pass of the Knight of the Pine is not dissimilar to that of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones in that the protagonist Gaston IV, Count of Foix, assumes the persona of the Knight of the Pine who fights in service and for love of the Lady of the Secret Forest. There are some major

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differences, however. The rules state that the lances would have rebated coronels that were fitted with small tines, the purpose of which was to gain a purchase on the armor rather than pierce through it (unlike the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, where they were fitted with dangerous leaf-shaped spearheads), and the participants are required to wear jousting armor as opposed to field armor (Leseur [1477–9] 1896: 2:44). Another difference between the two passages of arms is that the Pass of the Knight of the Pine hearkens back to similar rules as those stated in the statutes of the Order of the Band, where a set number of jousting courses is specified; in this case, three total, with four being permissible in the case of a tie. The Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, on the other hand, stipulates that three lances must be broken per competition, which often proved to be spectacularly difficult and exhausting, with the lengthiest competition involving as many as twenty-seven courses before the three lances were broken (Fallows 2010: 412–14). The rules in the case of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones did not align well with the skill sets of some of the jousters and were therefore responsible for overly complicating the passage of arms, needlessly dragging it out, and probably also boring the spectators. Indeed, the contestants at the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones did not come close to breaking the 300 lances that were expected to be broken at the passage of arms, as they ran out of time. The Pass of the Knight of the Pine, on the other hand, is distinguished by the stellar performance of all the contestants, who had been carefully selected for both their nobility and ability, thereby guaranteeing to the extent possible an opulent and aesthetically pleasing event that would have moved along at a brisk pace. In a sense, the rules pandered to the sensibilities of the spectators as well as to the jousters’ safety. A rule specific to this passage of arms is that whenever the Knight of the Pine wins, by breaking more lances than his opponent or making “more beautiful attaints” (Leseur [1477–9] 1896: 2:44), the loser must present the Lady of the Secret Forest with a ruby or diamond of at least 100 écus in value and, whenever the Knight of the Pine loses (which he seldom does), he is required to give the winner a ruby or diamond of equal value so that the winner can then present the jewel to the lady of his own choice (Leseur [1477–9] 1896: 2:45). This rule underscores not only the magnanimity of the participants, but also their extensive financial means. Another passage of arms which, like the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, has its own dedicated chronicle, is the Pas du Perron Fée (“Pass of the Enchanted Perron”), which was staged by the Burgundian knight Philippe de Lalaing at Bruges on April 28, 1463. The rules for this passage of arms offer the contestants a number of alternative methods for their jousts, also taking into account their levels of skill, which the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones did not. Option one is to engage in a joust and tourney, respectively, until just one lance is

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broken and then a maximum of twenty-seven sword strokes are delivered; option two is to run nine courses in a joust wearing a war harness, but with a jousting helm for extra protection; and option three is to run eleven courses in a joust with a war saddle and full jousting harness. The rules further state that, like the Pass of the Knight of the Pine, the lances will have rebated coronels, and the swords for the tourney will be of equal length and blunted (Horn et al. 2013: 102–3). This passage of arms, then, allows for a number of lances broken (though just one, presumably so as not to prolong the potential agony for the spectators) as well as set numbers of jousting courses. The early rules for the joust discussed in this chapter, from the Order of the Band through the Tiptoft ordinances, inclusive of the various passages of arms, that is, from c. 1330 to 1466, are the written vestiges of a European dialogue that lasted for over a century. They all have one thing in common, however, which is that they are formatted in relatively brief, itemized lists. The English rules have an added twist in that some include a primitive attempt at diagrammatic quantification of performance in the form of score cheques. These were a way of complementing the rules by indicating the outcomes that were determined by them. Score cheques emerged in the fifteenth century, reaching their apogee in Tudor times, and only in England. Although Charles ffoulkes is sometimes credited with deciphering the cheques, he had access only to a small selection and did not interpret them correctly. Sydney Anglo subsequently accessed a much more complete selection and has offered the most logical interpretation (ffoulkes 1912 and Anglo 1961; also Rühl 1990b). As well as articulating the rules, the score cheques offer some insight into what actually took place in specific jousts. The cheques consist of parallelograms dissected longitudinally by a line. The top, middle, and bottom lines of the tablets are in turn transected by smaller lines. The number of courses run is indicated on the projection of the middle line. Within the parallelogram, depending on their placement, smaller transecting lines indicate attaints to, or lances broken on, the body or the head, or lance-thrusts that knocked off pieces of armor. Fouls are generally indicated on the bottom line. The most common score consists of clusters of small lines transecting the middle line of the parallelogram, which, as Anglo has cogently argued, indicate the number of lances broken on the opponent’s body (Figure 4.3). The rule book as we would expect and understand such a document in the twenty-first century would finally coalesce and emerge in the year 1493 in Aragon-Catalonia, one of the great centers of chivalric tournaments and martial display. This is a book called Lo Cavaller (“The Knight”) written in Catalan by the Valencian jousting champion Ponç de Menaguerra.8 It went through two editions (1493 and 1532) and is best described as an analytical narrative of rules for the joust that includes a systematic method for scoring points, evaluating foul strokes, and awarding prizes. This book is distinguished from

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FIGURE 4.3: Jousting score cheque relating to Prince Arthur’s marriage tournament in 1501, copied into College of Arms Ms. M.3, known as Ballard’s Book, at fol. 25v. Reproduced by permission of the Kings, Heralds and Pursuivants of Arms.

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the earlier lists and the English cheques in that the author offers a detailed interpretation and assessment of both the rules and the outcomes, as opposed to merely stating what the rules are. A precursor to modern technical writing, the book finally gave the jousters themselves something relevant they could read (or have read to them) about their sport beyond the fanciful world of chivalric romance fiction. If the success and relevance of modern textbooks can be gauged by the number of editions they go through, we must conclude that Menaguerra’s book—though hardly known today—was akin to a modern-day bestseller, given that it went through two editions in the very early days of print culture in Catalonia. The English writer William Fitz Stephen’s vivid descriptions of sports in twelfth-century London have qualified him to be credited by one modern scholar—and rightly so—as the first medieval “sports reporter” (Carter 1992: 123). In a similar vein, as a champion jouster as well as a writer, Ponç de Menaguerra is the first discipline-specific professional sports commentator, and he underscores the fact that as sports evolved in sophistication, in addition to practicing them and knowing the rules, it would become just as meaningful to be able to discuss, analyze, and dissect regulatory practices in an articulate and eloquent manner. As the regulatory systems matured, so the art of sports commentary was born. With regard to the intersection of rules and order, sports commentary in written or oral form essentially appropriates sporting events and places them in a new, carefully crafted rhetorical framework governed by words, deliberative syntax, and intentionality as opposed to unpredictable physical actions and outcomes. It is significant that sports such as jousts and tourneys not only had strict rules for the participants, but also for the spectators. The rules for spectators stipulated that they were to remain silent and sit or stand perfectly still during the event itself so as not to distract the participants and so that the spectators themselves could focus and better “read” the players’ actions. Such rules underscore the preeminence of actions over words as the event was happening and, with the invention of sports commentary, the preeminence of words over actions after the event had happened. This same rule for spectator etiquette, though often not explicitly stated, would subtly permeate other sporting events such as tennis and golf, where spectatorial distractions could mean the difference between winning and losing.

FOOT COMBATS In addition to large-scale mêlée tournaments, smaller-scale tourneys on horseback, jousts, and passages of arms, rules were established for tourneys on foot. Tourneys and jousts were exclusively mounted exercises until the fourteenth century, a chronology that aligns with what the knightly class valued

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and esteemed at the time. However, around the fourteenth century, the English developed a tactical preference for fighting (and winning) battles on foot, which in turn brought a new emphasis to formal chivalric engagements (Capwell 2015: 5–18). Fighting on foot meant that training and practice for it in the sports that orbited around battlefield combat became increasingly important. The new and highly effective English tactic compelled their French archenemies to dismount as well, and spend more time honing infantry modes of attack. In the second half of the fourteenth century there is a rise in formal combats between English and French combatants fought at least in part on foot, and often completely. The incorporated weapons forms diversified, and soon knights were fighting cordial challenges with the spear, axe, sword, and dagger. Some of these sporting combats involved a fenced-in enclosure called a champ clos, which before that point had been a requirement for judicial combats—a separate activity, though related at least tangentially to foot combats in the sporting arena. A rare and possibly unique manual on axe combat known as the Jeu de la Hache has survived, but here the term Jeu indicates not so much a game or sport as the technique of handling a poleaxe (Anglo 2008). The opening three paragraphs of this treatise make it clear that the fighting in this case is preparation for judicial combat or a duel of honor, and the two combatants are recognized champions possibly fighting to the death. By the mid fifteenth century, foot combat was a standard feature of high profile tournaments. Some tournaments had both mounted and foot combats; others were dedicated to one or the other. An important development in formal foot combat was the introduction of the barrier, a long railing set waist-high across which the contestants had to fight with staffs (Anglo 2000: 168–71; LaRocca 2017: 90–3). The first documented foot combat at the barriers took place at Sandricourt in France in 1493, and there are most likely earlier examples for which there is as yet no concrete documentary evidence (Anglo 2007) (Figure 4.4). From France its use quickly spread across Europe. In particular the Italian Wars of 1494–1559 could have acted as a conduit of this new tournament fashion. Certainly in the first half of the sixteenth century tournament combats on foot both in the champ clos and at the barriers were popular, and both types of fighting could occur at the same event, even on the same day. No comprehensive rule books for combat at the barriers and other types of foot combats have survived (or perhaps ever existed, or have yet to be discovered). Even the Jeu de la Hache is about technique as opposed to rules. We must look once again to scattered references in chronicles for clues. Some of these rules have to be considered retrospectively, which is to say that they may appear in a sixteenth-century chronicle and it can be inferred that similar or identical rules existed much earlier prior to their being fortuitously written down at a later date. Itemized rules for foot combats from the Middle Ages are

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FIGURE 4.4: The first documented foot combat at the barriers, Sandricourt, France, 1493. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Le pas des armes de Sandricourt, Ms. 3958-reserve, c. 1493, fol. 8r. Copyright Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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rare though not unheard of. An early example of a non-judicial sporting foot combat took place in the city of Valladolid on Tuesday, June 8, 1428, the rules of which were straightforward. The two contestants, the Castilian knight Gonzalo de Guzmán and his opponent, the Catalonian knight Luis de Faces, were each expected to deliver fifty blows with daggers. This is the one and only rule specified, though the detailed description of this combat further indicates that it took place in two sets: a first set of twenty-five blows ended with a sitdown break of unspecified length to allow for recovery, after which the contestants returned to deliver the final twenty-five blows (Carrillo de Huete [1441] 2006: 26–7). This early documented dagger combat was not choreographed like its later Renaissance iterations and was hard fought by the contestants. By the 1500s axe play and fencing have been said to approximate the art of dance (Van Orden 2005: 81–124; Anglo 2011: 7–18), where the judges would determine who won based on an aesthetic appreciation of the overall skill and dexterity of the contestants, as well as their ability to remain temperate, in addition to focusing on where the blows were struck and the strokes delivered. Balletic foot combats were typically the opening activity and the prelude to a much larger pageant or festival. A more nuanced example of a foot tourney than the 1428 Valladolid dagger combat is described on the occasion of Prince Philip of Spain’s grand tour of Italy and the Low Countries in the mid sixteenth century. At the palace of Binche on St. Bartholomew’s Day (Saturday, August 24, 1549) a foot tourney was staged in the courtyard of the palace consisting of ten knights from France, Italy, and Spain captained by Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, prince of Piedmont and Philip’s first cousin. The team offered to take on all comers from ten o’clock in the morning until sundown. The rules of this tourney required that the contestants engage in different types of foot combats and deliver a specific number of blows. Each pair of combatants was expected to do the following: deliver three blows with the pike; five strokes with the sword; three blows each with the head and butt of the short spear; cast one javelin lance; deliver seven strokes with the two-handed sword; and nine blows with the axe.9 This is basically the same type of standard rule as at the Valladolid dagger combat, though with a much greater diversity of weapons. These rules constitute a list of knightly expectations that at the very least must be met by all of the contestants. There would be one winner per contest. This man would distinguish himself as a knight who not only met, but also exceeded expectations, enhancing his martial reputation as a result. As stated in one of the written accounts of this tourney, few men had the skill set to fight and realistically win with all of the weapons listed. Unlike the Valladolid rules, the rules at this tourney intersect directly with the popular fictional romances of chivalry of the time, and the contestants were expected to approach a row of pillars to which were attached shields with individual

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descriptions of each permissible weapon. They “all touched the one that indicated that they wished to fight with pike and sword, except Gaspar de Robles, who touched all of the arms on the shields, indicating that he wished to fight with all of them” (Calvete de Estrella [1552] 2001: 322). This initial foot tourney was followed by a mêlée combat in teams at the barriers. It was a long day of combat lasting just over twelve hours, and must have required great physical stamina to perform, as well as the intellectual acumen to remember and abide by the rules in the heat of the moment, and to ensure that Prince Philip emerged victorious in every contest in which he chose to participate. When the entire event was over the prizes were awarded as follows: It was by now past midnight when, while everyone remained silent, a kingof-arms began to call the knights who were to be awarded prizes by their names, one by one, and he gave each prize to the knight who was called, and the knight, with great courtesy and respect, presented the prize to the lady whom he loved. For the tourney, the prize for the sword was given to Juan Quijada, and Daniel de la Marcke was awarded the prize for the pike, and Gaspar de Robles for throwing the javelin lance, and André de Bouzanton, seigneur de Querinain, was awarded the prize for the two-handed sword, and Jean de Lanoy de Mingoval was awarded the prize for the short spear, and the Count of Egmont the prize for the axe. And for the mêlée, the Marquis of Berghes received an elaborate coronet as his prize, and the Prince of Spain was awarded a diamond, which he gave to the Princess of Espinoy, and he danced with her, and afterwards with the Countess of Mansfelt. And after the Prince of Piedmont and other knights had danced for a long while with the ladies, the sarao and the festival ended for that day. —Calvete de Estrella [1552] 2001: 325 The ceremony for awarding the prizes for these various types of foot tourneys further underscores the close synergy between combat and dance, where the winners of the tourney during the daytime have the honor that same evening of gently caressing noble ladies instead of weaponry, executing moves as choreographed and circumscribed as those in the champ clos, and expressing their masculinity now through the medium of dance. It is also worthy of note that although Gaspar de Robles fought in every type of competition, he won only one. In this case the rules underscore the impossibility of mastering every single weapon, at the same time as they expose this man’s own hubris in believing that he had.

CONCLUSION The chivalric ethos dictated that knights were accomplished warriors of the highest and most prestigious political and social classes in medieval society.

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This ethos may explain why the documentary evidence on rules is so exiguous, cryptic, and obscure. The rules for martial combat outlined in the statutes of the Order of the Band, for example, were a closely guarded secret. The English score cheques would have had no meaning to anyone outside of the inner circles at court, and were only properly deciphered for the benefit of modern scholars thanks to the pioneering work of Sydney Anglo in the 1960s. Rules are never included or mentioned in any depth in medieval romance fiction, where every virtuous knight is a champion. What the rules for medieval sporting events underscore and expose is another virtue in the evolution of the knightly caste, which is that the participants in sporting events had to accept that not all could be considered champions by any means, and conceding defeat gracefully within the regulatory infrastructure was nothing to be ashamed of. In real life, the majority were just ordinary knights. As the rules evolved, this fact about knighthood became more abundantly clear, but it also made sportsmen of the knights at the same time as it made them much more compelling, accessible, and, above all, human.

NOTES 1. On William Marshal’s life and career, see especially Crouch 1990, Asbridge 2015, and Bryant 2016. 2. Writing in 1986, Barker (191–2) noted that the least corrupt manuscript version of the Statute of Arms is available in the British Library, Harley Ms. 69, fol. 17r, but this version was not available in a modern edition at the time of writing. Subsequently Crouch (2005: 201–2) has provided an accessible and reliable English translation of this manuscript version. 3. Charny’s questions about the tourney have been edited and translated by Muhlberger 2002: 116–37. 4. On the lance-rest, see Buttin 1965, Malszecki 1982, and Fallows 2010: 84–5. On the tilt, see Fallows 2010: 92–4. 5. On the Binche tournaments of 1549, see Capwell (in press) and Bureaux (in press). 6. Dillon’s article discusses and edits sections of a manuscript which at the time of writing—1900—was in the library of Lord Hastings. Hastings auctioned the manuscript at Sotheby’s on July 20, 1931, when it was purchased through Quaritch of London by The Morgan Library and Museum in New York, where it currently resides in the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Ms. M.775. 7. The events are described by Carrillo de Huete (1441) 2006: 19–27. For a chronology of passages of arms, see Nadot 2012: 11–31 and 335–7. 8. The treatise is edited in Catalan and translated into English by Fallows 2010: 323–62. 9. A number of contemporary accounts exist in Spanish, Italian, and German. Juan Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella’s account in Spanish is the most thorough. See Calvete de Estrella (1552) 2001: 321–5.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Conflict and Accommodation MICHAEL HARNEY *

Sport is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in these terms: “An activity involving physical exertion and skill, especially . . . one regulated by set rules or customs in which an individual or team competes against another or others.” In agreement with this definition, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (1986: 154–6) note the historical tendency of sport, within a very wide range of communities, to formulate and enforce rules, to establish governing bodies, and to maintain a personnel of trained and knowledgeable judges and referees. Additionally, suggest Elias and Dunning, the many and varied physical activities we call sports generally show, in the elaboration and enforcement of rules, a preoccupation with “the permitted limits of physical force.” Yet another diagnostic trait is the notion that sport, in order to be sportive, is an activity “not wholly calculable in its course and its outcome” (Elias and Dunning 1986: 156). Sport in the broadly generic sense has been practiced universally and throughout human history. Each culture, and each era in its history, is likely to present specific attributes, local styles that distinguish its sports from those of other peoples and other times. To discuss sport in the medieval context, therefore, we must identify attributes of sport as practiced that seem specific to time and place. “Sport” in a medieval text will represent activities governed by attitudes and expectations arising long before the modern emergence of the many types of activity now classified under that heading. My specific focus in this chapter will be on issues of, and intersections between, conflict and accommodation in medieval sports culture. 141

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CONFLICT There is surely no greater human conflict than war itself. However, there were unique occasions in medieval warfare where war and peace collided through the medium of sports, blurring the lines between the two. At the siege of Winchester Castle in 1141, for example, William Marshal’s biographer notes: The Empress laid siege to Winchester. With her was the Marshal, ever loyal, and a good number of other barons were ranged around the city, bent on its capture. But it was defended by good knights and brave men who, eager to engage in feats of arms, rode out daily to tourney with the besiegers. Philip de Colombières was always at the forefront; young and valiant, he surpassed all, from both sides. —Bryant [1220] 2016: 291 Similarly, in 1327, when the Earl of Moray and James Douglas were laying siege to Alnwick, the chronicler Sir Thomas Gray notes that, all during the siege, “there were grand jousts of war by formal agreement” (Gray [1272–1363] 2005: 101).2 These jousts and tourneys would have taken place in the context of a realm of conflict that has been little studied and merits comment in this chapter: the truce. Although truces were delicate and precarious situations, fraught with treachery and betrayal, the philosophical thrust behind them was that they were intended to be parenthetical moments of peace during battles or sieges (see Bradbury 1992: 296–334, and Pérez Castañera 2013). The culture of the truce at battles and protracted sieges throughout the Middle Ages in Europe was often an occasion for sporting or martial contests between those who were laying siege and the beleaguered besieged as a means of alleviating the tedium and abject misery that plagued (often literally as well as metaphorically) both sides. These contests were something of a paradox: on the one hand, they were brief moments of respite during major conflicts, where the line between real war and knightly games was not sharply defined; and on the other, they ran the risk in such bellicose circumstances of kindling a powder keg that could explode with little or no warning into a full-scale and very real battle. All such meetings were underpinned by enmity real or imagined, arguably the most famous examples of them all being the foot combats between the English and French garrisons stationed at Josselin and Ploermel in Brittany in 1351 known as the Combat of the Thirty, and the jousts between the English and French at St. Inglevert in 1390 during a year-long truce between the two nations (see Barker 1986: 36–8, Barber and Barker 1989: 42–3, Muhlberger 2013 and 2014a: 27–73). Ideal chivalric standards, emphasizing fairness, generosity, forbearance, and other qualities associated with idealized knighthood, along with the notion of engaging in sports purely for the sake of doing so, even in the midst of war, clearly affected the rise and development of sport and concepts of sportsmanship.

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Turning now to medieval literature’s numerous scenes in which sport and conflict, very broadly speaking, figure prominently in the plot, to invoke standards such as those outlined by the OED and Elias and Dunning runs the risk of being anachronistic. To understand sport in the medieval context, we must strip away the accumulated layers of modified, post-medieval chivalric values that have accreted to the concept of sport in the course of the past two centuries. Not that chivalric concepts would be completely alien to medieval folk; the European Middle Ages invented chivalry, to be sure. But caution must be exercised in interpreting the significance of elements that might seem to some degree chivalric. The diffusion of such principles, especially those relevant to sportsmanship and resolution of conflict, was a process that took several centuries. The genre of the chivalric romance, the literary form that most extensively enunciated and popularized chivalric standards, only incidentally and inconsistently conformed to the original values and practices of the military caste among whose members chivalry originally evolved (Duby 1981: 165–70). It is an irony of cultural history, therefore, that the early modern heyday of chivalric romances coincided with the social and economic decline of the medieval knightly class (Nerlich 1987: 1:29–30). The epic and the chivalric romance, two medieval genres particularly occupied with violence, present significant indicators of the generalized reception of sporting concepts, such as recognition of rules by contending parties, and judgment and arbitration regarding compliance or deficient observance by participants. Scenes and episodes in these two genres representing sports-like activities and something approaching a sportsmanlike mentality privilege the sense of authors and audiences of what is deemed worthy of written description. Popular or lower-class sports, such as wrestling, hammer throwing, or the primitive forms of football practiced by peasants and villagers, are not represented in epic or romance. Instead, we find many scenes that invoke styles of conflict and competition typical of the tournament. The latter activity arises in what Richard Kaeuper (2016: 212) calls an environment of “competitive action” supportive of the tournament in its various forms and other, affiliated types of sportive combat and mock warfare throughout western Europe. While the more elaborate forms of tournament, involving expensive armor, weaponry, and horses, were engaged in by males of the social elite, chivalric style and practices were to varying degrees imitated by emulous non-nobles, each individual according to his means. Tournament action, furthermore, tended to be extremely vigorous, with wounds and injuries, both serious and superficial, and occasionally even fatal, a characteristic hazard (Kaeuper 2016: 214). The medieval epic and chivalric romance feature prominent examples of conflict resolution in scenes of man-to-man fighting evocative of the milieu of the tournament. A comparison of representative examples of the two genres hints at a certain tendency over time to enhance the sportive profile of the

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contests in question, and to reveal an increased influence of chivalric tinkering with the presentation of tournament-like elements in literary texts, if not with the actual enactment of real-world tournaments. For example, in the Song of Roland (mid or late eleventh century), the central conflict of the plot is resolved by means of judicial combat (Figure 5.1). The villainous Ganelon, accused of betraying the hero Roland, defends himself, arguing that his actions constituted not treason but legitimate and openly declared revenge against a personal enemy. The council of barons assembled to hear the case are at first persuaded by his argument, their judgment perhaps influenced by the challenge issued by Ganelon’s friend Pinabel to fight anyone who declares the defendant guilty. The noble Thierry then speaks up, declaring that because Roland was campaigning in service to Charlemagne when Ganelon took his revenge, the latter’s actions must be seen as treasonous. Pinabel then challenges Thierry to judicial combat. Each must provide a guarantee: thirty of Pinabel’s kinsmen offer to stand surety for him, while Charlemagne himself backs Thierry. In the ensuing encounter, Thierry slays his adversary by divine intervention, upholding the guilty verdict. Ganelon’s thirty relatives are then

FIGURE 5.1: Trial by combat. Enamel plaque depicting a duel between two medieval French knights, twelfth century. Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images.

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hanged, and he himself pulled apart by horses (Song of Roland [c. 1040–1115] 1990: laisses 270–89). The Song of the Cid ([c. 1207] 2009: 235–45) ends with a similar scene of legal redress determined by judicial combat. The Cid’s two beloved daughters, married to Diego and Fernando, the Scions of Carrión, have been savagely beaten and left for dead by their craven husbands. Rather than take up arms and exact revenge on his own against these two sons of one of the kingdom’s most prominent families, the Cid brings his complaint before the king and demands satisfaction of the Scions of Carrión, leveling against them a charge of treachery. After the Cid has made his case and presented his evidence, the king declares that a duel must be fought to determine the truth of the matter. The Scions of Carrión, along with their brother Ansur, agree to fight the Cid’s three champions. As the three duels—all of them fast-paced jousts (Figure 5.2)—end with the resounding defeat (rather than the death) of the three defendants, the king finds for the plaintiff and his champions, leaving the Scions and all their kin grieving at their individual and collective loss of face. A scholarly consensus has examined the episodes in question in terms of their legal significance. Though the treatment of this theme may be open to many interpretations regarding the author’s vocational background, the accuracy of his legal knowledge, or the relevance of the law to his intended audience, such questions are to be framed, according to this legalist approach, from the perspective of the history of law. Emanuel Mickel (1989: 13), for example, emphasizes the elaborate legalism of the Song of Roland’s depiction of the circumstances of Ganelon’s trial. Similarly, Joseph Duggan (1989: 65–6) focuses, with regard to the Song of the Cid’s trial scenes, on the poet’s preoccupation with legal matters, if not his actual professional expertise in that field. He emphasizes the role of legal experts (sabidores) as a separate function from that of the judges (fieles) who referee the duels. As we shall see below in the section on accommodation, literature, legal proceedings, and sports were in a continual state of conflict in the medieval age as sportsmen and legislators strove to understand the consequences and complexities of an emerging, formalized sporting culture with increasingly sophisticated technologies, dedicated rules, terminologies, and discourses. If we focus on the activity alone, as a type of organized exertion, and on the rules agreed upon by participants and onlookers, we understand why Johan Huizinga (1938; trans. 1955: 78–9) correlates the concept of play with that of legal procedure. The law, observes Huizinga, borrows from play and from sport in order to verify the outcomes of legal disputes. The outcome of sporting events, unknowable beforehand, involves a finality: there is a winner and a loser. The aleatory outcome, interpreted as a sign of divine favor in the case of epic judicial combat, and also of inherent personal superiority in the case of martial confrontations in the chivalric romances, constitutes a verdict whose

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FIGURE 5.2: Knights’ tournament in Camelot Kingdom, miniature of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, manuscript, France, fifteenth century. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

chief function is the settlement of a dispute or conflict. This is analogous to other activities defined by their unforeseeable result, such as tossing a coin. The acceptance of such outcomes by all parties concerned furthers one of the chief ends of law, which is the settlement of conflict so as to control the spread of violence in a community. What may be less obvious, in the case of the epic examples, is the sportive nature of the confrontations. What we see in the trial scenes of the Song of

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Roland and the Song of the Cid are, in essence, judicial duels that exhibit the form and method of sporting contests. The function of these contests as the basis for a legal settlement is a separate issue. The confrontations bespeak a culture of training, of organized participation, of adherence to rules. In the Song of Roland ([c. 1040–1115] 1990: ll. 3863–9) preparations for combat are described in some detail: spurs are fitted to the warriors’ feet; they don their hauberks, while their helmets are fastened on their heads; girding on their swords, they hang their shields around their necks, take their spears in hand, and mount their war horses. Similarly, in Chrétien de Troyes’ chivalric romance Erec and Enide (c. 1170), when Erec prepares for a joust and foot combat against Ydier, the son of Nut, his armor as well as the fighting techniques are described in the minutest detail (Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1170] 2004: 46–50). Such details bespeak a supporting cast of assistants; a technical culture manufacturing necessary equipment; and a horse-breeding tradition providing for specialized types of steeds. Such factors very possibly also suggest the significant presence of knowledgeable audience members whose connoisseurship was taken into account by the authors of these texts. In the Song of Roland and the Song of the Cid the duels take place in a marked-off space; the contestants are allowed to compete without interference from bystanders—a diagnostic feature of sport as we understand it. The Song of the Cid ([c. 1207] 2009: 239), while likewise revealing details suggestive of an extensive material culture supportive of the warrior’s performance, more elaborately emphasizes details surrounding the organization of the contest, such as the strict exclusion of bystanders; the careful marking off of the field of action; the clarification of ground rules and supervision by referees; the drawing of lots with respect to starting positions. The rules of engagement thus refer not only to the comportment of the contestants, but to that of the onlookers as well—in a society frequently riven by feud and vendetta, it is not to be taken for granted that onlookers refrain from intervention while the contest is taking place. Likewise significant is the tacit acceptance of the result by the combatants, their kin, and the other spectators. Depictions of medieval martial sports in manuscript illuminations routinely show the fenced enclosure, as well as uniformed, armed guards standing at attention nearby, whose task is to prevent overenthusiastic spectators from entering the enclosure, or to break up the fight if it gets out of hand (Figure 5.3). Such details are suggestive of the medieval tournament, a phenomenon which, especially in the earlier phases of its development, was often hard to distinguish from outright warfare, but which tended over time to take on the features of sport. Richard Barber (1982: 159) argues that in spite of its undoubted military associations the tournament must be considered a kind of sport, given that it became an end in itself as the knightly caste became less relevant to actual warfare. Tournaments afforded opportunities for contestants to demonstrate

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FIGURE 5.3: A chivalric axe tournament. Photo by Leemage/UIG via Getty Images.

their courage, prowess, and martial skill; they functioned as entertainment for all types of spectators. Probably originating in France sometime in the eleventh century, they are scarcely referred to, notes Maurice Keen (2005: 83), in the earliest French epics, such as the Song of Roland, probably composed in the late eleventh century. However, it is likely that they existed in some form before the

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turn of the twelfth century, which marked the beginning of a burgeoning expansion of the practice, not only in France but throughout Europe. It is thus arguable that the Song of Roland’s account of a judicial duel implies the existence of tournament culture, at least in its earlier manifestations, as a background to the narrative. The combat between the two adversaries might well have been perceived by audiences in terms of that emerging sportive phenomenon. Over time, tournaments—which at first had few spatial limitations, with contending teams ranging widely in towns and over adjacent countrysides—began to enclose the action within defined boundaries. Rules became more coherent and consistently applied; judges and referees took on an increasingly prominent role (Barber 1982: 162–3; also, regarding spatial restrictions, Kaeuper 1999: 164). Tournaments increasingly concentrated more on one-on-one encounters such as the joust, rather than the wild mêlée of earlier manifestations. The staging of dyadic encounters, observes Keen (2005: 87), often assigned opponents the roles of hero and villain. Within this emerging climate of sportive confrontation, there likewise emerged a certain rhetoric within the discourse of chivalry regarding the attenuation of violence. Notions of propriety in the way tournament participants treated one another began to crystallize around such questions as taking unfair advantage of an opponent who had been unhorsed or disarmed; the notion of the unfairness of several contestants attacking a singular adversary; concern for avoiding unnecessary cruelty to the horses involved (Kaeuper 1999: 170–1). In short, concepts of fairness and restraint, clearly premonitory of modern notions of sportsmanship, began to take hold of chivalric mentalities—at least in literature devoted to descriptions of tournaments and chivalric warfare. Whether that literature faithfully depicted actual practice is a much-debated question. At the same time, it is well known that literary texts greatly influenced the real-world staging of tournaments and the conduct of their participants. The latter, for example, often borrowed noms de guerre from epic and romance. This was in accordance with a widely diffused practice, in late medieval and early modern society, of incorporating into tournaments personages, situations, costumes, and decors from chivalric literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (see especially Cline 1945). A reduced version of the tournament is the passage of arms, a chivalric feat of arms involving the defense of a crossroads or other transit point by a single knight or team of knights; all who wish to pass are challenged to a joust. Here, as in the case of tournaments in general, the boundary between fiction and reality is by no means clear. Chivalric romance presents innumerable examples of the same basic situation: a spot is chosen to defend, with none allowed to pass short of taking on the defender or defenders in a joust and tourney with swords. The degree to which literary versions imitate actual examples, or vice versa, is a matter for a debate too complex to rehearse in the present chapter. The most famous real-world example

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of the passage of arms is the one staged by Suero de Quiñones in July and August of 1434 at a bridge over the River Órbigo in the kingdom of León, known as the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones. The event was documented by an eyewitness, Pedro Rodríguez de Lena, who provides many details suggestive of a developed sense of sportsmanship among the devotees of such exhibitions. A preliminary enunciation of ground rules provides in article 2 of the rules, for example, that all foreign participants will be provided with harnesses, mounts, and lances (Fallows 2010: 401). Article 12 stipulates that “no knight or gentleman motivated by good intentions . . . be concerned about his health,” with all necessary medical attention being provided by the event’s organizer (Fallows 2010: 403). Article 16 states that those whose horse is killed in the jousts will be reimbursed by Suero de Quiñones himself (Fallows 2010: 403). A number of the factors just mentioned, characteristic of the tournament in its more developed and sportsmanlike form, are evoked by the narrator of the Song of the Cid. Although, according to Barber and Barker (1989: 91–2), there is little evidence of tournaments in Spain before around 1300, the Cidian epic, probably composed in the first decade of the thirteenth century, distinctly refers to tournament-like activities. On the occasion of the wedding of the protagonist’s daughters in Valencia, recounts the narrator, the Cid and his men “galloped to the arena, where they played at war games.” A few lines later, reference is made to another frequent feature of tournaments, the construction of wooden targets called quintains that allow for a display of tilting prowess (Song of the Cid [c. 1207] 2009: 155). Judging is an important factor, as we see from the king’s appointment of dedicated judges (fieles) whom “no one could dispute” and who assist the king in marking out the boundaries of the climactic contest. Crowd control is exerted, as the bystanders are cleared from the field and strictly enjoined not to approach the designated boundaries “closer than the length of six lances” (Song of the Cid [c. 1207] 2009: 239). Just over two centuries later King René d’Anjou (1409–80) specified that the enclosure be surrounded by a double fence for the purpose of separating the nobles competing in the tournament from the rest of the populace. Intermediaries who stood at the intersection of the participants and the spectators would be placed between the fences, such as the knights’ squires and support staff, often referred to as “aiders,” as well as heralds and physicians. The two fences were a structural gesture that was as much symbolic as practical, one that underscored the distance placed between the noble participants and the spectators. Given that the context of these activities is clearly recreational rather than military, it seems reasonable to infer that the Song of the Cid poet refers to elements familiar to his audience; those elements suggest sportive activities and accouterments either typical of tournaments or at least similar to some of the latter’s characteristic procedures and equipment. While the Song of Roland presents no such tournament-like details, its duel scenes, like those of the

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Castilian epic, are presented as armed encounters involving precisely the same sort of martial arts as those employed in tournaments. In both works, the action of the confrontation appeals to the audience’s sense of what is procedurally normal or correct in such affairs; the judicial interpretation of the outcomes, as noted earlier, is a separate and secondary development, an add-on element that does not detract from the essentially sportive nature of the encounters. Chivalric sporting contests are peppered throughout Amadís de Gaula (“Amadis of Gaul”), the most famous of Spanish chivalric romances. With its earliest extant edition dating from 1508, but with one or more versions widely circulating in manuscript during the second half of the fourteenth century and throughout the fifteenth, Amadis of Gaul became one of the first international bestsellers in the early history of print. Read by all social classes and translated into English, French, and other languages, this adventurous narrative, regarded by many readers as a manual of courtesy (Pinet 2010: 121–3; Montoya 2013: 88), was probably the greatest literary influence on the emergence of chivalry as a code of gentlemanly conduct in the early modern era, not only in Spain, but throughout Europe. The book, furthermore, was held up by spokesmen of the nineteenth century’s neo-chivalric revival—most prominently Sir Walter Scott—as an exemplary expression of knightly philosophy in the civic, social, military, and amorous spheres, while its gallant protagonist was considered the quintessence of chivalric manhood in all its aspects (Harney 2012: 296–8). In its glorification of the character and lifestyle not only of its eponymous protagonist but also that of knights errant in general, Amadis of Gaul presents idealized role models for males aspiring to knightly style in speech, behavior, appearance, and, incidentally, of sportsmanlike conduct on the field of play. The many knights in the story are thus shown to be good in so far as they resemble the protagonist and bad to the degree that they ignore or are unaware of the example set by Amadis. This dichotomous demography of good versus bad knights comprises not only the hero’s closest associates, such as, on the good side, his brother Galaor and his cousin Agrajes, or, on the bad, his most significant adversaries, such as the evil wizard Archalaus, the scheming courtiers Gandandel and Brocadan, or the insolent knight Ardan Canileo. The narrative is likewise populated with a multitude of minor characters claiming the title of knight; all are shown to be either good in their adherence to chivalric standards or bad in their disregard of the same; there are no ambiguous cases. The innumerable one-on-one confrontations in Amadis of Gaul, including a number of jousts and foot combats, constitute one of the genre’s stereotypic features. Such scenes of single combat are to the chivalric romance what gunfights are to westerns, or shoot-outs to today’s action and police genres. As in those modern popular story types, the confrontation is generally between a good character—i.e., one who upholds core values—and a bad character—i.e., one who denigrates or neglects those same values. A significant example of

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these good-guy/bad-guy oppositions in Amadis of Gaul is the judicial duel between the hero and the thoroughly unpleasant Ardan Canileo. The temporal and spatial boundaries of the encounter are carefully delineated: “the king commanded his huntsmen and crossbowmen to enclose with chains and posts a field that was in front of his palace” (Rodríguez de Montalvo [1508] 1974: 1:617). The audience is likewise described in some detail: “all the people of the court and of the town were surrounding the field to see the combat, and the matrons and maidens were at their windows” (Rodríguez de Montalvo [1508] 1974: 1:621). Included among these onlookers are the hero’s beloved Oriana, as well as other prominent women, including King Lisuarte’s queen—a factor recalling the increasing significance of women in the audiences of tournaments (Barber and Barker 1989: 206). The two opponents are fundamentally opposed in their attitude toward competition. Before the battle, Ardan, clearly indifferent to notions of fairness and sportsmanship, accepts from Madasima, without hesitation, the gift of Amadis’ stolen sword, along with the unfair advantage implied by his use of it in the upcoming combat (Rodríguez de Montalvo [1508] 1974: 1:613). By contrast, when King Lisuarte offers his own prized sword in place of the hero’s stolen weapon, Amadis declines the king’s offer, reminding Lisuarte of the latter’s prior announcement that no knight would ever be lent his sword for use in single combat at his court. “Sire,” the hero affirms, “may it not please God that I, who must sustain and support your word, be the cause of your breaking it, after your having made a promise before so many nobles.” With tears in his eyes, the king responds: “Such a stickler you are for upholding all justice and loyalty!” (Rodríguez de Montalvo [1508] 1974: 1:617). To the coarse impression occasioned by the details of Ardan’s unchivalric profile are contrasted not only the exemplary finesse, elegant appearance, courtly manner, and conscientious sportsmanship of the hero, but also those of the latter’s entourage. An acute preoccupation with fairness, for example, is shown by Amadis’ friends and kinsmen Agrajes, Galvanes Lackland, and Guilan the Pensive, who fret at their exclusion from what seems to them a drastically unequal fight between the hero and the almost inhumanly formidable Ardan (Rodríguez de Montalvo [1508] 1974: 1:614). The standards they axiomatically endorse by thought and deed are summarized by the narrator’s description of Enil, “a very handsome, spruce, and light-hearted knight,” who, “for his good manners and great vigor . . . was much esteemed and valued by all” (Rodríguez de Montalvo [1508] 1974: 1:615). The hero, in other words, represents not only himself in the duel, but all those who define themselves by their compliance with his standards of chivalric conduct. Such scenes are probably influenced by the role-playing aspect of tournament culture, with its adumbration of modern-day sport’s more melodramatic manifestations. The latter are typified by the stage-managed, good-guy/bad-guy

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dynamics of American professional wrestling, which, as Roland Barthes long ago pointed out, “represents a sort of mythological fight between Good and Evil” (Barthes 1972: 23). Versions of the dichotomous histrionics exemplified by wrestling, however, are exhibited by other modern spectator team sports, particularly those appealing to massive audiences whose fans often express vociferously partisan support of the home team and equally clamorous vilification of the opposition. Such expressions, often accompanied by mimetic role-playing by fans, likewise frequently involve a mass-projected profiling of opposing sides in precisely the dualistic, quasi-mythical terms suggested by Barthes. The core element of the collective obsession in question remains the age-old fixation on the ostensibly unpredictable outcome of the sportive encounter. The literary examples cited above are therefore of interest not because they plausibly reflect a given stage of social development, but rather because their narrators celebrate conflict and dramatize settings that embody certain assumptions regarding the significance of activities that could be called sportive. The two earlier texts, the Song of Roland and the Song of the Cid, hint at a realworld setting in which the judicial duel, in its essential elements a form of sportive exertion, still fulfilled a legal function in the resolution of conflict. Amadis of Gaul, while authenticating the legal efficacy of such encounters, was seemingly aimed at audiences influenced by a more evolved tournament culture, one that had begun to attenuate combative violence and to nurture behavioral preferences approaching modern standards of sportsmanship. In this the chivalric romance conforms to a historical tendency toward attenuation of the more unruly and violent aspects of certain kinds of competitive or ludic exertions, a cultural movement resulting, Elias and Dunning suggest (1986: 129–32), from the civilizing influence of courtly culture. What they call the “sportization” of such activities thus involves a lowering of what they refer to as “the threshold of repugnance,” whereby participants and spectators become increasingly intolerant of the more violent and destructive actions and styles of play.

ACCOMMODATION An awkward conversation recorded in a fifteenth-century Castilian chronicle is an ideal point of departure for a discussion of accommodation. On June 2, 1453, Don Álvaro de Luna, formerly the Constable of Castile, Grand Master of the military Order of Santiago, and royal favorite of King Juan II, was publicly beheaded for treason in the main square of Valladolid. On the eve of his execution he was visited by the Bishop of Burgos, Alonso de Cartagena. The two men, one an ecclesiastic and politician, the other a (now disgraced) knight, sports champion, and politician, spoke for a while in the cells. During the course of the conversation Cartagena allegedly admonished Don Álvaro, warning him that even though he

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had surrendered peaceably to the authorities he should not expect preferential treatment because of that. His statement was more than Don Álvaro could bear. He gave full vent to his anger against Cartagena for the role that he had played in Don Álvaro’s downfall, telling him that because of the nature of his own profession Cartagena would never have the slightest understanding of the institution of chivalry. The episode unfolds in the Crónica de Don Álvaro de Luna (“Chronicle of Don Álvaro de Luna”) as follows: “Then the Grand Master, barely able to control his anger against the bishop, said to him: ‘Be silent, Bishop! And do not even think of speaking in the same company where knights are speaking: when those who wear long skirts like yours are speaking, that is when you should speak’” (Chacón [1453] 1940: 392). This sudden outburst underscores the uneasy and uncomfortable tension that often existed between the clergy and the knights as each tried to accommodate the other’s values and belief systems. By the fifteenth century this tension was an old story. When the high medieval mêlée tournament was at the height of its popularity, the Church responded with a reaction as subtle as it was cunning, not by prohibiting tournaments, but instead by denying ecclesiastical burial to knights who were killed in tournaments, and therefore threatening their souls. The first of the decrees against tournament culture was promulgated at the Council of Clermont in 1130 during the papacy of Innocent II. This decree set the tone of the ensuing legal discourses around the tournament. This same decree was ratified a year later in 1131 at the Council of Rheims. The inability to enforce it is suggested by the fact that it was ratified again by Pope Innocent II at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. The refined wording reads as follows: We entirely forbid, moreover, those abominable jousts and tournaments in which knights come together by agreement and rashly engage in showing off their physical prowess and daring, and which often result in human deaths and danger to souls. If any of them dies on these occasions, although penance and viaticum are not to be denied him when he requests them, he is to be deprived of a church burial. —Alberigo et al. [1990] 1:200 Pope Alexander III upheld this wording at the Third Lateran Council in 1179. Subsequently at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, in a strange confluence of both conflict and accommodation, Pope Innocent III banned tournaments outright on pain of excommunication, but with a caveat that this ban would be lifted after three years. The wording is embedded in canon 71, which outlines a strategy for an expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land, as follows: Although tournaments have been forbidden in a general way on pain of a fixed penalty at various councils, we strictly forbid them to be held for three

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years, under pain of excommunication, because the business of the crusade is much hindered by them at this present time. —Alberigo et al. [1990] 1:270 The medieval popes had the authority to annul as well as ratify decrees, and this particular decree was annulled just over a century later in 1316 by the evercontroversial Pope John XXII (1316–34) in the very first year of his papacy, though by then far fewer large-scale mêlée tournaments were being staged than in the twelfth century.3 Papal annulments in and of themselves were often complex legal maneuvers promulgated for political rather than religious or moral reasons (the same of course could be said of the decrees, though these were not just the work of one person). The annulments were known as “extravagants” and were made by individual popes—a kind of medieval executive order. They were not subsumed into the earlier decrees, but appended to them, which—inadvertently or not—meant that their overarching validity in comparison with the decrees of the ecumenical councils could be open to interpretation and debate among the intellectual elite. A unique statement by Alonso de Cartagena provides fascinating insight into his own thought process on this matter, looking back to the twelfth- and thirteenth-century decrees through the prism of fifteenth-century Castile. The statement is included in his Doctrinal de los caballeros (“Compendium of the Laws of Chivalry”), as follows: Even though Civil Law appears to tolerate these deeds of arms which take place so that men may demonstrate bodily strength and virtue, Canon Law, however, in one of the Lateran Councils, expressly forbids tournaments, denying Christian burial to those who die whilst tourneying. And a long time after that, Pope Clement V, in an extravagant, prohibited jousts and tourneys in France and in England and in Germany and in certain other parts of the world, under threat of serious penalties, but his successor Pope John XXII, considering how many men were incurring the penalties, revoked the extravagant of his predecessor. To my mind, however, even though the penalties were once again annulled, the prohibition and the penalty stated in the Lateran Council were still in effect. —Cartagena [c. 1444] 2006: 311 The original decree did not, as Cartagena claims, explicitly prohibit tournaments, but as we have seen, denied Christian burial, and the statute of limitations on the absolute ban promulgated at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had long since passed. Cartagena is here perhaps reflecting a shared Castilian political position on the decrees in the extenuating circumstances of the Reconquista. In the 1434 Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, which was far removed from

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the high medieval mêlée tournaments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the sense that it was a much more sophisticated and regulated sporting event in a contained and moderated space, one jouster—Asbert de Claramunt, from Catalonia—was accidentally killed by a direct blow with a sharp lancehead through the sight of his armet. This unfortunate incident inevitably raised the question of his burial. Despite a lengthy written petition by the architect of the event, Suero de Quiñones, Asbert was denied ecclesiastical burial by Sancho de Rojas, the Bishop of Astorga (1423–40), in whose bishopric this passage of arms was staged, and the decree rather than the annulment was upheld (see Fallows 2010: 172–5). This could have been for moral-spiritual reasons, or it could just as easily have been because of existing political tensions between King Juan II of Castile-León and King Alfonso V of Aragon at the time, in which case Rojas’ decision was a harsh political statement against the contingency of knights from Aragon-Catalonia who were attending the Pass of Honor. With the Reconquista moving at a painfully slow pace in the mid fifteenth century, the Bishop of Astorga may also have been using Asbert de Claramunt as a pawn or scapegoat in order to demonstrate forcefully that the knights’ time would be better spent fighting against the Muslims of Granada, as opposed to engaging in sports contests that pitted Christian against Christian. The irony here is that throughout their evolution, tournaments played themselves out on circuits that often attracted an international crowd of competitors. They were ideal opportunities for the clergy to engage in recruitment drives in an effort to convince the participants to go on crusade in the Iberian Peninsula or the Holy Land (Keen 2005: 97–101, Neste 1996: 163–7). Documentary evidence even proves that despite his position on tournaments, Alonso de Cartagena himself, as complex as ever, attended them regularly, not to denounce, but to enjoy as a spectator (Morera 2007: 85–7). Also worthy of note is that his opinion about papal extravagants prefaces a section of the Compendium of the Laws of Chivalry that includes the complete book of statutes of the Castilian Order of the Band, a monarchical order of chivalry said to have been founded by King Alfonso XI c. 1330. This book of statutes contains detailed sets of rules and regulations for the joust and the tourney, so it seems that Cartagena had a strong desire for knights to stop the practice and focus on the bigger picture of the Reconquista, but as a means of accommodating his own dilemma, he assumed the role of a realist and as a working compromise provided what in his view was a reasonable set of guidelines and best practices to be followed if they insisted on engaging in martial sports. Laws that repeal or rescind privileges that people have known and enjoyed are always controversial, often contested, rarely effective, and in some cases even a guilty pleasure that is difficult to resist, leading to a particularly dangerous kind of legal and social schizophrenia. Juliet Barker (1986: 30–44) and David

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Crouch (2005: 20–1, 49–55) note that at the height of the tournament bans in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the organizers of these types of events did not stop, but instead started to stage mêlées as close as they could to national and international borders, located as far as possible from central government, because these fringe territories were the most difficult for the centralized authorities to extend their reach and properly regulate. Large-scale tournaments continued to take place and attracted hundreds, sometimes even thousands of participants, at the same time that the clergy were promulgating decrees to prohibit them, which again points to the disconnect between the clergy and the knights in this instance. Georges Duby (1985: 93) refers to the “parasites”—prostitutes, horsetraders, and moneychangers—who orbited around tournaments as a means of profiting from them. In addition to Duby’s list, the tournaments attracted other parasitical creatures such as quack doctors and bonesetters, freelance blacksmiths of varied skill sets, beggars, con men and cutpurses, large crowds of spectators (including rowdy hecklers), and ecclesiastics. Perhaps some ecclesiastics attended with a view to proselytizing and preaching damnation, but others were there to recruit knights and mercenaries to go on crusade, and it is here where the Church was able to accommodate this particular sport. The history of the mêlée tournament runs parallel to the history of the Reconquista and the crusades in the Holy Land. Essentially the clergy needed the knights to help (re) conquer and protect the Iberian Peninsula (and by extension, the rest of Europe) and Jerusalem from Muslim occupation as much as the knights needed the clergy to facilitate the salvation of their souls; all in all, a means to an end, and therefore a rather cynical reconciliation, but one that would have worked well on and for both sides. By the twelfth century the great mêlée tournament had grown so popular in England and attracted so many participants that it had become a social liability. At the height of the tournament’s popularity the English kings grappled on and off with the notion of accommodation and the prohibitions of the ecumenical decrees that always loomed large in the background. As a temporary measure King Henry II (1154–89) forbade the sport, for fear that it brought together too many heavily armed knights and other combatants whose tempers could flare and cause much devastation. The fourteenth-century French knight Geoffroi de Charny captured this fear best when he wisely observed: “Fine games are good where there is no anger, but when tempers rise, it is no longer play” (Kaeuper and Kennedy 1996: 115). Henry eventually had to restore the privilege, as a long-term solution could not be sought, and forbidding the tournaments risked causing even greater and more hostile civil unrest than allowing them. Subsequently King Richard I (1189–99) followed in his father’s footsteps by allowing tournaments, but he also established a licensing system in 1194, in essence taxing the participants and placing bureaucratic obstacles in their way,

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as they were now required to apply for and purchase individual licenses in order to enter the tournaments. Different fees were assessed according to rank, which enabled the monarchy not only to accommodate tournaments, but also to profit from them (Crouch 2005: 44, 53–4; Saul 2011: 35–6). This mandate was referred to as the Conflictus Gallicus, as it was based on a system that had proven to be relatively effective in France. At the same time as the notion of paying for a license scaled back participation due to the fees involved, it also set a particular tone for the tournament as a special privilege. Richard also licensed the spaces in which tournaments could be practiced, a wise move designed to contain as well as accommodate the sport—it had caused much distress to local inhabitants when fought in the towns, often forcing them to evacuate temporarily so as to avoid injury. Tournaments were permissible in five areas, all of them demarcated by towns, but set in between those towns so as to cause a minimum amount of disturbance and disruption: between Salisbury and Wilton in Wiltshire, Warwick and Kenilworth in Warwickshire, Stamford and Wansford in Lincolnshire, Brackley and Mixbury in Northamptonshire, and Blyth and Tickhill in Nottinghamshire. Finally, under Richard’s rule, foreign knights were not allowed to apply for a license to participate in any tournaments on English soil, a move that seems to have been targeted at prospective participants from France and Scotland, traditional enemies of England at the time, whose presence ran the risk of being inflammatory. Tourneying roisterers could now go to their English-only designated spaces and tear them up with impunity time and time again. It is tempting to conjecture that Richard was influenced in his decision-making process by the seigneurial game parks in England that provided defined spaces for hunting, a sport which, not unlike the tournament, also had its own guidelines and regulatory systems, though these were much more sophisticated and nuanced than tournament rules. It bears pointing out that even though Richard proclaimed that tournaments should be fought on land located between towns and cities, as a means of safeguarding urban dwellers and infrastructures, that is not to say that there was no sport in the towns. William Fitz Stephen’s “Description of the Most Noble City of London” ([c. 1170–83] 1990) includes a broad array of sporting activities that were easily accommodated in the city, without implying any danger to infrastructures or inhabitants, from ball games, wrestling, and ice skating, to small-scale, impromptu mêlées acted out by youngsters who may not have been old enough or sufficiently well prepared to engage in the larger and much more dangerous mêlées in between the cities. Fitz Stephen limits his description to London, but there is no reason to believe that such activities did not flourish in other towns as well, and his encomium of London probably reflects English city and town culture in general. These types of games were noticeably celebrated rather than censured by Fitz Stephen, perhaps because they were contained to

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specific spaces in the city, no weaponry was involved, and they did not compromise what the intellectual elite saw as the higher priority of the crusading movement. Those who played these sports will have experienced the thrill of the adrenaline rush, while stopping short of engaging in the much more dangerous mêlée: the first “extreme sport” of the medieval West. As tournament culture evolved and increased in popularity, King Edward I of England eschewed the role of the distant administrator and took an internal rather than an external approach to the sport, making for a more optimistic narrative of accommodation. Edward was an avid tourneyer himself and, as Nigel Saul (2011: 76) has observed, his experience of tourneying “appears to have alerted him to the importance of the sport in assisting in the renewal and remilitarization of English knighthood.” Edward drew up a Statute of Arms in 1292 to regulate tournaments from the inside. The Statute of Arms formalized the need to address safety concerns at tournaments, as for example in the following decree: No knight or squire attending a tournament shall carry a pointed sword, nor a pointed knife, nor mace, nor sword with sharpened edge during the event. Those who carry the banners may be armed with a mail corselet, leggings, shoulder plates and helmet, but nothing else. —Crouch 2005: 201 Sharpened weapons must have been an endemic scourge at these events, as the Statute of Arms reiterates: “No one can carry pointed swords and knives, mace or broadsword, and if anyone is equipped in breach of this statute, then he will lose the horse on which he rides and may be in prison for as long as a year” (Crouch 2005: 201). And again: “Those who come to watch the tourneying should be completely unarmed, and carry no pointed knives, sword, mace or club” (Crouch 2005: 201). By creating legislation that recognized the actual problems on the ground and in the moment, and then enforcing it, Edward’s approach to the tournament was the most nuanced at the time. As Juliet Barker (1986: 58–60) and David Crouch (2005: 129) have cogently argued, the Statute of Arms seems to have actually worked. By attenuating the inherent risks and dangers caused by the weaponry itself, this new legislation—even though it came from the top down—was conceived by an experienced tourneyer who probably consulted with fellow practitioners on the draft narrative. It had the desired positive and practical impact on the sport and its evolution that had eluded all of the monarchical and ecclesiastic lawmakers prior to Edward. The struggle to reconcile tournament culture with canonical censure and threats to the environment was not of course a uniquely English phenomenon; perhaps what is unique about England is the extent to which the ruling monarchs themselves considered accommodation a high legislative priority. In England as

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well as other realms a distinct kind of homiletic discourse evolved out of the tournament and orbited around the sport, dialoguing with the canons and the knights as ecclesiastics attempted to define what constituted peace and the just war, and how to reconcile these two monumental questions with the nebulous tournament, which lay somewhere in between. The first of these authors is Bernard of Clairvaux, who is believed to have been the author of the first draft of the rules of the Order of Knights Templar (Carlson 1988: 157). In his treatise In Praise of the New Knighthood (1128–31), which is addressed to Hugh of Payns, Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templar, Bernard advocated for a complete overhaul of the institution of chivalry with an emphasis on the knights’ spiritual obligations to the extent that, for him, knight and monk were fused into one being: “Thus in a wondrous and unique manner they appear gentler than lambs, yet fiercer than lions. I do not know if it would be more appropriate to refer to them as monks or as soldiers, unless perhaps it would be better to recognize them as being both” (Bernard of Clairvaux [1128– 30] 1977: 140). Bernard’s ideal knights “foreswear dice and chess, and abhor the chase; they take no delight in the ridiculous cruelty of falconry”; and he lumps jousters in with jesters, magicians, bards, and troubadours, noting that the knights must “despise and reject them as so many vanities and unsound deceptions” (Bernard of Clairvaux [1128–30] 1977: 139). His is certainly one of the harshest criticisms of knightly sports in general, but his dour call for austerity offered no alternatives for his ideal warriors to train, or even just let off steam, which rendered his precepts virtually impossible to implement in any meaningful way. Much like Bernard of Clairvaux, John of Salisbury in Policraticus, VI.8 denounced what he called the knights’ “madness, vanity, avarice, or their own private self-will” (Dickinson 1963: 199) and, instead of advocating for tournaments, hearkened back to the rigorous gymnastic training regimes of the Roman miles, to include learning how to march in close formation, launch surprise attacks and beat hasty retreats, as well as running, jumping, swimming, and lifting weights (Dickinson 1963: 186–9), a style of training that is a completely separate activity from the notion of sports as training for war. John’s ideas were somewhat cliché, however, in that he was arguing for, and invoking a return to a mystical “lost” golden age, as outlined in treatises such as the latefourth-century Epitome of Military Science, by Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, which heavily influenced his own work (see Allmond 2011: 84–91). In reality, the glory days of the Roman miles had long since evanesced, and times and political institutions had changed irrevocably by the twelfth century. To cite a third example of “anti-tournament” literature, Jacques de Vitry (c. 1170–1240) attempted to reach out to the knights through his own homiletic discourse framed by the literary genre of the exemplum. The exempla were short stories designed both to entertain and instruct. Typically a number of

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exempla addressing a broad array of moral, philosophical, spiritual, social, and practical issues would be collected in a single volume. Jacques de Vitry depressingly associated knighthood and the tournament with the seven deadly sins, and in his tirade in exemplum 141 of the Sermones vulgares (“Popular Sermons”) he sternly warns that: “On the tournament ground the irreligious do indeed pace, whence with a millstone and their life’s course they are painfully drowned in the depth of the sea—in the depths of bitterness and pain” (Latin text in Jacques de Vitry [c. 1170–1240] 1890: 62–4; English trans. Carlson 1988: 155). The negative approach to chivalry and the tournament espoused by authors such as Bernard of Clairvaux, John of Salisbury, and Jacques de Vitry, along with the various decrees of the ecumenical councils, amounted to the musings of a distant intellectual elite, musings which most likely fell on deaf ears and had little or no direct impact, given the enduring popularity of the tournament. By offering no alternative solutions, or solutions that were pipe dreams, knightly games and play continued to flourish unabated. The great thirteenth-century theologian, intellectual, philosopher, and former practicing knight Ramon Llull composed his influential Book of the Order of Chivalry c. 1274–6, some sixteen years before King Edward I’s Statute of Arms, as he, too, contemplated how best to serve the knights. Llull was more temperate than Bernard of Clairvaux before him, though his goal was similar: to seek a mutually agreeable compromise, beyond canon law, between the clergy and the knights as a means of accommodating differing expectations, goals, and desires. The book has been described as “at once a homiletic primer . . . to enable clerics to teach, and a chivalric textbook to enable knights to learn” (Llull [c. 1276–8] 2013: 5). Llull did recognize the value of providing reasonable opportunities for aggressive young noblemen to let off steam, and his own idea, like Bernard’s, was to accommodate and contain the knights within a universal Order of Chivalry. Unlike Bernard, however, Llull recognized as well that orders of chivalry were ideal places and spaces for accommodating sports. Georges Duby (1985: 92) has remarked that the knightly tourneyers bonded in “a kind of club.” They could thus be corralled by the chivalric orders, where they could play in exclusivity with and against each other, which in turn meant close regulation, limited numbers, fewer roisterers, and greater esprit de corps. Llull’s goal was to unite all the knights and the clergy as a single united front in the crusade against Islam. This made sense in theory, even if it was generally rejected by the knights themselves, as demonstrated by the fact that the numerous military and monarchical orders of chivalry continued to thrive throughout the Middle Ages without ever consolidating into one single order. In fact, although neither Bernard of Clairvaux nor Ramon Llull could have anticipated it, this philosophical concept for containment and accommodation in a single order later proved to be a failure when it was actually implemented to its fullest extent by Bernard’s beloved Templars, who would rise to such

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prominence that they became a much-feared internal threat to the monarchy more so than to external enemies, and were summarily annihilated during the tumultuous reign of King Philip IV of France. Given his own scholastic background Llull must have known about the papal decrees on tournaments, but he nonetheless advocated in favor of tournaments as training exercises, though within the strict confines of his envisioned Order of Chivalry. He also supported other games, such as the behourd, which was an informal and innocuous type of practice exercise for the tournament proper of the kind played in Fitz Stephen’s London, and “Round Tables.” The Round Tables were popular chivalric happenings in Llull’s native Aragon-Catalonia and other realms that included regulated jousting competitions. They were more sophisticated and opulent than the rufty-tufty mêlées of the time and they tied sport in a formal way to Arthurian literature and pageantry, which would have been of great appeal to the participants. Llull also advocated for fencing practice and, unlike Bernard of Clairvaux, believed in the value of hunting large game for both training and exercise (Llull [c. 1276–8] 2013: 47), though he does not mention falconry. Llull would have recognized the problem of knightly rapine, having been a knight himself, and in his Book of the Order of Chivalry he established the link between the knights and the clergy, but not fused into one being, and instead working in tandem as the physical and spiritual saviors of Christendom and of the Order of Chivalry itself, all underpinned by a vigorous training regime in the form of knightly games. The clergy would have their own training regime, learning Arabic at the monastery of Miramar in Majorca that Llull had founded in 1276, around the same time that he composed the Book of the Order of Chivalry. Llull’s approach was a sound one, and no serious attempts to prohibit or abolish jousts and tournaments would be made in the wake of his treatise. In the post-Llullian world, as we saw in Edward I’s pioneering Statute of Arms, the creation by seasoned practitioners of increasingly formalized and nuanced rules and regulations for sports took precedence over condemnation and futile prohibitions promulgated by distant ecclesiatical administrators. In one of the greatest periods for the emergence and triumph of a medieval sporting culture, accommodation had prevailed.

CONCLUSION As depictions of sporting competitions such as jousts, foot combats, and tournaments became a fantasy element of chivalric romances, the literary exaltation of man-to-man conflict resolution might well have been intended to appeal to a broad range of audiences who, at the same time that they practiced sports, were frustrated with the intrusions of statutory law, one grounded in procedures and precedents, in cases argued and decided upon by increasingly

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autonomous monarchs, prelates, and lawyers. Within this recognizably modern legal and bureaucratic environment that was underpinned by its own literature, the allure of the man-to-man confrontation persisted, abetted by chivalric literature’s cathartic invocation of the aleatory mystique of sport. The charm of the concept endured not only among those who considered themselves of noble background—the real-world analogs of the warriors and knights of epic and romance—but among readers and audiences of popular genres expressive of either a parallel, or at times a nostalgic, craving for irrefutable sportive outcomes.

NOTES * This chapter was completed with additional material contributed by Noel Fallows. 1. The empress in this instance was Matilda, daughter of King Henry I, widow of Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich V, and rightful queen of England; and the Marshal was not William Marshal but his father John. 2. Other examples of sporting competitions staged during truces are cited by Crouch 2005: 4–5, Barker 1986: 30–44, and Prestwich 1996: 231–4. 3. The Councils of Clermont and Rheims and the papal annulment are well documented. See: Barber 1982: 161 and 190–1, Barber and Barker 1989: 17, Barker 1986: 5 and 70–83, Carlson 1988, Cripps-Day 1982: 39–45, Crouch 2005: 9–11, Keen 2005: 94–7, Neste 1996: 159–62. For the wording of the prohibitions in the various Lateran Councils, see Alberigo et al. 1990: 1:200 (Lateran II, 1139), 1:221 (Lateran III, 1179), and 1:270 (Lateran IV, 1215). For the annulment of John XXII, see Friedberg 1959: 2:1215.

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Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation KEN MONDSCHEIN

While for both Johan Huizinga (1938 [trans. 1955] and 1972) and Roger Caillois (1958; trans. 2001) play is a separate sphere from “real life” but from which society itself originates, for Pierre Bourdieu (1978) sport is central to social systems. Habitus, Bourdieu argues, is at least in part defined and negotiated by consumption of “sporting products.” I would like to point to sport in the premodern period as being a similar mechanism for formulating community, group identity, and solidarity. This necessarily required excluding out-groups: the Self can only be defined in opposition to the Other. The creation of difference is therefore integral to these processes and a necessary subject of study not just in the history of sport, but for understanding premodern culture as a whole. None of this should be unfamiliar to anyone who is familiar with the modern sociology of sport. For instance, look at the connection between cricket and “Englishness” both in the United Kingdom and in former colonies. On the more local level, American football teams, whether professional, quasiprofessional (that is, college), or even high school, are important for community and group identity formation. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, football is closely tied with regional and sectarian identity. Likewise with class: sports such as polo, fencing, golf, and sailing are considered patrician; running and yoga are firmly middle class; and the various species of football and boxing have long been working-class pastimes. One marker of modern middle-class or even aristocratic status is remaining active in sport well into adulthood, whereas 165

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sport is seen as a childish diversion in working-class communities, to be given up upon maturity. Race is another field of difference—just as African Americans were systematically excluded from sport for many decades, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Jackie Robinson were powerful symbols of desegregation. So, too, with gender: women were first allowed to compete in the Olympics in 1900, but it was not until 2004 that they were allowed to compete in individual sabre and wrestling—events that had been part of the Games since their inception; participation in boxing, which had been part of the Games since 1904, was only permitted in 2012. Finally, many modern athletes such as triathletes, skateboarders, and martial artists of various stripes formulate personal identities around their “lifestyle sports” and the related communities (Karen and Washington 2011). In the premodern period, when even more of life was lived in common, sport served no less of a communal purpose. Of course, whether we can speak of premodern activities as “sport” in the modern sense is a matter of debate: Bourdieu sees the bourgeois mentality and concomitant emergence of a market economy as necessary to the emergence of this field of activity. However, while Bourdieu was dismissive of medieval sport, he was himself no medievalist and a number of his observations are, despite his reluctance, salient to the premodern world. Furthermore, in premodern Europe, participation in the activities appropriate to one’s peer group, or imitation of a more dominant class, was a means of attaining what Bourdieu and others called “social capital.” Finally, just as athletic performance was an important performance of social identity, so, too, was exclusion from such performance a negative signifier of identity. This chapter will detail several fields of distinction in medieval Europe— division between genders; division between classes; and division between the sacred and the profane, lay and clerical—in an intersectional manner while attempting to draw some common observations in this undertheorized area of study. While much of the literature on medieval and early modern sport has concentrated on noble pastimes such as tournaments and hunting, many, many fields of play existed, and there were far more categories for constructing similarities and difference, some of which are quite foreign to modern categories, and some of which have only emerged as important distinctions in the light of critical race and gender theory. Overall, taking all the evidence into account, we find something surprising and quite against previous scholarship: that hermetically sealed barriers intended to reinforce hierarchies were, at best, permeable. Whenever difference was constructed, we see attempts to elide that difference and claim the social, political, and cultural capital that sporting activity represents. This includes fields such as gender, class, and race, religion, and ethnicity.

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GENDER DIFFERENCES One category of difference—and one that, while seemingly obvious, is accounted for in far too little of the secondary literature on medieval and early modern sport—is between men and women. Sport in the premodern age, especially spectator sport, was normatively for men; very few of the games described in this chapter allowed for female participants. Sport was thus a major way of dividing between the male and female spheres. Ball games were one exception. There are illustrations of women playing ball games, and, among commoners, coed courting-type games. One example is the English stoolball, related to both baseball and cricket. Even if tennis and other aristocratic ball games were normatively male activities, the early-fifteenthcentury memorialist known as “le Bourgeois de Paris” (Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris [1449] 1929: 101) reports that a rather young female player from Brabant named Margot was regularly beating male players in the jeu de paume courts in Paris in 1427; this was unusual enough that it merited special mention. Hunting was another sphere in which at least aristocratic women could participate, but they were restricted in such ways as the types of animals they could hunt, how they could participate (driven hunts, not the chase), the types of hawks they could fly, and how they could ride (sidesaddle). Nonetheless, women remained associated with this pastime, and authorship of The Boke of Saint Albans, a book on hunting printed in 1486, was even attributed to a noble prioress named Juliana Berners (b. 1388). The first treatise on fishing with an angle for sport, published in 1496, was also apocryphally attributed to Berners. Whether chess and cards should be regarded as sports is debatable, but these were certainly another example of games in which women could participate with men on equal footing. The d’Este accounts of the early fifteenth century, for instance, show that the painter Sagramoro was charged with producing inexpensive decks of tarot cards for coed court amusements. Chess was even more significant, and art and literature include numerous examples of women playing chess with men (see Mehl 2010: 325–32). This mixed-gender activity could have definite erotic overtones, such as in the lais of Marie de France or Les échecs amoureux composed by Évart de Conty c. 1400 (Figure 6.1). By removing the physical from the interaction and making the game one of wits alone, it was apparently acceptable for women to compete with men, which also could lead to other sorts of interactions. The Middle Ages also changed the name of the fers (“vizier”) to its modern name of queen, and by 1500 had made it the single most powerful piece on the board. The first chess manual to attest this change was Luis Ramírez de Lucena’s 1497 Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez con 101 Juegos de Partido (“Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess with 101 Opening Moves”), written during the reign of Isabella I of Castile. That Ramírez de Lucena came from a family of conversos incidentally

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FIGURE 6.1: Lancelot and Guinevere playing chess, miniature from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, manuscript, France, fifteenth century. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

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highlights the fact that the intellectual nature of the game also meant, at least in theory, that boundaries of religion or age were irrelevant. Chess aside, I would posit that female participation in more active sport tended to be more common where John Hajnal’s “Western European marriage pattern” (1965) held sway. In Mediterranean countries, where women were kept at home with a high degree of familial control until an early marriage, there was less participation in sports and games; in the north, where they were expected to earn their own dowries, marriage was comparatively late, and there was a relatively high rate of non-marriage, they were therefore freer from domestic responsibilities and able to participate in sports and games. However boundaries might have been reinforced, we cannot make a universal case for women’s exclusion from martial sport in the medieval age. As early as 1325, the Fechtbuch Ms. I.33 in the archives of the Royal Armouries at Leeds, which I will detail more in depth in the section on clergy, depicts a woman named Walpurgis fencing with a sword and buckler alongside a priest and a student. The choice of this name is quite probably not accidental, as Walpurgis was also a saint who offered protection against witches. While the purpose of this figure in the context of this particular Fight Book is unclear, and whether she is meant as an actual person or an allegory, what is clear is that she is acting as a fencer and not a combatant (Figure 6.2). While women could engage in tournament sports at least in literature such as the thirteenth-century German Frauenturnier, and noblewomen such as Joanna of Flanders, who defended a castle during the Hundred Years War, probably received some martial training, Valerie Eads and Rebecca Garber (2014) assert that: “Walpurgis is a woman— not an allegory or an image of anything—who is wielding the sword not to kill or be killed, but for the sheer pleasure of a good workout.”1 In this sense, we can see sport as a performance of masculinity, dividing between male and female. While some women did seem to have performed athletically, the overall tendency was for men to engage in rough play and sporting contests, and women to observe. As Ruth Mazo Karras (2002) has stated for the knightly class, one only became truly male under the gaze of others, displaying one’s skill in front of a coed audience of one’s peers. We can expand this to include not just the tournaments of the nobility, but also urban and clerical pastimes.

CLASS DIFFERENCES The majority of the literature on medieval and early modern sport concentrates on the nobility and their pursuits of tournaments, jousting, and hunting. The relevant scholarly literature on the former includes Richard Barber and Juliet Barker (1989), Noel Fallows (2011), Maurice Keen (2005), Sébastien Nadot (2010 and 2012), and Steven Muhlberger (2002, 2005, 2014a, and 2014b); on

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FIGURE 6.2: A woman called Walpurga or Walpurgis and a monk fencing with sword and buckler from a manuscript known as the Tower Fechtbuch (fencing manual). German, late thirteenth century. Leeds, Royal Armouries, inv. I.33, fol. 32r. Asset Number DI 2013-0072. © Board of Trustees of the Armouries.

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the latter, it includes John Cummins (2003), Lucien-Jean Bord and Jean-Pierre Mugg (2008), Daniel Boccassini (2010), and Richard Almond (2003 and 2009). Since these have been so well studied and I do not wish to fill this chapter with accounts of noble deeds of arms or the minutiae of the chase, I will simply restrict myself to the most relevant and salient points concerning the construction of difference in aristocratic sports and pastimes, and then attempt to describe fields of construction of difference for those of the first and third estates— especially, regarding the latter, for townspeople and martial sport. Of course, doing so is more difficult, as the clergy and commoners are less well represented in the literature. Nonetheless, the appropriation of aristocratic sport in the towns and the countryside—and the nobility’s dismissal or suppression thereof—is an important and little-studied field of differentiation. Jousts and tournaments Following Muhlberger, I will use the term “deed of arms” as an umbrella term for any sort of martial undertaking, and “tournament” and “joust” to talk about an organized contest with rules. Tournaments and jousts are not the same thing: a tournament is a group event, in which teams compete against one another en masse, while jousting (derived from the Old French jouster, “to bring together”) means a one-on-one contest, though the individual contestants may still be organized into teams. However, the distinction between sport, duel, and warfare was not hard and fast in the medieval age. Thus, the Combat of the Thirty—a prearranged series of foot combats between the English and French garrisons stationed at Josselin and Ploermel in Brittany in 1351 (Muhlberger 2013)—which had numerous fatalities, was not a tournament, though it was certainly both a group duel that took place in the context of warlike hostilities and a deed of arms. The fifteenthcentury challenges of Jacques de Lalaing were likewise deeds of arms, and though they were ostensibly friendly and were certainly well regulated, serious injury was possible. Nonetheless, Lalaing’s fights do participate somewhat in our modern idea of sport. A mêlée on horseback with blunt swords and clubs, such as described by René d’Anjou in the mid fifteenth century, was both a tournament and a deed of arms and, since the activity was relatively safe and casualties were not expected, it seems even more familiar to us as a sport. However, there are no clear “winners” and “losers” as defined by a modern scoring system. As dueling, warfare, and other forms of combat à outrance are beyond the scope of this chapter, I will concentrate solely on sportive tournaments and jousts. These mock-combat activities went through considerable changes from the time of their supposed invention around the late eleventh century. It is popular to claim on the authority of the thirteenth-century Chronicle of Tours that Godfrey de Preuilly, who died in 1063, “invented” the tournament, and even

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that the activity’s etymology is tied to the city of Tours; however, this is all spurious. Around 1140 Hermann of Tournai evoked what he called a jeu chevaleresque (“chivalric game”)—almost certainly a reference to a tournament— in 1095 during which the Count of Brabant was accidentally killed. The word “tournament” is first documented by the notary Galbert de Bruges in 1127 in reference to secular chivalric contests that he called tornationes. These early tournaments have been described by the French historian Dominique Barthélemy (2012: 114) as nothing less than ersatz versions of feudal warfare in decline. In these exercises, groups of cavalrymen would practice the coordinated movement needed in a cavalry battle by charging, wheeling around, and pursuing one another. Thus, the name of the tournament ultimately derived from Latin tornare, “to turn” (see especially Barthélemy 2012, and Bougard 2012). The tournament transformed around the eleventh century, becoming prearranged and allegedly non-hostile battles between groups of combatants. These events were almost purely mêlées and were only constrained to loosely defined areas of countryside. By the early twelfth century, a regular circuit had been established in northern Europe. By the early 1300s, the disorder was contained by keeping the participants within staked-off areas. Still, casualties were not uncommon, and the Church condemned tournaments as unchristian on several occasions, notably the Synod of Clermont’s forbidding Christian burial to anyone killed at a tournament in 1130. The ineffectiveness of this ban is probably why other church councils repeated it in 1139, 1215, and 1245. Such games were seen as critical to knightly training. As Roger de Hoveden (fl. 1174–1201) said: No athlete [athleticus] can fight tenaciously who has never received any blows: he must see his blood flow and hear his teeth crack under the fist of his adversary, and when he is thrown to the ground he must fight on with all his might and not lose courage. The oftener he falls the more determinedly he must spring to his feet again. Anyone who can do that can engage in battle confidently. Strength gained by practice is invaluable: a soul subject to terror has fleeting glory. . . . The price of sweat is well paid where the Temples of Victory stand. — Verbruggen 1997: 28 Note here the medieval usage of the Latin athleticus, especially used in antiquity for one who trained in the mixed-martial-arts-like pankration, as synonymous with “knight,” miles. This will be reflected later in this chapter when I discuss learned discourses on exercise and health. Needless to say, tournaments were mostly equestrian sports through most of our period, which in itself made participation a class marker. The aim of the mêlée tournament was to defeat rival knights, win horses, and win prizes and

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ransoms. For some, such as William Marshal, tournaments were an opportunity to make your fortune and come to the attention of powerful patrons. Most of all, though, it was all about the horses, both to battle test mounts and to exchange or capture superior breeding stock. In the Questions on the Joust, Tournament, and War written by the French nobleman Geoffroi de Charny in the mid fourteenth century as a treatise on chivalry, the central issue in the questions on tournaments is, as Muhlberger (2002, 2014b) has put it, “who gets the horse” in case of disagreement. However, Charny is very much concerned with the construction of difference, since his questions concern expected behavior of the knightly class in liminal situations. As the title of the book indicates, jousts and tournaments were not simply games, but (as has frequently been observed of modern war and sport) shaded into political conflict. While tournaments could be used to organize sedition (for instance, the earls who murdered Edward II’s lover Piers Gaveston in 1312 used the pretense of a tournament to organize their forces), they were more often used by rulers as propaganda to reinforce their prestige; for example, the “round tables” held throughout Europe in imitation of Arthurian myth. By the fifteenth century, just as the battlefield came to be dominated by the ruler with the largest tax base and thus army, so, too, did tournaments become a way of demonstrating the

FIGURE 6.3: Inspection of the helmets, 1488–9. Scene from a tournament. Illustration from the Livre des tournois de René d’Anjou, collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images.

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rulership of a wealthy and powerful patron and binding the elite of the realm to him in the drama of chivalric performance. For instance, the French nobles who organized the St. Inglevert jousts of 1390 during a period of truce in the Hundred Years War risked committing lese-majesty, so Charles VI made these jousts an affair of state, paying the expenses from his own pocket. At the same time, the mass mêlée of the tournament began to fall out of favor for the individual performance of skill that was jousting. As jousts came under the control of powerful patrons, emphasis in such contests likewise changed to display and showing the onlookers that one belonged to the ruling class. In René d’Anjou’s tournament book, written about 1460 as a throwback to the old tournament days, the tourney was a society event that included formal dinners and dancing. René describes how the helmets of the tourneyers, bearing their heraldic crests, should be placed on the inner wall of a cloister. Any would-be participant who could not prove sufficient pedigree, or who had acted ignobly, should be disgraced by having their helmets knocked over (Figure 6.3). René did, however, allow that anyone without proper ancestry ought to be lightly beaten as a sort of initiation ritual. In the Iberian jousting treatises studied by Fallows (2011), the writers likewise detail not so much how men jousted, but how they should show their class by their riding, lance-handling, and general demeanor. Under Philip the Good (1419– 67) and his son Charles the Bold (1467–77), the Burgundian court was a center of fabulous, theatrical, allegorical passages of arms. This sort of tournament continued into the seventeenth century—for instance, Elizabeth I’s Accession Day tilts. By the fifteenth century, the tournament thus came to be a means of demonstrating, through martial performance—which included learned gesture, acquired taste, and carefully practiced skill—one’s class and status. As Muhlberger puts it: “Those witnessing as well as those participating were taking part in an act of definition. The combatants . . . were demonstrating their status as armed gentlemen, who deserved the lofty place in society they held, or a loftier one they hoped to hold” (Muhlberger 2005: 16). Besides status, the tournament could also draw distinctions such as age and experience. The fifteenth-century author Pietro Monte wrote that some martial exercises were more suited for younger men, while older men should seek to preserve their health and avoid embarrassment (Forgeng 2018a: 226–7). As Fallows (2010: 80) recalls, novice jousters in fifteenth-century Iberia wore undecorated “white armor,” while experienced men wore surcoats over their harness. Jousting was likewise the domain of young urban patricians, as I shall discuss below, and was universally practiced as part of marriage festivities or by young married men as a performance of virility. In short, tournaments helped to define all manner of social distinction—class, gender, and age—and not just for the ruling class.

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Hunting and hawking Hunting, while not “sport” in the modern sense, is nonetheless integral to understanding the medieval “leisure class.” This stretches back to classical roots and into Merovingian and Carolingian times. Writing in the ninth century, Notker of Saint Gall, in his Life of Charlemagne, and possibly imitating a Persian story, describes Pepin cutting through the necks of a lion and bull (the former having pounced on the latter) with a single blow, thus legitimizing his right to rule before the emissaries of the Caliph of Baghdad (Grant 1905: 141). Carolingian hunting was also essential to building bonds between the ruling warrior caste; the right to control the wild areas and the game within passed to the feudal aristocracy and higher clergy in the same way as political enfranchisement devolved. The various rituals involved in hunting such as “unmaking” the deer were a further enactment of habitus. The association between certain forms of the chase and social status—witness the English aristocracy’s stubborn passion for fox hunting—has persisted until this day. As with modern fox hunting, aristocratic hunting in the Middle Ages, whether by the chase or the driven hunt, was the very enactment of class. It was a concise statement of division from, and superiority over, the lesser orders, the natural world, and the human and natural landscape; an imposition of violent order on the animal kingdom; and part of an economy of gift giving. Hunting boar or deer as described by noblemen such as Gaston III Phœbus was a sort of military expedition, requiring numerous helpers, scouts, dog-handlers, gamesmen, and other assistants. The breeding of dogs, of course, also required the resources of the landowning class (Figure 6.4). Animal fighting, such as bullfights, was another category of masculine performance. This was done from horseback, as today in Portugal, and was therefore the province of the nobility. It was probably conducted in continuity from antiquity. However, hunting was also practiced by the lower orders. Even if boar, bear, and deer were restricted to the nobility (and poaching did occur—on English manors, even taking a bow into the woods was a punishable offense), commoners could hawk, hunt nuisance foxes and wolves, and take rabbits, even if not in their landlords’ warrens. The Boke of St. Albans, for instance, specifies that yeomen could fly goshawk and servants could fly kestrels. Birds such as ducks and geese were also fair game. In France, peasants could hunt small animals and birds outside of hunting preserves; Polish peasants were also less restricted; and in Scandinavia, hunting was more or less universally practiced. In one particular case, that of Strasbourg, no sooner were firearms invented than there were regulations against discharging them too close to town, with the first regulation occurring in 1456. The marshes around the city were teeming with water birds, which must have made tempting targets. The virtual extermination of wolves in

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FIGURE 6.4: Hunters pursuing a deer. Miniature from a copy of the Book of the Hunt by Gaston III Phœbus, Count of Foix, Lord of Béarn (1331–91), made in Brittany c. 1430–40. Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 27 (87.MR.34), fol. 61v. Digital image courtesy of the Getty Museum Open Content Program.

France and England was accomplished by non-aristocratic huntsmen, and commoners served as staff for aristocratic hunts, which could, in turn, lead to social mobility. Nonetheless, the ways in which one could hunt served as important social distinctions. The restriction of common folk from taking anything but what were essentially vermin was a matter of considerable grievance, and poaching

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was not just a way of obtaining protein, but, as seen by the various fifteenthcentury Robin Hood ballads, a form of social protest. Noble ball games Tennis was de facto limited to the well-to-do, as the game was originally and necessarily played on courts in private buildings. The game was invented in France, or at least was most popular there. It is worth pointing out here that “real tennis” is a modern invention, though the game was also called “royal tennis,” after the French le jeu royal de la paume; the Italian terms pallacorda and pallamano are very rare and simply designated variants of the game. The actual ancestor of modern tennis was the outdoor variety known as longue paume. The game was beloved of the nobility, and there are many stories of jeu de paume-related misfortunes. Louis X of France, who was supposedly the first to build indoor tennis courts, died in 1316 after drinking cooled wine following an exhausting game. In 1437, James I of Scotland was prevented from escaping his assassins in Blackfriars Priory in Perth (an important government center) because a drain had been stopped up to prevent the loss of tennis balls. Charles VIII of France died in 1498 after striking his head on the lintel of a door while on his way to watch a game of jeu de paume. Castiglione praised the game as one well suited to performance of courtliness, and its popularity continued through the early modern period—the Tennis Court Oath of 1789 was, of course, sworn on a jeu de paume court—but it was gradually supplanted by modern (“lawn”) tennis in the nineteenth century. Tennis, squash, and other descended games continue their well-heeled reputation today. Nonetheless, like other pastimes, jeu de paume traveled down the social ladder; by the sixteenth century, there were numerous courts around Paris.

GEOGRAPHIES OF DIFFERENCE Just as jeu de paume was played in private courts, jousts and tournaments were walled off from society at large and contained in specialized fields. Hunting, of course, took place in forests, which were private game preserves. While in Roman law wild lands belonged to no one, in the seventh century, the Franks invented the “forest” as land reserved for the aristocracy. The distinction of geography became even more important as the medieval population expanded but the aristocracy’s game parks remained off limits to agriculture and pasturage. This also had the effect of clearly distinguishing between cultivated and noncultivated land, something not so distinct in earlier slash-and-burn agriculture (Bechmann 1990). This “walling off ” took its most extreme form in the duel, which, even if it was not a sport, was certainly a game of sorts. According to the formulae

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established by legal scholars such as Giovanni di Legnano and Baldo di Ubaldi, combatants did battle on a palisaded field granted by a ruler. The temporal boundaries were limited by sunset, one of the combatants touching the barrier, or one or both becoming incapacitated; the duel thus occurred in an artificial time and place, walling off the parties’ conflict from the rest of society (Mondschein 2009: xli). The same may be said, however, for any deed of arms, from the challenges of Arthurian romance to Elizabethan courtly entertainments. In this, they resemble sport, which takes place in its own special time and place separated from the rest of day-to-day life. Sports in the towns Patricians and wealthy members of urban guilds sought to imitate the nobility in their sporting pursuits, but there were also pastimes that were uniquely urban. Martial sports, which aimed to construct difference by establishing the town as a political player in a world where political enfranchisement was tied to military service, were key to this. They provided a show of civic pride and strength, and marking who belonged and who did not, for those who were not citizens could not own arms. Further, patronizing martial sports such as fencing and jousting were a marker of status and wealth. Martial sports in northern Europe We must not imagine that tournaments and jousting were the sole province of the nobility. As Évelyne van den Neste (1996) has observed, “civic jousts” were taking place in the Low Countries by the thirteenth century. Several German cities kept loaner suits of armor for the young men of the town’s ruling families; sixteenth-century examples from Augsburg, for instance, survive in several museum collections. Though the nobility scathingly dismissed these poseurs (in one case, the sand laid down for noble jousting was replaced by animal manure for the bourgeois), if anything, the towns were more active sites of jousting than were castle courtyards. One renowned jouster, Walther Marx of Donauwörth, Bavaria (1456–1511), even made his low birth into a joke by wearing a helmet crest of three sausages on a spike. Even those who could not afford armor could participate in running at the quintain, though their “tournaments” were often mocked by their betters. Matthew Paris relates that just such an incident in thirteenth-century London led to a brawl and a heavy fine laid on the city. Similarly, the anonymous fifteenth-century English poem The Tournament of Tottenham ridicules the potter Perkyn who tries to win the local reeve’s daughter in a farcical jousting tournament. Such country “tournaments”—and well-heeled mockery of them—persisted for a long time, just as did the royally-sponsored versions of the aristocracy.

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Shooting sports were highly encouraged in the towns as a means of urban defense. B. Ann Tlusty (2011) and Laura Crombie (2011) have both written about German and Flemish shooting guilds, and shooting competitions, such as “shooting the popinjay,” were held to keep the men in practice; the ancestor of the modern “turkey shoot.” Though much of the evidence for grand public shooting contests comes from the sixteenth century—for instance, the 1576 match between Zurich and Strasbourg, which was as much a statement of a mutual defense pact as it was a shooting contest—we find mentions of such competitions going back far earlier, even to the Iliad, and there was probably never a time when humans did not compete at skill with ranged weapons (Strickland and Hardy 2005). In England, where all free men were legally enjoined to practice archery, and shooting meets were held every Sunday, the bow served an important purpose for social definition. It was the weapon of the yeoman, the non-noble’s claim to enfranchisement in a violent world. Robin Hood, the quintessential hero of the common people (and a poacher), was also an archer par excellence. Unlike archery, fencing—or at least formal fencing taught by masters in schools—is a middle-class, urban pastime, since it presupposes a market of students and service providers (Mondschein 2009). However, we have records of professional fencing masters as early as the thirteenth century, and it is again inconceivable that some sort of competition did not take place between fencers. Our best documentation of fencing competitions is from the Fechtschule of the sixteenth-century Holy Roman Empire, where, like the ritualized drinking sessions and initiations that were also a part of their world, they served the increasingly proletarianized journeymen’s needs for social cohesion. These competitions were regular events held by tradesmen-Fechtmeister (fencing masters) in the courts of private residences (that is, inns) or guildhalls. However, these events built upon a martial tradition that went back at least to the fourteenth century (Alderson 2014). Olivier Dupuis (2013) has documented two fifteenth-century tournaments in Strasbourg: one a sparsely described mêlée-type event; and the other a welldescribed contest that took place within a fenced-off area in a public place, with fencing weapons supplied by the city. The regulations specified that the audience was to keep good order, that referees would be provided, that fencers would draw their opponents by lot, that bouts would be fenced to one hit and that the victors would remain to fight the next round, and that the victory conditions were inflicting the most bleeding wounds the highest on the adversary’s body. This is a rationalized, if rough, competition, with rules, scoring criteria, and a specially constructed playing field. The possibly apocryphal grandmaster of this tradition, Johannes Liechtenauer, is first attested in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Ms. 3227a, dated to about 1389. The anonymous scribe of the mnemonic verses on fighting makes several

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distinctions, such as between “school fencers” (schulfechter) and “false masters” (leychmeistere) and those who practice “earnest fencing” (ernste fechten). He (or she) also insists that Liechtenauer invented nothing new, but only transmitted an art that was hundreds of years old. This emphasis on past glories is continued as late as the Strasbourg master Joachim Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens (“A Thorough Description of the Art of Fencing”) of 1570, where he praises the martial history of the “German” nation. Fencing, for Meyer, was at once a statement of masculinity and political enfranchisement, and an assertion of a national community rooted in the past. The transGermanic nature of this tradition is attested as far back as the fifteenth century; Paulus Kal, in his Fechtbuch composed between 1450 and 1479, lists seventeen masters from across the German-speaking lands as the Geselschaft Liechtenauers, the “Society of Liechtenauer.” This, together with the presence of transGermanic fencing guilds such as the Marxbrüder recognized by Frederick III in 1487, seems to indicate that fencing culture was spread through the Empire by journeymen. Joachim Meyer himself was a Freifechter, the Protestant rivals to the Catholic Marxbrüder. Martial sports in Italy Patrician jousting and armed societies were also common in Italian cities, and status-appropriate martial training and martial sport were part of any young man’s upbringing. In 1443, for instance, the city council of Bologna fixed the amount the fencing master and professor of mathematics and astronomy Filippo di Bartolomeo Dardi could charge for teaching sword and shield, two-handed sword, and other weapons (Battistini and Corradetti 2016). The council considered it essential that the youth of the city learn such skills. A chief difference is that unlike in the north, which rapidly came to focus on competitions between individuals, many Italian urban sports were experienced communally and highlighted the role of factions. The famed palio horse race in Siena, for instance—the surviving representative of once-popular spectacles in Italy—has horses and riders representing the parishes of the city. As Muhlberger (2014a) points out, these equestrian events, as well as processions and other events, also had martial overtones: horses are symbols of noble prestige and cannot be separated from their military role. Providing a good horse for one’s faction would have also been a sign of distinction for a noble patron. This communal aspect persisted even as such upper-class activities intended to show virtù, such as riding, fencing, and tournament-fighting in armor at the barriers, gained popularity in the early modern era. The quintessentially urban Italian factional sport, organized fighting, was about the commune as a whole defining itself vis-à-vis demonstrating its ability

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to defend itself in a hostile world. Various stick-and-shield fights, which have precedent both in late Roman military training as described by Vegetius and the judicial combat of Germanic law, were held in cities such as Bologna, Florence, Arezzo, Pisa, Faenza, Orvieto, and Lucca around Carnival time in continuity from late antiquity. Aldo A. Settia (2013) hypothesizes that these activities originated from military training, but it is clear they quickly became ritualized sports. They were variously referred to as battles (battaglie), little battles (battagliole), wars (guerre); or, in Latin, fights (pugnae), wars (bella), and games (ludi). The armor used gave the spectacle its name. In Siena it was called the battle of the helmets (elmora), and in Bologna the little grills (gradizolis), for the grilled visors. The use of armor, including decorated helmets, must have been expensive, and distinguished between rich or skilled combatants and the larger mass of participants. There were also distinctions in the form the game took between cities. At Pavia and Pisa, for example, the shield could be used as an offensive as well as a defensive implement. Settia points out that participation in these games was not limited by age or status, and that even clerics sometimes took part. It was not until the fifteenth century that distinctions between classes began to be made. Generally, the format was for two sides to meet at an established playing field to contest a space in the middle, with the losers driven back to a set point or even to their homes. The sides were chosen topographically. Some medieval battles set the northern half of the city against the southern, though Settia finds occasional accounts of smaller divisions mirroring the organization of the militia, such as at Pavia and Pisa. In Pisa, the main factions were also represented by colors; in Perugia, the five factions represented the five gates; in the later battle of the Bridge of Fists in Venice, the Nicolotti and Castellani clans. Such managed battles, though carefully segregated in time and place, could easily get out of hand or even provoke factional conflict; for instance, in Piacenza in 1190, a joint-arms exercise led to a conflict between the city’s cavalry-aristocrats and the footmen-commoners. These ritual wars existed alongside other violent games such as stone throwing—for instance, the battle of the stones (battaglia della sassi) in Perugia, and fists (pugni) in Gubbio and Venice. Stone throwing also opened the stick battles, though the age of the stone-throwers was supposed to be under 14 (Settia 2013: 14), and participation in these sorts of games seems to have been regarded as an activity for young males. As time went on, fights with stones, fruit, and other projectiles as well as with fists, tended to supplant the dangerous stick fights even for the adults. Pisa kept the stick-and-shield form and defensive armor well into the early modern period, and ritualized stone-throwing battles persisted as part of Italian youth culture into modern times. Stone throwing was also echoed in violent medieval snowball fights; Basel, for instance, issued several regulations against these from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries.

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Italian universities such as Padua became places to learn elegant riding and swordplay. The fencing master Antoni Manciolino wrote in 1531 about the difference between friendly fencing, which ought to be elegant and favor flashy moves and athletic performance, and the no-nonsense dueling style. Giovanni Battista Gaiani similarly mentions in 1619 how fencing masters are ennobled by their profession; for him, fencing is above all a display of skill and taste. Everything he does, including fencing before great lords, is for gain, be it pecuniary, or for honor and reputation. Similarly, one could be shamed and lose reputation if one did not fence well before an audience. I mention these postmedieval authors to underscore that the performance of fencing was thus a performance of habitus. This idea goes back to at least the fifteenth century, as well. For instance, Mondschein (2018: 100) examines the Paris manuscript of Fiore dei Liberi, composed for Leonello d’Este perhaps in the 1430s as “not only a unique and beautiful work of art, but a witness to the birth of an aristocratic humanist idea, a piece of official Estense propaganda, and a direct predecessor to Baldesar Castiglione’s famous statement that “the principal and true profession of the courtier ought to be that of arms.” By recasting knightly martial arts in refined Latin, it shows the humanistic interrelation of the academic and practical—and, by extension, courtly and scientific—knowledge.” As fencing gradually evolved into a courtly art, it also became a means of transcending class and even race. Commoners’ games A variety of games and sports were common throughout Europe. Children’s games such as depicted by Peter Breugel the Elder (c. 1525–69) included rolling hoops, hobby-horses, a roly-poly, and a variant of leapfrog called “horse” (Comeaux 2005). Outside of children’s games, fencing, stick fighting, ball games, wrestling, and other martial arts were seen as more serious and practiced by all ages and social levels (Figure 6.5). In a similar vein, Chaucer’s miller wore a sword and buckler and “could go / and win the ram at any wrestling show” (Chaucer [c. 1400] 1982: 34). Varieties of football were also played throughout Europe. Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (1972) trace the various futile royal attempts to forbid this rowdy game in England, which seems to have taken on much of the same character as the prearranged factional fights in Italy, held at regular times such as Shrove Tuesday and between social groups such as neighboring villages, students and townsfolk, guilds, and married and unmarried young men in a town. An English game related to football was hurling, which resembles modern American football. Racing, both on foot and on horse, were also commonly practiced throughout Europe. While Bourdieu (1978) alleges that people of the Middle Ages did not swim, they most certainly did, albeit not competitively so

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FIGURE 6.5: Alexander the Great hosts games among his troops. Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XV 8, Livre des fais d’Alexandre le grant, fol. 99. Burgundian, c. 1470–5. Digital image courtesy of the Getty Museum Open Content Program.

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far as we can discern. None of these common and inexpensive games and pastimes served the functions of differentiation well, though Castiglione’s Federico Fregoso advises the courtier not to wrestle or otherwise engage with peasants unless he is sure of winning (Castiglione [1528] 2005: 85). Archery was an especially English province, and its practice was enforced by law. For instance, at various times during his reign, Edward III forbade commoners to bear swords or, as a proclamation of 1363 put it, engage in “hurling of stones, loggats, quoits, handball, football, club ball, cambuc, cockfighting, and other games of no value” (Hendricks 1991: 85), but rather to practice with bow and arrow on Sundays and holidays. Such laws were enforced as late as the reign of Charles I. As Clifford Rogers (1995) has argued, the arming of commoners and their becoming a potent military force was key to the emergence of modern democracy. Its relationship to the enfranchisement of free yeomen is certainly seen in the aforesaid Robin Hood literature.

DIFFERENCES OF RACE AND RELIGION Whereas race in the modern sense was not an important category of difference for most of Europe in the Middle Ages, religious difference certainly was, and was also envisioned in a race-like manner. Despite this, Jewish fencing masters were not unknown. There are records, for instance, of Jewish fencing masters in thirteenth-century Winchester, England (Brand 2003), and various German Fechtbücher contain references to Jewish wrestling masters serving the Hapsburgs (Jaquet 2017). An “Andreas the Jew” is mentioned, for instance, in Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Ms. 3227a, and another, anonymous Jew in Hans Talhoffer’s mid-fifteenth-century fencing book. Jews also occasionally participated in hunting (Birrell 1982; Jacobi 2013). Jews also participated in equestrian sports. Tosafot Sukkah from twelfth- or thirteenth-century France states that when “young people ride on horses to greet the groom and bride and joust [for sport] and sometimes tear each others’ clothing or damage the horse, there is no requirement to reimburse because this is the commonly accepted way to celebrate at a wedding” (Flug 2013: 2). This is not to say that there was no differentiation on the basis of race in the modern sense. Pietro Monte notes that men of one region like to try their skill against the inhabitants of different places, and writes extensively about the qualities of the people of different countries and regions, including North Africa and Central Asia (Forgeng 2018a: 90–5). One of the earliest postclassical occurrences of Hippocratic environmental determinism then follows an extensive discussion on how to diagnose the “temperaments” of men and what tactics to use against each. Monte thus suggests that athletic performance could serve as a differentiation between different ethnic groups.

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Clergy on exercise The clergy, at least in theory, established their difference by not participating in sport. Rather, following a patristic ideal, they defined themselves as being “athletes for Christ.” St. Benedict mentions work, but not play. Blue-nosed clergymen such as John Peckham, the thirteenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned games such as chess. His contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, forbade games “which they call the bringing-in of summer and autumn” (Hutton 1994: 56); and the fifteenth-century English moralist John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests names wrestling, shooting, hawking, hunting, and dancing as illicit activities for clergy. Nonetheless, monks and other members of the first estate could and did engage in board games and more active recreation such as ball games and bowling, often given a religious veneer. Chaucer’s monk is addicted to the hunting he is not supposed to participate in, and many medieval marginalia depict members of the clergy engaging in ludic pastimes. Religious holidays also gave laypeople a time and place for their own games, though this could also draw condemnation as Sabbath-breaking or ungodly idleness. Even before the Reformation there were those who considered sporting diversions to be distractions from the true care of one’s soul. The author of the English treatise Jacob’s Well, for instance, comes off as a proto-Calvinist who condemned not only dancing and going to wakes, but also hunting and wrestling (Dougall 2011: 7). While gambling and excessive eating and drinking tended to draw the most condemnation, sports, which were often seen as a social good insofar as they could be preparation for war, could also fall under blanket condemnation. Generally speaking, though, Sunday game-playing was tolerated so long as it did not lead to disorder and was not during Mass. In this way, the clergy enforced a segregation of time and place. The clergy, of course, were not those who fought, and so strenuous exercise was inappropriate for this estate. Related to this was the medical discourse, following Galen: exercise was necessary for health, but training as a professional athlete (or a knight) was dangerous and disturbing to the health, an example of immoderation. This, to some extent, imitated the classical patrician ideal whereby exercise was something distinct from manual labor, something undertaken by people of leisure and professionals to preserve their health. Wrestling was good, but dangerous; walking was also good; best of all was a game with a small ball that was similar to rugby or football. An example of practical “Galenism” is the advice from a Spanish physician to his sons studying in Toulouse, c. 1315, found in British Library, Ms. Sloane 3124, fols. 74r–77r and published by Lynn Thorndike in 1931: If you can’t exercise outdoors, either because the weather won’t allow it or it’s rainy, run quickly up the stairs three or four times, and have a large and heavy stick like a sword in your room, and with one hand as with the other

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move it around as if you’re fencing until you’re tired, so that it gets you heated and the fumes can escape through your pores and other superfluities are consumed. Similarly, one must practice jumping, and also sing for the benefit of the chest, and if you do this, you will have a sound body, a sound mind and a good memory, and avoid rheum. Also ball games. All these inventions are not for sport, but for exercise, for too much excessive continual work is to be avoided. — Thorndike 1931: 110–14 Still, clergy could and did participate in secular games. Friar Tuck from the English Robin Hood ballads is mirrored in Germany by the aforementioned Ms. I.33 (see Forgeng 2018b), which depicts a student and priest practicing fencing. Similarly, in the spring of 1278, when some of the students and teachers came into the fields outside of Paris “for the cause of recreation,” Gerard, the abbot of St. Germain, had his bells rung to assemble his troops, and with cries of “Kill the clerks! Kill them, kill them!” they set upon the hapless scholars, causing them to flee to the safety of the city (Denifle 1889: 1:546). This “recreation” must have been rowdy indeed if the abbot felt the need to call out his private army!

MODERN MEDIEVALIST SPORTS It is necessary to address contemporary medievalism and sport, as modern medievalist recreations often center around sporting contests. The largest, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), is organized as a “king game” where leadership of the various groups, or “kingdoms,” devolves on the winner (almost always male) of biannual stick-fighting tournaments. These tournaments are self-scored, with honesty enforced by the spectators (Cramer 2009). Other popular modern medievalist competitions include competitive Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) and competitive jousting. All of these competitive medievalist activities serve purposes of differentiation for creating hierarchy within the group, since authority is often seen as deriving from competitive success. Furthermore, they differentiate between a “colonizable” medieval age that is seen, in a remnant of Victorian attitudes, as more masculine, primitive, and authentic; and a modern world that is perceived as decadent, effeminate, and inauthentic. Heavy is to be valued over light; strength over subtlety; earlier over later. This also serves to distinguish between genders, since women rarely have the raw strength and power to succeed in such games, not to mention the size and mass to avoid injury. It is also ableist, distinguishing between those with athletic ability and those without, and even sizeist. I would also be remiss if I did not mention the use of the medieval age as a symbol of a purer, culturally homogeneous time by certain sectors of right-wing

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nationalistic movements. The appropriation of the accouterments of knightly sport—the tournament—is part of this. In this way, playing at knights and competitive “knightly” sport can be part of writing a very modern fantasy of a masculine, primitive, and authentic age, one that also happens to be ethnically homogeneous. However, such pursuits are also antidotes to what Robert Putnam (2000) identifies as declining civic engagement in modern America. Participation in these communities is a source of social capital—albeit of a rarified sort—and at once a protest against, and reaction to, the technologically driven “individualizing” of American society. In finding a common interest in the past, however imagined, modern medievalists are both defining themselves and their values and perhaps pointing a way to a more connected future.

CONCLUSION While I could make normative statements about inclusion and exclusion in sport in the premodern world, the more we delve into the original sources, the more we see exceptions to the rule. Sports previously thought to be restricted to the nobility, in fact, traveled down the social ladder. Boundaries, once drawn, would be smudged or even erased, and must be redrawn again. At the same time, sports could define communities and establish hierarchies within those communities. Factional fighting drew boundaries around communities and placed them in opposition to one another. Ball games could serve similar purposes. Jousting, fencing, and shooting sports proclaimed one’s willingness to fight in a world where political capital was given to the warrior-aristocracy, and created communities among the practitioners. Finally, excellence in a sport, particularly a martial sport, could be a means of social mobility. Today, the idea of the medieval age has been appropriated for a number of reasons, including creating communities, gaining social capital within those communities, and overcoming the anomie of modern life. The form these appropriations have taken often place sportive competition at the forefront. In this way, the Middle Ages themselves have become a game of a sort for purposes of distinguishing between peoples and times.

NOTES 1. Women who actually fought in wars or duels, such as Joanna or Catalina de Erauso, naturally do not fall under the scope of this chapter, though, of course, this was not normative behavior.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Minds, Bodies, and Identities GRANT A. GEARHART

The film A Knight’s Tale (2001) suggests that the son of a laborer, who adopts the identity of a knight, could challenge the status quo by defeating other natural-born noblemen in tournaments. William Thatcher assumes the name Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein from Gelderland; and, with the help of one Geoffrey Chaucer, William creates a backstory to legitimize his genealogy and begins participating in tournaments, winning more fame and fortune. Despite his successes, by the end of the film he must confront the reality that he is not of noble lineage, and therefore technically disqualified from knighthood. William’s nemesis, Count Adhemar, discovers he has falsified his nobility and turns him in to the authorities. Then, with true Hollywood flair, the Black Prince comes to William’s aid, applauding his character and dubbing him “Sir William.” In the end, William embraces his birth name, defeats Adhemar in the joust, and wins the love of his lady and the respect of his prince as a champion athlete. The idea that a laborer could alter his identity and, through exceptional martial and athletic skill, redirect the trajectory of his life from rags to riches is, in truth, a highly unlikely scenario in medieval Europe. Post-medieval Hollywood enjoys telling stories about athletes who overcome less than ideal circumstances as youths in order to find success in the sporting arena, and who sometimes go on to become iconic global figures. Athletic competition also played an important role in shaping identity in the medieval age, but quite differently than modern athletes. For the people who lived in what we refer to today as the medieval period, it was impossible, as 189

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Johan Huizinga (1938; trans. 1955: 89) affirms, to fully separate sport from war, for: “Ever since words existed for fighting and playing, men have been wont to call war a game.” Sports served as important training grounds for battle, but also provided avenues to demonstrate and solidify individual prowess. This mindset recalls the ancient Athenian ideal of manliness. Herbert Sussman (2012: 42–3) explains that “young Athenians were expected to train their bodies,” and the Greeks “treasured athletic skill and saw the trained male body as the sign of true manliness.” In other words, one’s body displayed and affirmed one’s identity. This chapter explores the connections between the mind, the body, and identity through sport, paying particular attention to the body’s role in constructing masculinity in the European Middle Ages. Much like today, discerning the concept of identity in the medieval age poses challenges. The period of time historians commonly define to be between 600 and 1450 experienced tremendous changes after the fall of the Roman Empire. Suddenly, new kingdoms spawned new cultures, languages, and subsequently new identities. Christianity became the driving cultural force, and Christians believed themselves to be born into and part of a cosmic structure created by God that consisted of three “orders”: those who prayed, those who fought, and those who worked (Duby 1980). Royalty and nobility were birthrights bestowed by God and passed down through hereditary claims, allowing the privileged from this category to enjoy greater spoils in life. The warriors charged with protecting their civilizations—commonly known as knights—emerged from this privileged class and trained consistently to fight. Others, such as the laborers, were likewise born into this fixed social structure, and their primary vocation revolved around working to support their families and their landholding lords. The essential principal was to embody one’s identity according to one’s position in society.

WOMEN AND SPORT Evidence suggests that, albeit on a somewhat limited basis, women enjoyed physical activity for recreation, competition, or, in unique cases, war. But, as John Marshall Carter says, most of what is known about women’s recreation appears in fictional literature focusing nearly exclusively on noble women. He goes on to list nine thirteenth-century English cases (five of them in 1276) drawn from the archives that mention women dying when involved, however tangentially, in recreational activities: two drowned while swimming; two drowned when their boat capsized; one was killed when watching an archery contest, presumably by a misdirected arrow; one was accidentally stabbed; and two were killed in arguments that arose from a gaming dispute (Carter 1992: 83–4). In truth, however, due to sparse examples of female authorship, or primary sources composed with women’s points of view in mind, pinpointing the degree to which medieval females practiced sport is troublesome. Today,

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women participate alongside and against men in re-creations of full-contact jousting tournaments in the image of the medieval age, demonstrating their corporeal abilities to perform activities traditionally ascribed to the male body. According to Jack Halberstam (1998), this type of performance equates to what he terms as “female masculinity,” a separation of traditional masculinity from the male body. Modern examples of female athletes in the Olympics, particularly the equestrian, track-and-field, strength, and combat athletes, validate the notion that the female body is certainly proficient at performing the skills necessary for medieval knights. Although medieval women lived somewhat restricted lives relative to the present, evidence suggests that on occasion they engaged in physical challenges during the medieval age. For example, one of the sets of illustrations in the third version of Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch (“Fight Book,” 1467) shows a man and a woman dueling with each other to resolve a legal dispute.1 In this judicial combat, the man stands in a waist-deep pit while the woman, armed with a bludgeoning object (perhaps a rock wrapped in a veil), moves menacingly around him on the ground. In order to win the duel, the man tries to strike the woman and pull her into the pit, while the woman aims to strike the man and drag him out. The winner, as was customary, would be declared righteous in the eyes of the law, as it was God who ultimately determined the outcome in favor of the just party (Figure 7.1).

FIGURE 7.1: A woman fights a duel with a man in a pit. From the 1467 manuscript copy of Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch. Munich, Bayersiche Staatsbibliothek, Cod. icon.349a, fol. 125v. Image courtesy of Wiktenauer.

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While it is unclear as to exactly why the man begins in the hole and the woman above ground, the woman clearly enjoys the advantage of more mobility and the leverage of being able to strike down. Women were considered to suffer from fragilitas sexus, the fragility inherent to their gender. That is, they were hampered by having weaker bodies than their male counterparts. According to Natasha Hodgson (2007: 47), “Fragilitas sexus was the conventional description applied to medieval women to explain their exclusion from warfare, and they were sometimes described as unfit to bear arms.” Perhaps these fight scenes pertain to the idea that women were not as physically strong as men, and would have been at a distinct disadvantage without having some kind of leverage. However, as other illustrations from Talhoffer exhibit, any disparities in physical strength could be nullified by attacking sensitive areas of the body, such as the neck and genitalia (Figure 7.2). The example of the male–female duel conflicts with the Aristotelian view of gender in which men were hot, dry, and active, while women were cold, wet, and passive, a point of view supported by medieval Christianity and medical science (Allen 1997: 84, 251, 445). In other words, the female temperament was thought to be more subdued than her male counterpart, while the male’s heat led to “firmer flesh and greater strength” (Cullum and Goldberg 2015: 309). The modern idea that females could equal or exceed their male counterparts in the athletic arena did

FIGURE 7.2: A woman grabs her male opponent by the genitals. From the 1467 manuscript copy of Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch. Munich, Bayersiche Staatsbibliothek, Cod.icon.349a, fol. 125v. Image courtesy of Wiktenauer.

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not exist (hence, the advantage given to the female starting outside the hole in the duel). For a female, being overly aggressive would have been at odds with medieval society’s gender expectations and would have been cause for concern about her health. Both males and females could exist at different points along medieval Europe’s binary gender continuum, and women who displayed “manly” characteristics in different ways, such as through a hefty build or by demonstrating bravery or higher levels of intelligence, were referred to as “viragos” (Murray 2006: 284). Combined, these outlooks help explain the lack of sources depicting active female warriors or athletes in Christian medieval Europe. Joan of Arc represents one of the most famous examples of a medieval woman remembered by history for her physical achievements. Born a peasant, Joan received no formal education nor underwent military training. Also absent from her history is whether or not she played sports recreationally or with the intention to prepare her body for war. While growing up on her farm, it is conceivable that she enjoyed games in addition to performing manual labor. Evidence also suggests that Joan was much more than a mere cheerleader in battle, but it is impossible to determine exactly how she prepared her body for war. As an adolescent female, she would have likely been smaller than her older, battle-ready male counterparts. Any perceived physical weaknesses did not affect her ability to inspire the French troops in battle, as witnesses from her trial noted that she enthusiastically charged the English ranks with lance couched, and during assaults on fortifications she mounted the scaling ladders while shouting encouragement to the men. This type of behavior was not entirely unheard of because women sometimes forgot about their inherent fragility and took up arms and fought courageously beyond their strength (Hodgson 2007: 47). Joan’s combativeness did not end on the battlefield; she behaved aggressively towards her troops, enjoining them to maintain high moral standards, such as attending mass and confession. She was also known to have chased prostitutes from camp with sword in hand. Joan’s impressive and unique case confirms that females could execute physical feats alongside males, but given the strict gender norms that permeated medieval thinking, her example remains the exception and not the rule. According to Natasha Hodgson: If women did fight, it was only in the absence of suitable male warriors or when the odds seemed overwhelming; and they usually were praised for it in masculine terms. Women who became involved in fighting were encroaching on a male role that was fundamental to the construct of medieval masculinity. Fighting women could demonstrate chivalrous qualities, bravery in particular, but in order to keep masculinity intact, women had to be seen as transcending their gender. — Hodgson 2007: 49

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Through wearing armor and cutting her hair short, Joan created a more masculine profile that conformed in appearance with the other men in the ranks, but eventually resulted in heretical charges of transvestism that (among other charges) led to her execution (Schibanoff 1996: 31–60). Despite this ending, Joan remains one of the best examples today of how women in the medieval age dealt with gender restrictions and stereotypes, particularly in terms of physical capabilities.

MEN AND SPORT Aside from isolated examples like Joan of Arc, the medieval sporting arena was a highly masculinized space in which male performance played a more genderdefining role for men than women. Under this umbrella of gendered identity, recreation was essential in preparation for war and therefore became a symbolic and significant space for men across classes to test themselves against their peers. Sport and competition were also crucial components of establishing group hierarchy, a pivotal aspect of the patriarchal society. Ruth Mazo Karras (2002: 1) opens her study of medieval masculinity From Boys to Men by stating that: “Medieval Europe was a man’s world.” Men indeed enjoyed near exclusive and often hereditary rights to military and political power, and monopolized participation in, and recognition through, sport. Sport was linked to military training, and men almost exclusively occupied the arena of war due to their typically more robust physiques, which made them adept for the hardships of martial campaigns (Braudy 2005: 9). Physiologically speaking, the male body’s muscles tend to be thicker and longer—presumably a result of naturally higher testosterone levels—enabling a man to undertake greater physical workloads over time. Additionally, the male body could not experience a significant loss of fighting time by becoming pregnant (Braudy 2005: 9). Achieving masculine identity typically required a ritual or test in which the male proved himself to be worthy of embodying his respective society’s values (Badinter 1997: 67–8). David Gilmore argues that masculinity is a concept independent of biological anatomy, and that the ideals and structures that define what it means to be “masculine” change over time. He states that there are: Often dramatic ways in which cultures construct an appropriate manhood— the presentation or “imaging” of the male role. In particular, there is a constantly recurring notion that real manhood is different from simple anatomical maleness, that it is not a natural condition that comes about spontaneously through biological maturation but rather is a precarious or artificial state that boys must win against powerful odds. This recurrent notion that manhood is problematic, a critical threshold that boys must pass

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through testing, is found at all levels of sociocultural development regardless of what other alternative roles are recognized. — Gilmore 1990: 11 Sussman (2012: 1) agrees with Gilmore, stating that “not all men in the sense of persons born biologically male become ‘men’ or ‘real men’ living up to the socially constructed ideal set for males that we call manliness.” Often a man tested his masculinity through some form of competition—combat, sport, or even intellectual debate (depending on his position and role)—in order to demonstrate his prowess to onlookers who would either affirm or deny his station as a man. Proving to be superior to other men, therefore, was a cornerstone of medieval masculine identity (Karras 2002: 10). Men consistently proved their valor in two particular domains: the sporting arena and real battle. These were often only narrowly separated and frequently overlapped, particularly in the case of combat sports. Martial combat sports have existed throughout recorded history, regularly with the intent of replicating warfare. Roman culture is famous for its gladiatorial games, but its society also reveled in chariot races and hunting, spectacles that frequently displayed the human body’s rugged capabilities (Kyle 2015: 243–67). Post-Roman cultures also propped up physical feats as markers of masculine identity. Sidonius Apollinaris, a fifth-century writer, intellectual, bishop, and future saint, comments extensively on the sporting habits of a variety of these cultures, including Germanic tribes.2 In one example, he describes the Gothic chieftain Theodoric II’s strong build: “His shoulders are well-shaped, his upper arms sturdy, his forearms hard, his hands broad. The chest is prominent, the stomach recedes . . . Strength reigns in his well-girt loins. His thigh is hard as horn; the upper legs from joint to joint are full of manly vigour” (Sidonius [c. 469] 1936: 337). Theodoric, an avid hunter, exhibited his prowess in the way he carried his bow unstrung, only stringing it himself in the moments prior to shooting it; also, he was known to test (or parade) his skills by urging members of his retinue to choose his targets for him (Sidonius [c. 469] 1936: 340–1). These characteristics of strength and dexterity—cornerstones of athletic prowess—align with other medieval European civilizations’ expectations of manly behavior. Older, established realms left untouched by Rome’s tremendous reach, such as parts of Scandinavia, report similar ideals of achieving masculine prowess through physical undertakings. The cultures and societies that make up what is commonly known as the Vikings were ferocious, seafaring raiders who explored much of the Atlantic and Mediterranean world. Although they organized their societies differently, the people from Scandinavia exhibited the characteristics of feudalism and its interdependence through a stratified class system composed of slaves, freemen, and the aristocracy, of which the last two held the greatest power (Wolf 2013: 135–42). When compared to other medieval European

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civilizations, however, only sparse evidence exists about the Norsemen, or Northmen. Often today Vikings are characterized as bloodthirsty warriors, but archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence, as well as the Icelandic Sagas— perhaps our best source for gleaning information about Scandinavian culture— reveals that Viking societies were sophisticated, with tiered governance, laws, and a social hierarchy. The Norsemen, for example, enjoyed both indoor and outdoor leisure activities; and great warriors, often described as great athletes, too, received the respect and admiration of their people (Wolf 2013: 189). Through the Sagas, Norse mythology established a baseline for excellence by providing men with exemplary models to emulate (French 2017: 96). These tales spotlight heroic cases and reveal the values most admired by the Vikings. The Sagas speak of the importance of athletics, especially those that exercise skills transferable to battle, which include weapons training, archery, throwing objects like spears, and handling swords (Wolf 2013: 189–90). Icelandic literature notes the corporeal significance of many of its male heroes, marking the correlation between physicality and identity. Physical strength was paramount in Viking society, and was particularly tested by lifting and throwing heavy objects such as spears and stones. Vikings relished combat sports like wrestling and primitive forms of boxing, which trained men to fight while simultaneously creating a group hierarchy. Vikings likewise demonstrated prowess through feats of agility such as mountain climbing, skiing, skating, and balancing on a boat’s oar while it was being rowed (Wolf 2013: 190–1). The Story of Burnt Njal (c. 1270–90) describes one such hero, Gunnar Hamundarson: He was a tall man in growth, and a strong man—best skilled in arms of all men. He could cut or thrust or shoot if he chose as well with his left as with his right hand, and he smote so swiftly with his sword, that three seemed to flash through the air at once. He was the best shot with the bow of all men, and never missed his mark. He could leap more than his own height, with all his war-gear, and as far backwards as forwards. He could swim like a seal, and there was no game in which it was any good for anyone to strive with him, and so it has been said that no man was his match. — Dasent 1911: 33 Examples like Gunnar’s reveal the significance of sport in Viking culture. Athletic activities, particularly when begun from a young age, provided male warriors-to-be with foundational training for the inevitable battles they would face later as raiders themselves. In fact, Vikings extensively trained and educated their youth, and praised their leaders and heroes not only for their martial prowess, but also for their skills at persuasive rhetoric, knowledge of law, and prudent demeanor (French 2017: 98). These traits predate medieval Europe’s most commonly known warrior ethos: chivalry.

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SPORT AND THE CHIVALRIC WORLD Although medieval European culture developed under the umbrella of chivalry, scholars debate how to define exactly what chivalry is (see Cross 2019). Maurice Keen’s foundational study of the subject states that: Chivalry is an evocative word, conjuring up images in the mind—of the knight fully armed, perhaps with the crusaders’ red cross sewn upon his surcoat; of martial adventures in strange lands; of castles with tall towers and of the fair women who dwelt in them. It is also, for that very reason, a word elusive of definition. — Keen 2005: 1 While most agree chivalry influenced life across the continent, how so and to what degree varies geographically.3 Collectively across Europe, chivalry played a vital role in defining social roles, particularly for men and women of the nobility. Specifically, men of noble birth were given tremendous privilege, educated as young boys in both the liberal and fighting arts, for it would be their responsibility as adults to defend their faith and lands (Keen 2005: 2). The Church was chivalry’s primary architect, and it did not always view the nobles’ activities with absolute approval. The very nature of competition clashed with the Church’s mission for completing a moral regeneration of its followers, and thus it preferred that its congregation refrain from athletic endeavors. People began to reject the earlier Greco-Roman outlook that a person’s will and intellect dominated the world, and that events and achievements were byproducts of those efforts. Instead, they viewed God as the supreme engineer of life down to its finest details. Deobold B. Van Dalen (1973: 217–24) comments that: “The [medieval] historical process was not the working out of the plans of man, but the unfolding plan that God had constructed and no man could alter.” As a result, spiritual steadfastness became the bedrock of life, and the Church aimed to steer the masses toward God and away from sin. Elements of the Church disdained the celebration of human flesh and considered the body to be a vehicle for sin and eternal damnation. This point of view deviated from the Greeks and Romans, who admired and portrayed the conditioned male physique through multiple artistic impressions that survive today. For the medieval world, however, sporting competitions meant displaying the male body and offering onlookers an earthly being to objectify, judge, and ultimately admire. In particular, tournaments honored male competitors who not only attempted to best their counterparts, but also wanted to attract the attention of female spectators. One can easily imagine, therefore, that sports created environments conducive to a variety of sins, most notably lust and pride. Nevertheless, similar to the laborers and knights, the clergy competed

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for hierarchical status, just not through sport. Instead, these men pitted their intellectual skills against each other through discussion and debate. The clergy represented the most educated sector of society, and that education gave men from this class “the skills to compete verbally against other educated men, and to prove his superiority over the uneducated” (Karras 2002: 67). During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, though, recruitment for the clergy began to change as more and more noblemen (knights) abandoned the secular realm in favor of the monastic life. Orders such as the Cistercians, Savigniacs, and Premonstratensians altered the traditional composition of the clergy by adding former knights to their ranks. These men and their martial and athletic backgrounds cross-pollinated with established viewpoints about sport, thereby altering the expectations of the men serving the Church. These orders would go on to initiate “rigid programs of physical and mental athletics” (Carter 1992: 52) shaped by the opinions and experiences of their new membership. Men of the militia Christi were no longer sedentary; instead, their activity employed both their bodies and their minds to further the mission of God on Earth. For some Christian thinkers, Christ served as an example to emulate by representing the perfect configuration of mind, body, and spirt. Ideally, these three components worked in harmony according to God’s will. St. Thomas Aquinas believed that one could not optimize the mind without deliberately caring for the body; and, although the mind was superior to the body, maintaining the vitality of both was preferable. This attitude diverged from the notion that the body was a vessel for evil, and others such as the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher and physician Moses Maimonides and the thirteenth-century Parisian St. Bonaventure agreed that preserving the body’s health was essential in maintaining a working mind (Mechikoff and Estes 1993: 62). Therefore, although there were competing opinions about the body’s place in a Christian world, prominent intellectuals viewed the corporeal and the cerebral as closely related. Evidence reveals that physical endeavors could be quite intellectual, particularly in hunting and martial arts. The thirteenth-century Germanic emperor Frederick II wrote a treatise on hunting with falcons, and several medieval Fechtbücher—or “fight books”—illustrate how men were to perform complex grappling and sword techniques. These books study the physical art through systematic intellectual analysis and theorization (McClelland 2007: 46). The Royal Armouries Ms. I.33—known variously as the “Tower Fechtbuch,” the “Walpurgis Fechtbuch,” or the “Luitger Fechtbuch”—depicts an instructor, known as the “Priest,” training a “Student” in various techniques with a sword and shield (Forgeng 2018b). The illustrations from this manuscript suggest that the clergy actively participated in the transmission of knowledge related to physical training (Figure 7.3). In a later example from Spain, Alonso Martínez de Toledo’s The Archpriest of Talavera (1438) details a wrestling scene so precisely that it would appear that the author—a clergyman—was well-versed

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FIGURE 7.3: A student and a monk fencing with sword and buckler from a manuscript known as the Tower Fechtbuch (fencing manual). German, late thirteenth century. Leeds, Royal Armouries, inv. I.33, fol. 4r. Asset Number DI 2013-0015. © Board of Trustees of the Armouries.

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in grappling techniques (Naylor and Rank 2015: 209–12; also Penna 1955: 43; and Anglo 2000: 347 n. 84). Martínez’s work spotlights how a clergyman could embrace being both highly intelligent and physically gifted, recognizing both aspects of his personality as valid. While the educated clergy analyzed and recorded specific details about human performance, they were not alone in this undertaking. Across medieval Europe, martial arts masters collected their knowledge into illustrated treatises, which included instructions on grappling, long and short sword techniques, fighting on horseback, and foot combat with a variety of weapons (Anglo 2000: 23). This systemization of combat skills (for either sporting encounters such as jousting or for open war) showcases some of the finest examples of medieval scientific thinking. In this vein, the master Pietro Monte is of particular importance. Monte’s Exercitiorum atque artis militaris collectanea in tres libros distincta (1509)—abbreviated as the Collectanea—packs a lifetime of knowledge about a human’s physical capabilities, and additionally how the mind works in partnership and consonance with the body. He states that “we should harmonize physical skills with the intellect, for then we can more easily show the general and specific means that are suitable for men who use their powers of body and intellect” (Forgeng 2018a: 31), and that “someone who purifies and exercises his body will possess a good spirit, while someone who consigns it to worry will be in weak spirits” (Forgeng 2018a: 86). Monte’s work illuminates his stance on the mind–body connection by uniquely describing the pedagogical practices that align with teaching men physical skills and fitness. In one instance he notes that “light and agile people learn everything better, and work with fluidity going in and out with little effort and without the opponent’s knowledge” (Forgeng 2018a: 248). Monte took particular care to ensure that his knowledge did not fall into the hands of those seeking to do evil. In this way he parallels the thinking of the Church, which remained suspicious of the body’s role in sport and society, particularly its capacity for immorality. On the one hand, the Church prescribed humility and meekness through peaceful rhetoric; on the other, despite its initial aversion to sport, competition, and admiration of the human figure, the Church would eventually attenuate its opinion and recognize the true value of athletics: to train the warriors who would protect its institution and mission. John Marshall Carter explains that: Rhetorically, the Church, as an agent of peace, condemned sport which, oftentimes, resulted in death or serious injury. Yet in practice, the church appears to have been more tolerant of the warrior’s sport than the papal prohibitions of the twelfth century would indicate. To prepare for the “just war,” the warrior had to engage in the “just sport.” — Carter 1985: 136

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As a result, the Church maintained a close relationship with the military class, and chivalry revived physical training for the purpose of conditioning warriors for the Crusades (Carter 1985: 135). Exercise and drill became paramount, and sports provided opportunities for knights to perfect their martial techniques. Ultimately, chivalric culture acclaimed physical prowess, and these ideals became the bedrock of the young nobleman’s education (Broekhoff 2006: 40). Earning the title of knight required a lengthy process that began when a boy was around 7 years old and left home to begin his education with another noble household. Working as a page from ages 7 to 14, the boy would begin to understand the duties executed by knights in feudal society. Upon successfully completing his tour as a page, the adolescent male became a squire and plunged further into his apprenticeship.4 This involved, as the late-thirteenth-century Catalonian writer and philosopher Ramon Llull ([c. 1274–6] 2013: 56) describes, a rigorous examination of the young man’s moral character. “In the beginning,” Llull declares, “the squire who wishes to be a knight must be asked whether he loves and fears God, for he who neither loves nor fears God is not worthy of joining the Order of Chivalry.” The ideal knight, he argues, must be conditioned to defend the Church, his lord, women, widows, orphans, and the weak in general. A squire could disqualify himself by exhibiting a lack of “nobility of courage,” for “evil ways and bad habits,” or for being “vainglorious . . . for vainglory is a vice that destroys the merits and guerdons of the benefits that are bestowed by knighthood” (Llull [c. 1274–6] 2013: 56–61). At around 21 years of age, if the squire possessed the economic resources (i.e., armor and horse) and was deemed worthy, he could be designated a knight. Part of a knightly education involved strenuous physical exercise, such as equestrian activities, hunting, falconry, and martial arts. Young squires had to build their bodies to withstand periods of intense riding, long intervals of travel, wearing and carrying armor and weapons, as well as the ability to endure extreme bouts of heat and cold. As Earle F. Zeigler (1993: 21) explains, “During this time muscles had to be strengthened greatly, endurance had to be developed significantly, the skills of hand-to-hand battles had to be learned, the level of horsemanship had to be improved, and social skills and graces had to be acquired.” Practicing wrestling, in particular, developed strength and dexterity while teaching essential skills such as footwork, distance from one’s opponent, and timing (Jones 2011: 84). Vegetius, the fifth-century CE Roman author of the Epitoma Rei Militaris (“Epitome of Military Science”), describes in detail the importance of physique when selecting and training military recruits. According to him, the youth should have “alert eyes, straight neck, broad chest, muscular shoulders, strong arms, long fingers” as well as be “small in the stomach, slender in the buttocks, and have calves and feet that are not swollen by surplus fat but firm with hard muscle” (Vegetius Renatus [c. 384–9] 2013: 7). These ideas of the body were

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not lost to medieval military minds, and they ultimately influenced how warriors were trained (Vegetius Renatus [c. 384–9] 2013: iii). Llull ([c. 1274–6] 2013: 60) argues that a poor physique or any physical handicap would disqualify a candidate: “It is baseness of the Order of Chivalry if it receives a man who is frail, sickly, or unable to wear a harness . . . neither riches, nobility of heart nor lineage can compensate for a squire who is crippled in any limb.” The knight was, by definition, a mounted warrior who prevailed over his opponent through skill in the saddle and superiority with bladed weapons and protective armor. His training would have been anaerobically intensive: rounds of flourishing with the sword (either against air or a pell), sparring with wasters (dull or wooden swords), open-hand combat grappling, and jousting. Additionally, he would engage in bouts of all-out riding as part of a hunt, coupled with longer, steady rides that were intended to mimic the march to battle. Through hunting and overall economic prosperity, it is also likely that knights had greater access to more protein-rich food, which, along with their training, would have supplemented muscular development.5 The resulting physique of such training and diet, especially when considering the knight would often train in full armor, aligns with the ideal body type described by Vegetius: broad shoulders, stout chest, powerful legs, and a narrow waist. In addition to developing their physiques, apprentice knights would have accompanied their masters to tournaments and battles to mind the extra horses a knight might need. This up-close exposure to the corporeal stresses he would later endure likely prepared the knight-in-training’s body and mind for the hardships of knighthood. Along the way, the trainee would achieve milestones that helped enshrine his identity as a warrior, such as receiving a sword from a superior, likely his father or another high-ranking nobleman (Carter 1985: 134). Knights were routinely recognized for their corporeal abilities. The French knight Jean Le Maingre—commonly known as Boucicaut—was strong and agile enough to turn a somersault dressed in full armor (minus the helmet), as well as scale the inside of a ladder using only his arms while remaining equipped in harness (Painter 1940: 39). Gutierre Díaz de Games’ El Victorial, a fifteenthcentury biography of the Castilian knight Pero Niño, reports that, as a youth, Niño chased a wild boar into the River Guadalquivir near Seville, swam after it, speared it, and brought it ashore (Díaz de Games [c. 1436–48] 2014: 105). While episodes like these spotlight how knights used their physical gifts outside combat, the knight’s favorite arena to display his moxie was the tournament. Tournaments took place throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, spreading through Christendom to places like Antioch in Syria (Keen 2005: 84). Originally consisting of a variety of martial competitions for groups and individuals, by the fifteenth century tournaments focused on three contests in particular: the mêlée, the joust, and hand-to-hand fighting on foot (Vale 1981: 67). Initially, the mêlée was the main attraction, and gave men the opportunity

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to display their combat skills while working in concert with fellow soldiers. Two sides, often composed of households, would line up opposite each other, charge, and fight. From its inception, the mêlée tournament was a dangerous affair that could result in devastating injury or death (Keen 2005: 86–7). Killing one’s opponent, though, was not the goal, and by the thirteenth century rules and regulations obliged participants to use beaded weapons or even patent leather and non-metal weapons. The apex tournament athlete, as it were, captured his opponent for ransom. William Marshal, an Anglo-Norman tournament professional operating in the twelfth century and eulogized as the “greatest knight who ever lived” (Painter 1982: 289), is noted to have been an expert at subduing other knights in order to finance his tournament campaigns. As a result of his prowess, he was able to ascend his society’s socioeconomic ladder to become regent of England from 1216 to 1219 (Asbridge 2014: 346; Crouch 1990: 119; Duby 1985: 152). While knights simultaneously bonded and cemented their social status at tournaments, these violent sports provided excellent training not only for war but also for forging intellectual bonds. The French knight Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1300–56), in his Livre de chevalerie (“Book of Chivalry”), for example, understood that mental and physical agility were on an equal footing in warfare and the tournament, or what he called the knights’ “good sense, their physical strength and dexterity” (Kaeuper and Kennedy 1996: 87). Christine de Pizan, in Li livres du corps de policie (“The Book of the Body Politic” [1404–7] 1994: 63–4) applied six conditions to young noblemen and aspiring knights if they were to succeed in life, which combined the power of the mind and the body, as follows: The first is that they ought to love arms and the art of them perfectly, and they ought to practice that work. The second condition is that they ought to be very bold, and have such firmness and constancy in their courage that they never flee nor run from battles out of fear of death, nor spare their blood nor life, for the good of their prince and the safe keeping of their country and the republic. . . . Thirdly, they ought to give heart and steadiness to each other, counselling their companions to do well, and to be firm and steadfast. The fourth is to be truthful and to uphold their fealty and oath. Fifthly, they ought to love and desire honor above all worldly things. Sixthly, they ought to be wise and crafty against their enemies and in all deeds of arms. The tournament in particular simulated the battlefield, and was a supreme test of the application of the individual and collective intellect to Pizan’s “wise and crafty” tactics and strategies, as well as sheer physical stamina and endurance, “qualities which were also at a premium in war” (Vale 1981: 78). They afforded robust practice for groups of men who would fight together in real battle to

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bond intellectually, as well as training in the handling of weapons and horsemanship. Not least of all, tournaments served to toughen men up, and to reveal those “who have the courage to endure bodily hardship” (Keen 2005: 88). Ruth Mazo Karras (2002: 37) states that “a man must test and win his masculinity in combat,” and knights’ skills at arms, strength, and aggressive attitudes contributed to an outward portrayal of manliness that needed to be affirmed by their peers. Leo Braudy (2005: 57) agrees, stating that displaying personal honor “requires an audience, even an imagined one [and] the presence of some spectators is crucial, to validate the behavior of the combatants and to carry their story both to those not present and to future generations.” Tournaments were also arenas for the nobility to display exclusivity. Keen (2005: 90) states that “the tournament was an exercise for the elite, and simply to appear there, armed and mounted and with his own squire or squires in attendance, was in itself a demonstration of a man’s right to mingle in an elite society of his social identity.” To begin with, tournaments were pricey for the participants, requiring an assortment of expensive equipment that included armor, multiple steeds, and usually a traveling entourage. Additionally, while participating in these athletic feats, knights aimed to dress in beautifully welltailored garments. For the medieval nobleman, his aesthetic appeal contributed to his identity. Pero Rodríguez de Lena’s fifteenth-century account of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, for example, tells the story of a passage of arms where knights from across Spain and other parts of Europe journeyed to Órbigo, Spain, in the summer of 1434 to participate in a jousting competition near a bridge. In addition to impressing with their jousting abilities, the knights paraded their decorated horses and outfits. Rodríguez de Lena describes how Suero de Quiñones, his title character, enters the lists (or jousting enclosure) for his first joust: Later, happy and very even-tempered he rode in on his horse, which was covered with richly decorated textiles that were flowing and blue in color, and he wore a blue Italian style cloak over his shoulders and armor that was a rich brocade from the same cloth as that of the horses. — Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 148 In the next joust, a fellow nobleman named Lope de Estúñiga enters the lists “astride his horse, which was completely covered in a blue caparison outlined in gold, with colorful patterns of Suero de Quiñones’s heraldry” (Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 163). Descriptions like these show the competition to be much more than an athletic contest; it was also a pageant of style and elegance akin to a Hollywood “red carpet,” where onlookers observed and commented on the newest designs in chivalric fashion (Gearhart 2017: 667).

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As full-contact sports, martial contests provided a platform for medieval athletes to display their aggrandized bodies, which were frequently encased in protective armor. Knights wore armor for both practical and symbolic purposes, because in addition to protecting him from wounds, armor gave the knight added confidence to fight harder. The knight’s legs appeared longer when clad in armor, while the breastplate accentuated the girth of his chest; the shoulders, too, looked wider as a result of the narrower waist and bulging chest; and, finally, the knight seemed taller when wearing a helmet (Jones 2010: 99). Armor artificially yields an aggrandized contour of the male physique, which mirrors “the very traits which we use to assess the strength, masculinity and dominance of an individual” (Jones 2010: 99). As Rachel Dressler (2004: 109) has commented: “Knights are most fully men only when they are completely encased in armor.” Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec and Enide (c. 1170) illustrates the knightly world’s affinity for armor when the author describes in detail Erec dressing in order to fight one on one with another knight in order to win a prize: Erec was impatient for the battle. He asked for the armour and it was brought to him. The maiden herself armed him; she used neither spell nor charm in doing so. She laced on the iron greaves and attached them solidly with deerhide thongs; she dressed him in the hauberk of good chain mail and laced on the ventail; she put the burnished helmet on his head: she armed him well from head to foot. She girded his sword at his side. . . . The burnished helmet suits him well, as do that hauberk, that shield, and that blade of sharpened steel. He has an excellent posture on the horse and he certainly looks like a valiant knight! He’s very well-built and well-proportioned in his arms, his legs, and his feet. — Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1170] 2004: 46; ll. 707–72 in the original old French Subsequently Erec is described as follows: And Erec called for another squire and ordered him to bring his armour that he might put it on. . . . First he had the greaves of shining steel laced on. Next he put on such an expensive hauberk that no link could be cut from it. . . . When they had put on his hauberk, a squire laced upon his head a helmet with a bejewelled golden circlet that shone more brightly than a mirror. Then he girded on his sword. — Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1170] 2004: 69; ll. 2620–58 in the original old French Sussman (2012: 83) evaluates this praise for the body, stating:

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The valor, worth, and very identity of the ancient warrior and the medieval knight depended on the strength of his good right arm that could power his sword or spear so as to cleave through armor. An important element of Athenian manliness was what we now call a good body, a ripped torso displayed in the Discobolus that was both an aesthetic and sexualized value as well as a preparation for the duty of war. As Sussman points out, one’s appearance brings much to bear on one’s perceived identity, especially in the context of martial competition. The anonymous Middle English poem Winner and Waster (1352) echoes this assessment of male virility and physique in its representation of the Black Prince as a warrior clad in armor: He doth him down on the bank, and dwelleth a time, Till he busk’d was and bound in the bravest array. He lapped his legs in iron to the lower bones; With pisane and with pauncer, polish’d full bright; With braces of burnish’d steel, closely braided with rings; With plates buckled behind, the body to ward; With a well-fitting jupon, joined at the sides; A broad scutcheon at the back; the breast had another; Three wings within, truly wrought after kind, Engirt with gold wire. When that warrior I knew, Lo, he was youngest of years and yarest of wit That any wight in this world wist of his age. — Gollancz 1930: 24–5 The poet creates an impressive image of the knight clad in his armor by describing a full harness, beginning with shin guards and then a shiny cuirass (pauncer). Next, he points to the forearm guards (braces), followed by the plate protecting the knight’s back. A tailored jupon, or quilted cloth shirt, complements the ensemble. Contests of physical skill, therefore, reveal two pillars of knightly identity: function and aesthetics. Essentially, to be a great knight one had to win at arms and look good doing it. An example of pairing form and function appears in El Victorial, when Pero Niño shines before the Spanish king while competing in a cane game in Seville. The cane games are thought to have originated in Muslimoccupied Andalusia. They were contests that consisted of two teams of mounted knights lined up with their canes—a type of short wooden or bamboo lance— couched and ready to charge in concert. They used large, bivalve shields called adargas for defense while they launched their canes. The spectacle ended when one team surrendered or when the horses reached exhaustion, and the winners

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often received prizes. Eventually, the sport attracted the attention of Christian knights, who went as far as to participate in contests located inside Muslim lands. Although lesser known today than jousting tournaments, by the late Middle Ages the sport had become mainstream and was often paired with bullfighting as a knightly spectacle. Díaz de Games ([c. 1436–48] 2014: 106–7) describes Niño’s play as outstanding, stating that: “Those who saw him compete could truthfully say that no knight passed there who threw a cane more beautifully, or landed such powerful blows.” The author combines aesthetics and function into one by juxtaposing the beauty with which Pero Niño throws the canes and the power behind their delivery. Within the text, the fact that Pero Niño can perform this athletic feat with style while simultaneously demonstrating prowess enhances his overall image as a knight. Of all the tournament’s activities, though, perhaps no other competition revered style and prowess as much as the joust. Jousting—a vehicle of fame for knights—became the premier event in the fifteenth century. Unlike the mêlée, where spectators lost sight of single competitors upon commencement, the joust spotlighted individual beauty, skill, and prowess for a captive audience that carefully viewed and assessed what the knight was able to do with his body. Noel Fallows (2010: 8) explains that: “From both a physical and a symbolic point of view, jousts offered tangible evidence of a man’s prowess, of the meaningful role that he played in the masculine active life.” Beginning as a warm-up exercise for young knights eager to display their skill in the mêlée, jousting quickly evolved to be more sport than combat because of its intricate rules, its spectator-friendly nature, and because it meshed easily with courtly pageants (Jones 2011: 88). Although it continued to foster established chivalric ideals, the skills required no longer translated much to the contemporary battlefields (Hale 1983: 37; Saunders 2009: 84). This fact, though, did not stop jousting from becoming an increasingly popular sport through which noblemen could attain fame and wealth while assessing each other’s manliness. The idealized, powerful male physique—elegantly displayed in full armor during jousts—was not immune to injuries. Similar to competitive sports today, injuries were a harsh reality of the tough lives people led during the medieval age. Even though precautions were taken to avoid serious bodily harm, sustaining an injury was a real possibility for the knights competing in the joust. Fictional accounts of jousting are replete with examples of knights sustaining dangerous trauma. Thigh injuries were particularly devastating. Two of Marie de France’s lais, for example, describe a pair of knights—one nameless and one called Guigemar—who sustain debilitating thigh injuries (Marie de France [fl. late twelfth century] 1986: 44, 107–8). Tristan, the male protagonist of Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and Isolde, lauded on the one hand for his powerful thighs that commanded his steed, also found himself laid low by a lance blow to his lower extremities. Additionally, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s King Anfortas

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suffered a grotesque injury when a lance through the thigh left him with a bamboo splinter wedged in his scrotum (Fallows 2010: 176). Other injuries to the hands, such as finger dislocations, were likewise common. Also, blows to the eyes could send deadly lance shards into the brain, causing permanent handicap or even death (see Fallows 2010: 171, 234). Participants appear to have understood and even embraced these risks, reveling in the opportunity wounds provided to parade their grit. When Suero de Quiñones is injured in the face during a joust, the spectators fear that he is dead. Instead, the knight shouts: “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. Quiñones! Quiñones!” (Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 199). Appearing stronger than ever despite the apparent injury, he reinforces his hardiness by yelling his name for all to hear, and then continues jousting. “Indifference in the face of miraculous escapes,” Fallows (2010: 171) points out, “is not an uncommon public reaction among seasoned combat veterans.” During Suero de Quiñones’ passage of arms, another knight named Gonzalo de Castañeda reveals how honor could be gained from being wounded. According to the account, Gonzalo jousts against Quiñones and receives an armor-piercing blow through the right forearm that buries a lance into his body up to a hand’s breadth. Both competitors stop, and the judges end the contest immediately. Under obligation to follow the judges’ ruling, Gonzalo obeys but publicly affirms that his joust has ended with honor, and he delights in being wounded by a knight of such high caliber as Suero de Quiñones. Although he does not win, Gonzalo’s wound acts as his trophy, and illuminates his courage (Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 244). Whether or not a knight was competing in a tournament or fighting on the battlefield, his approach to injuries was the same: demonstrating fortitude and impassivity toward the pain cemented his hardy identity (Cohen 2003: 210– 11). When the Castilian knight Pero Niño is severely injured in his leg during a fight, he confronts the possibility that he may lose his limb or even die. Surgeons from Seville inspect the wound, and recommend a full amputation. For Pero Niño, this result is unacceptable: “If the hour in which I should die has arrived,” he states, “let it be however God wills it. For a knight, it is better that he dies with all his limbs intact, as God made him, than to continue living permanently injured or crippled and be no good to anybody” (Díaz de Games [c. 1436–48] 2014: 178). For a knight, the loss of an extremity would be calamitous, impeding his ability to fight and consequently stripping him of his identity. Pero Niño implores the surgeons to seek an alternative, which they agree must involve the agonizing procedure of cauterizing the wound in order to have any hope of recovery. Thus they hesitate, fearing the pain they will cause. Pero Niño, though, does not hesitate, and grabs the white-hot iron from the hands of the timid surgeons and places it over the wound—twice. Although this episode in Pero Niño’s biography could easily be the author’s own embellishment, it nevertheless

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provides an important clue about how pain and injury were viewed by the noble elites: tolerating and overcoming bodily pain was an important marker of being manly (Gearhart 2014). Although knights lived to train and prepare for war, the laborers dedicated the majority of their time to work and/or mastering their crafts. While it is widely accepted that this group supported the nobility’s lifestyle, laborers were not without their own aspirations. Financial independence was the ultimate goal and a cornerstone of artisanal masculinity, and a man able to apprentice and learn a trade could solidify his economic position, increase his social status, and cement his identity by being superior to his peers (Karras 2003: 109–11). This pursuit of economic well-being did not restrain laborers from engaging in leisure activities. In fact, many of their sporting pursuits mirrored those of knights in that they helped prepare the laborer for his potential duties in battle. While knights received the lion’s share of attention for their parts in martial conflict during the medieval age, non-knights and the peasantry certainly played significant roles in military endeavors, and their sporting activities reflected the need to prepare their bodies and minds for physical confrontation. Sports such as wrestling and running trained the body’s endurance and martial dexterity, while hunting and fishing made the laborer proficient at living off the land and using weapons applicable to war like the bow and arrow. Combined, these activities honed the body and mind for the potential trials of war. Practicing and playing sports may have aided in constructing the laborer’s identity as well. Just as the nobleman needed to dominate his peers in order to establish his place in the societal hierarchy, laborers similarly competed with each other for economic dominance. It is conceivable that the best hunters and fishermen, along with the best archers and strongest wrestlers, garnered praise among their communities. Additionally, being a proficient archer, for example, would have afforded the chance for more kills during the hunt, which in turn would have provided more food for the laborer’s family and thus more economic stability and independence. These traits, as mentioned earlier, represented the foundation of a laborer’s identity. It is difficult to discern whether or not, or to what extent, peasants would have adopted the same competitive attitude toward sport that they applied to their trades as laborers. Where a knight’s honor (and thus his identity) might hinge on his skills as a jouster, it is quite possible that laborers simply enjoyed playing sports for purposes of escape and enjoyment. Farmers worked according to the agricultural year, which granted time for leisure pursuits. The twelfthcentury biographer William Fitz Stephen notes that in London on the day of “Carnival” young laborers would organize themselves by their crafts and play ball after dinner: “after dinner all the youth of the City goes out into the fields to a much-frequented game of ball. The scholars of each school have their own ball, and almost all the workers of each trade have theirs also in their hands”

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(Fitz Stephen [c. 1170–83] 1990: 56). While certainly enjoyable, even friendly ball games produced secondary effects that helped to prepare players for war, such as strategy, teamwork, and competitiveness. Thus, playing games for fun could also yield benefits for combat even if that was not its main purpose for the peasantry.

CONCLUSION Studying the role of sports in the Middle Ages radically changes our understanding of how the medieval mind and body interacted with notions of identity. In A Knight’s Tale, William Thatcher’s atypical journey from peasant to champion knight appears reasonable and meritorious. Notwithstanding Hollywood’s fictionalization of the medieval sporting realm, though, the way medieval society debated who played sport and where and when and for what purpose was more complex, particularly when considering developing attitudes regarding the human physique. The Romans openly adored the body, celebrating its potential in the circus and arena, as well as enjoying its pleasures in public baths. As Christianity took hold over Europe, theological shapers sought to confine biologically-born males and females to rigid gender roles. The body became “a slave’s prison for the soul” (Le Goff 1988: 83), and the female body in particular attracted much disdain from theologians for its understood biblical role as the orchestrator of sin. Later, theologians and theorists would recalibrate ideas about the connection between the mind and body by beginning to view a healthy body as a means to a healthy mind and soul. Members of the clergy and the peasantry took pleasure in exercising their bodies in the pursuit of pastime, fitness, and comradery. Physical beauty influenced social divisions, as the attractive and sturdy nobleman contrasted with the rustic peasant (Le Goff 1988: 84). Yet, despite these ingrained beliefs about the body and how it endangers the soul, through athletic competitions and games, medieval people clearly understood the body’s potential and limitations, and admired both its form and function. The male body, in particular, received the majority of attention when it came to admiration and awe. Although both male and female bodies experienced hardship during the medieval age, females were viewed as weaker than their male counterparts, and very limited information exists about their role in sports. With a few notable exceptions, women were largely encouraged to remain docile and avoid excitable behaviors. They could enjoy recreation, of course, but becoming a champion athlete did not bear the same consequence for females as it would have for males. Men—whether from the clergy, nobility, or peasantry—competed for status within their respective groups. For the clergy and peasantry, identity depended

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on other factors, such as the ability to outperform one’s peer rhetorically through debate, or through economic independence and prosperity. Sports were not a means to an end, but rather forms of exercise to enjoy and maintain overall health. Noble warriors—knights—relied on sport as the bedrock of their physical development and identity as men. The pursuit of martial prowess led certain intellectuals to compose detailed treatises on grappling and swordplay, and these works would evolve to become essential guides for medieval physical education. The progression from squire to knight required boys to train vigorously and hone their equestrian and fighting skills, and young men tested themselves in combat enclosures in front of crowds of enthusiastic spectators. Gradually, as changes in warfare began limiting the knight’s role as shock trooper on the battlefield, events like jousting became more important in establishing a reputation as a great fighter. Knights could earn ample fame with their performances in the lists, and perhaps even attract the attention of a maiden who might go on to inspire future glory in chivalric competitions. Knightly identity, therefore, depended heavily on physical strength and finesse, and not just birthright.6

NOTES 1. Several manuscripts have been attributed to Talhoffer. Two foundational examples of his teaching are Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Ms. Thott 290.2 , and Munich, Bayersiche Staatsbibliothek, Cod.icon.349a. Illustrations of the male– female duel appear in different manuscript versions with slight variations in the drawings. For a print edition, see Talhoffer 2014. 2. Sidonius was born in Lyon c. 430 and was trained in various humanities including grammar, literature, and philosophy, among others. From an upper-class family, he participated in Roman courts in southern Gaul (Carter 1992: 23). 3. A number of studies exist on this topic. See, for example, Keen 2005; for France and England, see Painter 1940, Flori 2010, Saul 2011, and Vale 1981; for Spain, see Rodríguez Velasco 1996, 2010, and Fallows 1995, 2010. 4. Sources vary on the exact age that boys would become pages, squires, and then be eligible for knighthood. Broekhoff (2006: 45–6) writes that there were clear seven-year intervals beginning at age 7 (page), then 14 (squire), and finally eligibility for knighthood at 21. Zeigler (1993: 21) is less rigid in his assessment, noting that training could begin “at about eight years of age” and that “after four or five years he was eligible for squire status.” 5. For studies on the medieval diet, see Pearson 1997 and Schofield 2006. 6. I would like to thank my research assistant David A. Woods II for his efforts in helping me complete this chapter.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Representation EMMA LEVITT *

THE QUESTION OF REPRESENTATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES In general terms, can we really answer the question as to just what a medieval athlete imagined he was “representing” when he played a sport? As Nigel Spivey stresses in his chapter on “Representation” in the antiquity volume in this set, representation has to be understood not only as portraying persons or acts— thus, for the purposes of this chapter, depictions of medieval athletes and sports events—but also in grasping just what it was the athlete and the sport represented— symbolized or allegorized—within the cultural framework of the age. A modern professional or college athlete is usually considered to be representing the “superiority” of his team’s city or university, however that superiority is to be understood. But when, for example, William Marshal fought in a tournament in the late twelfth century in which regionally-based teams from Anjou, Maine, Poitou, and Brittany fought against teams from Île-deFrance, Normandy, and England, did he think he was representing—and fighting to defend—the honor of England? He probably was not consciously representing anything at all, since his aim was to capture as much ransomable or saleable booty as he could. In any case, tournaments took place over such large areas that there was no consistent or contained audience. As Thomas Asbridge (2015: 117) has observed, William Marshal’s tourneying career reveals a man who was “resolutely acquisitive, devious, proud and even preening.” In Chrétien de Troyes’ fictionalized versions of knightly combat, on the other hand—written, it must be remembered, for the Countess of Champagne who even dictated the content—the tourneying knight rejects material gain as a 213

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motive for participating. Instead he is demonstrating his own valor and his devotion to his lady. Two centuries later, in the elaborately organized jousts at St. Inglevert, national honor was certainly and quite explicitly at stake. The notion of English nationhood had developed during the Hundred Years War— the sentiment had existed for a somewhat longer time in France—and tournaments of this sort were not only “opportunities for men to exhibit their status and test their courage, strength and horsemanship,” but they also “became potent symbols of national rivalry” (Sumption 1991: 3:723). Individual challenge matches might also take on nationalistic overtones, as in the 1467 fight between Lord Scales and the Bastard of Burgundy (about which there is more below; see also Levitt 2016), although by that time the political dimensions of international tournaments had been largely played down. They did risk raising their ugly head again in 1520 when Henry VIII and François I met in a lavish summit known as the Field of Cloth of Gold. Eleven of the eighteen days the meeting lasted were devoted to jousting, a sport avidly practiced by both Henry and François. Rivalry, and possible national embarrassment, were avoided, however, by putting the two kings on the same team. The representation of those qualities generally accepted as masculine was, of course, a given in the chivalric sports; and Joan of Arc may have owed her ascension from peasant girl to military leader initially by demonstrating on the field of sport that, though a woman, she possessed them: “D’Alençon saw her in the lists at Chinon. ‘After dinner the king went for a walk. Jeanne coursed before him, lance in hand. Seeing her manage her lance so well, I gave her a horse’ ” (Warner 1983: 167). Pictorial representations of masculinity in a chivalric context had, necessarily, to concentrate on purely outward signs. The knights were encased in armor and so it was the quality of the armor, the noble breed of the horse, the lavishness of its caparison that signified the status of the man who was hidden underneath all that. In this chapter I shall approach the theme of representation from three principal perspectives, on the understanding that they often and necessarily intersect: pictorial, literary, and political.

PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION Pictorially speaking, medieval representations of sports are rarely if ever to be found as stand-alone pictures in the modern sense of a canvas to be framed and displayed. Late in the period and into the early Renaissance, especially in Italy, they might appear as the subject of, or as incidental features in mural paintings, decorated wooden panels on large storage chests (known as cassoni), and wall hangings used for insulation in ill-heated medieval castles. But they are most often encountered as ancillary or as even principal images in manuscript books, i.e., as illuminations standing in some relation to a written text.1 In the early

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Middle Ages these representations were apt to be small and to take the form of decorated capital letters at the beginning of chapters; or they might be mere ornamental page fillers when there was available blank space. Vellum and paper—the latter appeared in the West only in the thirteenth century—were expensive materials and there was hence a desire not to waste any. The inks used were made from pigments, with black and red being the most common (and are still today the default colors for written texts), and the rarest and most expensive being gold leaf and turquoise (and other hues of blue) extracted from lapis lazuli, which had to be imported to western Europe from faraway Persia (modern-day Iran and Afghanistan). Thus, it is primarily the royal representations of sports that are depicted in rich shades of blue and purple and adorned with gold leaf. In the fourteenth century, chivalric sports—tournaments and jousting in particular—transitioned from being mock battles, in which knights captured opponents and booty to be used for material gain, into lavish spectacles staged by monarchs and feudal overlords for a variety of political and cultural purposes. They were advertised internationally, lasted as much as a month, and attracted such large numbers of spectators that viewing stands and fences had to be erected and armed guards stationed around the perimeter. Those who were excluded from the stands perched on dangerously steep roofs to watch the action. The participating tourneyers rode extravagantly decorated horses and their helmets and shields featured elaborate symbolic crests and devices that enabled the spectators to identify them. Tournaments were exciting events in a world that offered few public diversions beyond those sponsored by the Christian Church and they were so celebrated that they created a demand for what we might think of as commemorative souvenir programs, manuscripts that both recounted and depicted the tournaments in full folio-page images. The best-known and most beautiful of these is René d’Anjou’s Forme et devis d’un tournoi (“Treatise on the Form and Organization of a Tournament,” c. 1460), which does not describe a real tournament but configures an imaginary, idealized encounter. Such was the hold of the tournament on the late medieval imaginary that it could pass into fiction but still somehow seem real. Three important points need to be made about these manuscript representations of sport. The first is that medieval manuscripts existed in two different categories. The majority were created for utilitarian purposes; they contained works of erudition to be used by monks, professors, and students. They were copied, recopied, and housed in monasteries, later in university libraries, and, for commercial purposes, in stationers’ shops where they were fabricated, bought, sold, bought back, and resold. Though not cheap to acquire, they were generally devoid of illumination and are valued today as accurate textual witnesses to the body of ancient and early medieval thought whose original written expression has long since disappeared.

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The other category consists of more ornately produced books whose purpose, perhaps, was less to be read than to adorn the libraries of royals, nobles, and the rich bourgeoisie. They might be gifts or presentation copies—even after the introduction of printing in the late fifteenth century, manuscript copies retained a certain prestige—but the essential point is that they were specially ordered and thus expensive and unique. The illuminating images that accompanied the text were peculiar to that particular exemplar. Thus, the brilliantly-colored depictions of the 1390 jousts at St. Inglevert in the copy of Froissart’s chronicles held in the British Library (Ms. Harley 4379, reproduced in Barber and Barker 1989: 111; and Muhlberger 2014a: 45–54) are not found in any of the 149 other manuscripts containing Froissart’s works (Figure 8.1). They were undoubtedly created and inserted according to the wishes of the patron and purchaser of that particular manuscript. On the other hand, René d’Anjou’s Forme et devis d’un tournoi (1460) was such a celebrated book and objet d’art that at least six quite faithful copies of the original—text and illustration—were made before 1520 and owned by kings and other royals, and later bequeathed, auctioned, or presented as gifts to other distinguished people before making their way into national

FIGURE 8.1: The Jousts of St. Inglevert, France, 1470–5. Artist: Master of the Harley Froissart. Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images.

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libraries. Four more copies, less faithful but enriched with illustrations copied from other manuscripts, were made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (René d’Anjou [c. 1460] 1986: 80–4).2 A second and concomitant point is, then, that illuminated manuscripts—and for the purposes of the present chapter, manuscripts that were illuminated with images of sport—were prized by the successive generations of owners and carefully preserved. None the less, visual depictions of medieval sport were usually one-off creations and ought, for that reason, to be difficult to track down in the twenty-first century, hundreds of years after their creation. The third point, then, is the fact that despite what ought to be a dearth of medieval sports images, modern books on the subject of medieval athletics have certainly been able to locate and reproduce a plethora of them. That attests both to the popularity of sport as a subject of manuscript illumination and the care with which these images were created and preserved. It also attests to the degree to which sport was a cultural phenomenon in the medieval age, an activity that absorbed both the physical and psychological energy of all the social classes. As I have indicated above, the chivalric sports of tourneying and jousting were the subject that engaged most intensely pictorial artists and their clients. And although the centerpiece of the images is always the jousting or otherwise battling knights, the depictions also contain much accessory detail that we may take to be realistic. It is hence possible to know just what the viewing stands looked like and how they were constructed, the images giving concrete reality to the verbal description that we find, for example, in the chronicle of the Religieux de Saint-Denis, who writes of the French king Charles VI (1380– 1422) ordering the construction of a stadium to be built for tournaments (hastiludia, games with lances), and for there to be at a higher level (desuper) on one side a wooden promenade (ambulatoria lignea) for the ladies (domine) who have been invited to preside over the spectacle (ad spectaculum presiderent) (Pintoin [c. 1380–1422] 2007: 1:588). Illustrations in René d’Anjou (1986, unpaginated) show readers what a tournament looked like, or at least ought to look like. The double fence around the field of play and the tripartite stands are depicted both empty and full, with the spectators and judges above the level of the action and thus having full view of it (Figure 8.2). Since René’s tournament is an encounter between two teams, led respectively by the Duke of Brittany, who initiated the event, and the Duke of Bourbon, the four judges (the number is specified in the text) are accompanied by the Duke of Brittany’s herald and are impartially placed in the middle spectator box. The spectators—almost exclusively ladies—are in stands on either side of the judges, the stands being, as it were, color-coded to indicate which team the ladies support. It is worth noting that the viewing stands are also not tiered and the spectators at the back of the box have to look between the heads of those in front.

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FIGURE 8.2: Medieval tournament. The two sides of the contest with the Knight of Honor at the center. Miniature in the Livre des tournois of René d’Anjou, 1465, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Photo by Prisma/UIG/Getty Images.

Since René styled his book as a traité or treatise—a word that at this period was normally written only in Latin (tractatus) and was reserved for books on philosophy and science—it is clear that he was aiming his work to be as precise a set of instructions as was manageable. Thus, both the text and the illuminations represent interesting technical details, some determined by protocol. The knights (maîtres), it is stipulated and illustrated, are lined up in front, while their support staff (serviteurs) are lined up behind, much less richly and less protectively caparisoned. Between the two fences surrounding the field are to be placed armed guards whose function is to protect the tourneying knights from la foule du peuple, the mass of common spectators (not shown in the illuminations) who might otherwise—apparently—be tempted to run in among the battling knights. Despite this possibility, however, the guards are shown as being more interested in the tournament than in any possible intrusion by the public. The pictures also reveal that the two teams awaiting the starting signal are being contained each in its own half of the field by ropes stretched across in front of them. Four men holding axes sit astride the fence ready to chop the ropes as soon as the Duke of Brittany’s herald shouts out three times, “Coupez

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cordes, et heurtez batailles, quand vous voudrez” (“Cut the ropes and let the teams clash, when you are ready”). With regard to the female spectators, Ruth Mazo Karras (2002: 51) has shown that men displayed their superiority to other men through competition for women, as they became “tokens in a game of masculine competition.” The fact that a knight appealed to women could in itself increase his worth in the eyes of other men. The lady thus enters the tournament as a spectator and as a prize in part to represent the masculinity of the knight. Indeed, Allen Guttmann (2016: 3:97) has observed that, although spectators in illuminated medieval depictions of jousts, especially ladies and damsels, appear in the background, they are often represented almost as large as the clashing knights of the foreground, thus emphasizing from an artistic perspective their fundamental importance and centrality to the overall event. The first written references to the presence of women at tournaments may be found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain” [c. 1136] 1984: 328). Geoffrey states that after King Arthur had been fighting—and defeating—other rival regional kings in England, he held a great feast at Whitsun: “The knights planned an imitation battle and competed together on horseback, while the women watched from the top of the city walls and aroused them to passionate excitement by their flirtatious behaviour.” Although clearly legendary, equally it could not have been presented as historical if the presence of ladies at tournaments had not been commonplace and realistically plausible. The presence of women at sporting events was an important element in the confirmation of aristocratic manhood, as the ritualized (as opposed to the actual) submission of men to the power of women inspired aggression and competition. The knights used this sporting display to appeal to the female gaze as much as to other men. It is certain that the presence of women gave noble men an added incentive to fight; the ladies sometimes organized and adjudicated, and often presented prizes to victorious knights, which served as a public recognition of their prowess and desirability. The prizes at tournaments tended to be trophies that could be prominently displayed on the victors, which acted as a symbol of having emerged as the champion. Some of the prizes won at medieval jousting contests included gold and silver belts, gold chains, diamond and ruby rings, gold clasps, and gold crowns. In honor of the marriage of King Edward IV’s son, the young Richard Duke of York, to Anne Mowbray, a tournament was held at Westminster in 1478 at which the winners were presented with gold chains that displayed a letter A, E, and M of gold. The prizes themselves were then a marker of highstatus manhood, as those present at the tournament would have witnessed the prize-giving, and subsequently the visible reward would have acted as a reminder of how it was won. Letters and other prizes could be suspended from the chains or collars that men wore about their necks, so that victory in more than one tournament could be made known through the wearing of multiple trophies.

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It was not just in jousting that men could receive prizes; there were other public competitions such as wrestling, which was very much a spectator sport, with prizes being awarded to the winners. Guilds or nobles would offer a prize, often animals, especially rams, as Chaucer ([c. 1400] 1982: 34) notes in the Canterbury Tales. In the early medieval period Londoners were distinguished for their wrestling abilities. William Fitz Stephen ([c. 1170–83] 1990: 58), in his “Description of the Most Noble City of London,” notes that: “On feastdays throughout the summer the youths exercise themselves in leaping, archery and wrestling.” Matthew Paris in his Historia Anglorum ([1250–5] 2012: 3:69) recounts that in Henry III’s reign a wrestling match took place between the men of Westminster and the citizens of London in St. Giles, and “a ram was presented for the prize; the Londoners were victorious, having greatly excelled their antagonists.” Spectators flocked to see men wrestle for prize rams, and occasionally cocks, which clearly were intended to be potent symbols of the virility of the victor. The most developed pictorial representations of chivalric tournaments portray multiple layers of the social and cultural phenomena associated with these events. This is especially true of Italian images, because in Italy the tournament was more of a communal celebratory occasion, and less of a pseudo-military encounter. At all events, medieval manuscript illuminations and other paintings with a chivalric theme give the reader and viewer a fuller sense of medieval life, showing attendant musicians, elegantly gowned ladies, perfectly groomed horses, squires and other animal handlers, and senior knights serving as judges. Although we may take it that these images are artistically heightened, they are none the less realistic in the sense that the purchasers sought representations that were both accurate and aesthetically pleasing. They, too—or perhaps it was a preference of the artist— liked images that conveyed the excitement of the action: tourneyers and spectators crowded together, knights being unhorsed or fighting furiously en masse or about to strike a mighty blow with their sword or axe (Figure 8.3; see also comparable illustrations in Barber and Barker 1989: 5, 92–3, 178–9). By the fourteenth century in northern Europe (earlier in Italy) there started to emerge an educated bourgeoisie that created a market for books recounting the exploits of real or fictional heroes and that wanted these exploits illustrated as well as narrated in words. And medieval monarchs and other sovereigns, like some twenty-first-century despots, also had their publicity machines ready to depict them performing great deeds on the field of sport. Images of real celebrities and fictional heroes tourneying seem to have found a ready market. The Arthurian romances and the medieval epic cycles such as the Song of Roland (c. 1040–1115) and the Song of the Cid (c. 1207) remanifested themselves in romanticized chronicle versions and were produced in increasing numbers throughout the medieval age. The most popular representative of the genre was the Luso-Spanish epic romance Amadís de Gaula (“Amadis of Gaul”) that

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FIGURE 8.3: Scene from a jousting tournament, miniature from the Romance of Tristan and Isolde, manuscript, France, fifteenth century. Chantilly, Château, Musée Condé. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

originated in the fourteenth century and was disseminated throughout Europe in manuscript and (after 1508) printed form, translated into most of the western languages, and copiously illuminated. Written relics not of knights performing great deeds in the lists but of the practical issue in the moment of quantification of performance are rare. A significant amount of source material produced not so much for but by the late medieval tournament in English realms has survived, however, and is particularly notable for its austerity, consisting of cryptic, diagrammatic score cards, known

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as cheques. The surviving cheques vary in the quality of the draftsmanship, but all follow the same basic design of a parallelogram divided by a horizontal line which extends longitudinally beyond the right-hand edge of the tablet. The top and bottom edges of the parallelogram and the dividing center line are in turn bisected with small vertical lines which represent the scores of each competitor, such as blows to the torso and head, as well as foul strokes (Figure 8.4). The cheques rank among the most ascetic pictorial or documentary relics of the late medieval joust, and they remained a stubbornly English phenomenon and were not used as a graphic system in other European realms for depicting what happened in the moment at each competition. Other nations such as France and Castile preferred chronicle narratives. These types of narratives are distinguished by their almost complete lack of literary hyperbole in the form of similes and metaphors, as their intended purpose was to represent the event for posterity in as much factual detail as possible. Pero Rodríguez de Lena’s lengthy chronicle of the Passo honroso (“Pass of Honor”), a large-scale passage of arms and jousting tournament held in the Iberian Christian kingdom of León in 1434 (see Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977), and the chronicle of the Pas du Perron Fée (“Pass of the Enchanted Perron”), which was staged by the Burgundian knight Philippe de Lalaing at Bruges on April 28, 1463 (see Horn et al. 2013) are two salient examples of the genre. For modern scholars the descriptive narratives are of greater overall value than the score cheques, as they allowed for much greater elaboration of the type of armor worn by the contestants, how the lance staves actually broke, which pieces of armor were struck, and what happened to those pieces (if they were damaged, knocked off, etc.), in addition to verbal disputes that may have taken place over the outcomes or the judges’ decisions. The score cheques have attracted study of their own, though the earliest modern scholarship must be treated with caution. They were first discussed in any depth by Charles ffoulkes (1912), whose major contribution was to point to their existence, but only to a small selection, and his interpretation of the selected examples was flawed. Sydney Anglo (1961; 1968: 1:112–15) subsequently studied the entire corpus of English cheques (most of which are housed in the archives of the College of Arms and the British Library) and his meticulous analysis is the key that has unlocked their hidden meanings and mysteries. Both Anglo and Joachim Rühl (1990b) have examined the known surviving examples with a focus on the technical interpretations of their status as records of the results of jousts and quantification of performance. Images of more leisurely pursuits such as ball games and associated sports did not enjoy the same prestige among painters and purchasers of manuscripts as did the chivalric tournament. Before Breughel’s Children’s Games (1560) and the subsequent development of what is usually termed “genre paintings,” sentimentalized depictions of everyday life among the humbler segments of society, less dangerous games were consigned to the margins of written texts or to

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FIGURE 8.4: Jousting score cheque for a contest at the Field of Cloth of Gold, 1520. London, Society of Antiquaries, Ms. 136.2. By kind permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

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images reduced in size. The aim of these images was less to inform or to excite than simply to possibly distract or amuse. Sometimes they formed decorative borders around a central text to which they were otherwise unrelated: Books of Hours, i.e., prayer books, might include such images (McClelland 2010). But so, too, might epic poems such as the French Roman d’Alexandre, books of sacred songs such as the Spanish Cantigas de Santa María, or books in Latin of an edifying or scientific or ecclesiastical nature. Michael Flannery and Richard Leech (2004: 48–62, 123–6) reproduce a variety of medieval manuscript illuminations of people from different social classes striking a ball along the ground or through the air with a shepherd’s crook, a proto-cricket bat, and other ill-defined (but clearly purpose-made) implements devised for long drives or approach shots. David Block (2005: 107–8 and following p. 148) reproduces images which depict games with tapered clubs resembling baseball bats complete with fielders waiting or attempting to catch the batted ball. The participants in these ball-sport images, particularly those of the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, seem to be rustics or students; on the other hand, fifteenth-century illuminations tend to show the players as bourgeois. There is even a mid-fifteenth-century fresco in Milan’s Palazzo Borromeo that shows some very elegantly dressed, obviously aristocratic ladies in a garden hitting a ball with a small tapered bat; a companion fresco shows them playing catch (Malato 1993: 1:250–1). The point worth making is that in none of these images is there any attempt to represent any particular physical form or skill that—unlike the tournament and jousting images—would represent any superior degree of strength or (necessarily) masculine superiority. The artists do portray with some accuracy the postures and gestures that are appropriate to hitting or throwing; Flannery and Leech (2004: 20), for example, point out, in respect to one of the images, that the artist is showing the stance and arm position that would be exactly necessary to execute the move the game required (Figure 8.5). Other types of recreational sports are even more rarely represented. In the Très riches heures du duc de Berry (1412–16) the illustration for the month of August portrays peasants swimming naked in the river while sumptuously dressed aristocrats are riding out to hunt with falcons. Swimming for sport is also portrayed in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Roman d’Alexandre: very scantily clad young men bathe and dive into a river, while older men watch them (pruriently?) from a bridge. Another fifteenth-century manuscript shows young people being taught how to swim (both images in Mehl 1993: 171). These rare samplings serve as a caution to the modern scholar that the apparent exiguousness or lack of representation of sports such as swimming in contemporary images or narrative accounts should not necessarily lead to the conclusion that they did not exist or were rarely practiced at the time; they clearly did exist, and more evidence will undoubtedly come to light as the scholarship on the subject continues to evolve and discover fresh primary source material.

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FIGURE 8.5: Miniature for the Month of February, puck games. Book of Hours of Adélaïde of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy. Musée Condé in Chantilly. Photo by Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images.

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LITERARY REPRESENTATION Detailed verbal representations of sports practices and events were rarer during the medieval age than were pictorial illustrations, but they did exist. In his twelfth-century Arthurian romances the French poet Chrétien de Troyes describes a number of fictional tournaments, often in precise detail, with exciting descriptions of the splendor of the encounter as well as the disorder and the violence that were attendant upon it. In Erec et Enide, for example, he evokes the flags, the shields, the armor, and the weapons, the clashing lances and sword blows, and the knights knocked from the saddle (Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1170] 2004: 64; ll. 2172–206 in the original old French). Earlier in the poem Erec fights another knight, Ydier, in order to win a prize falcon in a public challenge in front of spectators. Chrétien goes into meticulous and vivid detail in telling how Erec dons the various pieces of his armor and in narrating the fight itself (Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1170] 2004: 46–50; ll. 707–1040 in the original old French). He describes not simply what did happen in this combat, but also speculates analytically and accurately about what could have happened had not certain blows been deflected, as follows: At that first attack, if Erec had not covered himself, the knight would have wounded him. The knight struck him such a blow above the shield, where he was unprotected, that he sliced off a piece of his helmet, the sword cutting down to the white coif, splitting the shield down to the boss, and taking off more than a hand’s breadth from the side of his hauberk. Erec might have been badly injured: the cold steel cut right to the flesh of his thigh. But God protected him at that time: if the blade had not been deflected outward, it would have sliced right through his body. — Chrétien de Troyes [c. 1170] 2004: 49 Technical details are also provided in abundance by the anonymous biographer of the Anglo-Norman knight (and later regent of England) William Marshal (1144–1219), in describing how the tourneyers stayed up late the night before the great mêlée tournament staged in 1166 between two villages near Le Mans called Sainte-Jamme-sur-Sarthe and Valennes, checking their armor and equipment: “All night long the knights had their hauberks sanded, their chausses furbished and their weaponry, caparisons and harness prepared: saddles, bridles, breast-straps, saddle-straps, stout stirrups and girths. Others tried on their helms, making sure they’d fit well when the time came” (Bryant [1220] 2016: 40). In a similar vein, a focal point of Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole (“Romance of the Rose or of Guillaume de Dole”), most likely composed c. 1212, is a highly detailed account of a tournament from beginning to end, including how the knights were armored in preparation for the mêlée, as follows:

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In sixty or a hundred places you would have seen servants unload the packhorses, emptying out strong new cases onto capes on the ground, taking out the hauberks and elegant white leggings. Some brought thread for sleeves, and others attached the shoulder-pieces, while in the meantime their lords went up to each other with greetings. There you would have heard so many “Welcomes!” and “Good my lords!” and from a hundred places, calls for armor, cinches, straps, and helmet-laces. — Jean Renart [c. 1212] 1995: 119; ll. 2584–97 in the original old French The fourteenth-century historian Jean Froissart, who worked in both France and England, often furnishes highly colored accounts of tournaments, telling of sparks flying off the weapons and armor and knights knocked senseless to the ground. He describes with evident gusto the jousts attendant upon the 1389 royal entry of Queen Isabeau into Paris and those organized by Richard II in London in 1390, but saves his greatest enthusiasm for the tournament at St. Inglevert, to which he devotes almost 100 pages (Froissart [c. 1400] 1872 14:22–4, 55–151, 253–65). This last event occurred when three French knights issued an international challenge stating that during thirty days in the spring of 1390 (Froissart states that the jousts took place in May, but in fact the St. Inglevert jousts began on Monday, March 21, 1390) they would take on all comers, though they were aiming particularly at the English. This famous tournament inspired several other written accounts, notably a long anonymous poem that supplies additional details.3 Another precise and very frank account of an elaborate jousting tournament can be found in the memoirs of the fifteenth-century Burgundian court official, Olivier de La Marche ([fifteenth century] 1883: 282–350). Organized in 1443 at Marsannay, just south of Dijon, in a triangle bounded by three chateaux that were commandeered as hospitality suites, the lavishness and excitement of the event astounded the young Olivier, who was just 21 years old at the time and had not seen a tournament before. He gives a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the event, including a description of the tents erected as dressing rooms for the international crew of knights who had answered the challenge. Some of these last, Olivier found, talked a better joust than they actually performed, and as a group they missed their targets as often as they hit them. A point to be

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made about both Froissart’s and La Marche’s accounts of these real historical events is that, though they were being true to the facts, they were also writing for an audience that sought to be entertained and to experience the excitement that was part of a tournament. Indeed, Froissart’s description of the jousts at St. Inglevert has been described appropriately as “a novelette of the perfect joust” (Muhlberger 2005: 198; also 205–15). A decade or so earlier than La Marche’s tournament, King Duarte of Portugal had explained in some detail the problems of jousting from a technical and psychological angle. His Livro da ensinança de bem cavalgar toda sela (“Book of Horsemanship”) of c. 1430 is an instruction manual for young knights and as such provides a realistic description of what it was actually like for a prospective jouster to control a fast-moving horse and a heavy lance while trying to hit a target that was also moving and was attempting to hit him. It does bear pointing out here that it is not at all certain that Duarte’s book was ever read by its intended audience, because it was left unfinished; its value to modern scholars, however, lies not so much in its pedagogical aims but as an expert representation of the physical and psychological challenges that jousting entailed. Duarte ([c. 1430] 2016: 104–23) was not surprised that jousters often closed their eyes at the crucial moment of the encounter, an important facet of the sport that led to complete misses or embarrassing or even injurious accidents that later Renaissance theorists would grapple with resolving. A final dual example of the literary representation of sport is found in Giovanni Boccaccio’s long epic poem of 1340–2, Teseida, the life and deeds of Theseus, and in the use his younger contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer made of this text in The Knight’s Tale, the first of the stories told to entertain the pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales (before 1400). The manner in which Chaucer adapted his Italian source to the expectations of his English public gives us an insight into the cultural confrontation between the mindset of the medieval age and that of the Renaissance, even though here the usual chronology is reversed. The centerpiece of Boccaccio’s poem, books 7 and 8 of twelve, is an account of a battle between Arcita and Palemone, each supported by a team of 100 baroni, to decide which of the two will marry the beautiful Emilia. Theseus schedules this battle to take place in a huge, perfectly circular arena (un pian ritondo a sesta) that has over 500 tiers of seats (più di cinquecento giri). It is, in fact, a genuine battle reminiscent of the ancient epics—the Aeneid and the Thebaid—that Boccaccio was striving to emulate; men are seriously hurt and killed, and though Arcita wins and survives and marries Emilia, he then dies of his wounds and Theseus gives Emilia to Palemone as a kind of consolation prize (Boccaccio [fourteenth century] 1970: 247–765). Chaucer represents Boccaccio’s classically imagined confrontation in terms more suited to his fourteenth-century English readers, who had not yet caught up to the already humanistically-minded Italians. He changes the fight into a

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tournament—“a justes, or a tourneiynge” (Chaucer [c. 1400] 1958, The Knight’s Tale, l. 2720)—and adds to Boccaccio first a stipulation by Theseus that, since “it were destruccioun” (l. 2538) if any blood were shed, the only weapons allowed are lances; and after the fighting some lines showing that although men are hurt, they have means to treat and heal their wounds: “To othere woundes and to broken armes / Somme hadden salves, and somme hadden charmes; / Fermacies of herbes, and eek save [sage] / They dronken, for they wolde hir lymes have [save their limbs]” (ll. 2711–14).4 Before the fighting actually begins, Chaucer paints a vivid picture of all the hustle and bustle of the last-minute preparations, down-to-earth realism not present in the more nobly-minded Boccaccio: And what device of harness too indeed, So rich and so outlandish, what a deal Of goldsmith work, embroidery and steel! Bright shields and trappings, headpieces and charms, Great golden helmets, hauberks, coats of arms. ... Spears being nailed and helmets buckled strong, Strapping of shields and lacing up of thong, ... The foamy steeds gnawing at the golden bridle, The armourers up and down and round about Racing with file and hammer through the rout, ... With pipe and clarion, trump and kettle drum. — Chaucer [c. 1400] 1982: 86. This modernized version corresponds to Chaucer [c. 1400] 1958, The Knight’s Tale, ll. 2496–2511 Chaucer also alters, or rather more fully develops, the description of the arena itself, reducing its height from the impossibly high 500 rows of seats imagined by Boccaccio to 60 feet (though he maintains its circumference “a myle was aboute”). More interestingly, he seems more intrigued by the fact that the seating was tiered and the sight lines thus unobstructed. Whereas Boccaccio simply wrote le genti sedeno . . . sanza impedir l’un l’altro in nessun loco, (“people sat without getting in one another’s way,” Boccaccio [fourteenth century] 1970: 481, stanza CX), Chaucer felt compelled to explain further “That whan a man was set on o degree, / He letted nat his felawe for to see” (Chaucer [c. 1400] 1958, The Knight’s Tale, ll. 1891–920). Tiered seating and standing to permit clear viewing had not occurred to the medieval mind (see, for example, Figure 8.2, the image in René’s tournament book discussed above),

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and Chaucer was clearly interested in the possibilities that that afforded. Such raked seating is accurately depicted in the jousting scenes in the late-fifteenthcentury illustrated life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (1382–1439) known as the Beauchamp Pageant (see Sinclair 2003: plates XXX and XXXI). Chaucer also admires the mathematical precision of the structure, stating, as did Boccaccio, “Round was the shap, in manere of compass,” but then later adding that Theseus had hired to build the arena every “crafty man” in the land “that geometrie or ars-metrike kan” (Chaucer [c. 1400] 1958, The Knight’s Tale, ll. 1889 and 1897–8). Chaucer appears to be sensitive to the increasing importance of a priori quantitative mathematical models in structuring practical and creative human behavior—something that was perhaps already a given for Boccaccio and thus a way of thinking Chaucer may have encountered in Italy.5 Beyond these descriptions of the medieval tournament, other sports such as tennis attracted broader attention among the clergy as well as the nobility, and further written comparisons of the way in which tennis is represented in medieval texts shed light on the differing opinions about this popular sport. While the game could be played ad hoc, its exclusivity was predicated, in part, upon the fact that in optimal circumstances tennis required a carefully manicured level area or court in which it could best be played. The construction and maintenance of a permanent tennis court required economic resources, which only the nobility and the clergy possessed. In medieval cloisters and castles so many ecclesiastics, nobles, and kings enjoyed playing tennis that it came to be called the Game of Kings. It was a French king—Louis X (1314–16)—who was the first recorded royal builder of tennis courts (Gillmeister 1997: 17–22). Medieval conduct books also indicate that tennis was recommended by educators as a suitable sport for kings and princes, though there were some detractors. The French knight Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1300–56), in his Livre de chevalerie (“Book of Chivalry”), for example, argued that tennis was strictly a woman’s game and that it encouraged gambling, observing that: There is also a game called real tennis (gieux de la paume) at which many people have lost some of their chattels and their inheritance. . . . And if you are determined to play, do not mind too much about winning, and do not stake too much of your money lest your game turn to anger. The situation is the same for real tennis; women have greatly suffered over this, for ball games used to be women’s pastime and pleasure. Yet it should be apparent that the finest games and pastimes that people who seek such honor should never tire of engaging in would be in the pastimes of jousting, conversation, dancing, and singing in the company of ladies and damsels as honorably as is possible and fitting. —Kaeuper and Kennedy 1996: 113

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Since Charny was writing his Book of Chivalry ostensibly for a male audience, his discouraging rebuke inadvertently points to the popularity of tennis and ball games among male as well as female players. Subsequently a female author, Christine de Pizan, in Li livres du corps de policie (“The Book of the Body Politic” [1404–7] 1994: 10), written as a guidebook for the French dauphin, Louis de Guienne, mentions the game of tennis in the specific context of acceptable games for the purpose of exercise in the overall education regime of the male heir of a prince: “It is good for him sometimes to exercise his body both in some work and in some suitable games like tennis and similar sports, but not too much, only so that he does not become too heavy and fat from too much rest.” The popularity of tennis among the English and French elite emerges in the alleged interchange between Charles VI of France and Henry V of England in 1415, when Charles sent the English king a chest of tennis balls with the suggestion that it was safer for Henry to play tennis than for him to wage war against France (Holinshed 1587: 3:547). The implication of this gesture was that Henry was wasting his adolescence in frivolous sports more appropriate for women and children when the real manly activity was to be found on the battlefield. By the mid fifteenth century the demand for tennis implements in England was substantial enough that Edward IV was petitioned to prevent the import of tennis balls (Marshal 1878: 210–12). Ultimately, however, tennis triumphed as a major sport that was played by men, women, and children across a broad spectrum of society, and constituted an early example of the democratization of certain sports that challenged the kind of exclusivity which surrounded the adult-male-oriented joust. Unlike tennis and other popular sports such as football and wrestling, tournaments were always overtly infused with class distinctions and biases, which varied from one realm to another. In particular in German-speaking lands, proof of noble ancestry in the form of written documentation and heraldry was essential, and interlopers were ritualistically beaten or publicly shamed if their true identity were discovered. In Spain, the rules of the Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones state that all ten of the defenders are knights and gentlemen beyond reproach, but this same stipulation is not imposed upon those who come to compete. Ancestry and lineage at this competition seem to have been an informal or even arbitrary consideration as, for example, when nine of the defenders refused to joust with a squire called Pedro de Torrecilla because they suspected he was not of noble birth. Prior to Torrecilla’s arrival these same nine defenders had jousted unconditionally with other squires, and it is not clear why he was singled out. The tenth defender, Lope de Estúñiga, would come to the rescue, stating that he could tell that Torrecilla was indeed of noble stock simply by the way he spoke and the eloquence of his words, that is, the way he carried and represented himself (none of which would have been

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at all evident in an English jousting cheque, which again underscores the great value of these types of narrative accounts). Interestingly, Lope de Estúñiga also offered to dub Torrecilla a knight on the spot, but Torrecilla politely declined on the grounds that, although he was indeed noble and had documentation to prove it, he was also of limited financial means and could not afford the upkeep required to be a member of the Order of Chivalry. His words echo those of the thirteenth-century chivalric theorist Ramon Llull ([c. 1274–6] 2013: 60), who was clear that “chivalry cannot be upheld without the . . . great expenses that befit the office of knighthood.” Torrecilla therefore preferred to remain a humble (but noble) squire (Rodríguez de Lena [1434] 1977: 327–8). The fact that he took the precaution of bringing relevant documentation to this passage of arms as a means of tangible selfrepresentation suggests that he knew full well that his lineage might be questioned by some. Another, and somewhat problematic, category of medieval books that portray sporting activities with technical precision is that of the combat manuals. Authored by instructors in the manly arts of fighting, these books taught chiefly swordplay, but also wrestling and fighting with weapons such as maces, axes, flails, and even large shields. The earliest known of these dates from the late thirteenth century (Forgeng 2018b), but they become more frequent into the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They are almost all written in German, most of them are illustrated, and many original texts were copied, rewritten, and expanded—Sydney Anglo (2000: 23) has numbered a corpus of more than sixty surviving manuscripts. For example, Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch of 1443 was redone in 1459 and again in 1467 and exists in six extant copies (see Gaurin 2006 for reproductions of the three different versions). Italian manuals begin to appear in the fifteenth century (see, for example, Mondschein 2011), but virtually no such books were composed in France and England. The verbal texts are almost always very brief and emphasis is placed on the depictions of the different moves and countermoves the fighters can make. The images may be very barebones or quite artistically drawn, as in Albrecht Dürer’s Fechtbuch of 1512 (Dürer [1512] 1910). Medieval combat sport manuals were mostly concerned to show the position of the fighting bodies and the weapons—usually swords—with a view to representing tactics; they do not convey any sense of the exertion involved in wielding a heavy weapon or trying to displace the opponent’s body when wrestling. There is hence no sense of the masculine body exhibiting itself. In any case, medieval combat manuals tend to show the fighters fully dressed, though perhaps in very formfitting costumes that tend to emphasize more fully the male body’s physical contours if not actually its musculature. This artistic representation has less to do, however, with exhibiting masculinity than with late medieval realism. Men about to fight a judicial duel in Valenciennes in 1455 are sewn into a costume

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“of cordovan leather, all just one piece, and [wearing] nothing underneath” (Huizinga 1996: 110). Illustrations in contemporary manuscripts amply attest to the wearing of skintight costumes, and some of these are reproduced in Wierschin 1965, Hils 1985, and Anglo 2000. In the images of a woman fighting a man in the 1467 manuscript copy of Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch preserved at the Bavarian State Library (Cod.icon. 394a), she, too, wears a formfitting leather costume (Figure 8.6). It may be questioned whether or not these books were actually teaching a sport, since their purpose was to impart the skills and techniques required to kill or disable an enemy in battle or in a judicial duel. However, what these books taught could really be learned only through repeated practice, by fighting an opponent for whom one felt no animosity, as distinct from dueling with someone who had inflicted real or imagined harm. The antagonists in the Valenciennes duel were accompanied by their fencing masters; prospective participants in these encounters—untrained bourgeois trying to settle a dispute judicially but not in the courts—were customarily allowed four weeks to prepare for the event (Wierschin 1965: 209). We know from later sources such as travel diaries that fencing masters supplemented their teaching income by inviting a paying public to observe their

FIGURE 8.6: A woman and a man wrestle in formfitting leather costumes. From the 1467 manuscript copy of Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch. Bavarian State Library, Cod. icon.394a, fol. 124v. Image courtesy of Wiktenauer.

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training techniques. Such practice fighting bore, of course, its share of dangers, but to do it in public, showing off one’s disdain for danger and one’s skill in weapon handling was akin to jousting, but without the protection of armor. These contests, which always led to victory or defeat, were clearly a manner of representing one’s masculinity that was particularly attractive to young nobles and a source of exciting entertainment for city dwellers. The fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch ([c. 1359] 1934: 5.6) reports attending a public display of sword fighting in Naples in 1343—he calls it an infamis gladiatorius ludus— and though he condemns the fact that such fights might end in the death of one of the fighters, everyone else, the willing, even eager, participants and the spectators, thought of them as sport.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION The model of the armored, mounted knight, which produced an idealized version of masculinity and chivalry for aristocratic males in the medieval period was particularly dominant in sporting culture, which provided an outlet beyond real battle for young males to display their strength, athletic skills, and manliness. The armor itself represented a specific model of chivalrous masculinity that was based on the wearer’s ability to perform his manhood in competition with other men. In the context of the medieval tournament, knightly masculinity was manifested by how many lances a man was able to shatter, if he struck his opponent on the body or head, and how many points he was able to score. The same went for wrestling as a close contact sport that involved fighting against an opponent, with winners and skillful participants receiving prizes. For the elite these sporting activities were not simply leisure activities; they provided an opportunity to demonstrate their athletic prowess and strength, to practice battling against other men of equal skill, and to show off to women. The gaze of other men was vital to a man’s honor and reputation in sporting events, but also the presence of women was significant to the construction of chivalric masculinity. This active lifestyle required men to display the right sort of body that was fitting for physical combat, as the fighter’s size, strength, and athleticism represented the highest forms of masculinity. After all, the male body was generally the first signifier of knightly masculinity being on full display, and it was therefore essential to train hard in order to keep the body in shape. By the thirteenth century the regulated combat of the joust enabled noble men to gain individual renown and approval. Emphasis in the earliest one-onone jousting competitions was often placed on the number of lances broken and unseating one’s opponent—these rules would become more nuanced and sophisticated as the sport and equipment evolved. This early scoring system for jousting is evident from the tours of the cross-dressing Bavarian knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein, according to his autobiography written in the mid thirteenth

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century, in which he records his adventures as a knight errant. Ulrich undertook what he called his “Journey of Venus” from April to May, 1227, disguised as a queen in honor of his lady. Traveling during the mornings and jousting against all comers in the afternoons, he claimed that over the course of the month he broke over 300 lances and knocked four knights out of the saddle, without once losing his own seat (Thomas 1969: 100–79). His detailed account is valuable in representing how a knight perceived his ideal manliness and status in the lists, which was based on achieving high scores in the joust and his desire to impress his chosen female. Perhaps also in Ulrich’s particular case he felt confident enough to engage in a playful self-parody of this otherwise serious ethos by actually assuming a female disguise. It was not uncommon for jousters to wear a “cointise,” or favor, as a crest on their helms, such as women’s gloves, sleeves, wimples, and cone-shaped hennins—see, for example, the jouster’s helm on the viewer’s left in Figure 8.1 above—but needless to say, without pushing the transvestism to the same extreme as Ulrich. A good indicator of certain aspects of the physique of the medieval sporting elite is found in surviving homogeneous armor. A complete armor provides a close approximation of the dimensions of the wearer’s actual body size and thus constitutes a valuable material tool in the realm of representation. Certain key parts of an armor were made to fit like a second skin, designed to flex and move fluidly and dynamically. It was also an idealized sculptural form made of steel, at once chromatic and somatic, the essence of the active life to which all knights aspired. It protected and obscured the wearer’s body while also accentuating and enhancing its contours, and by extension the wearer’s virility and potency. Thus, it encapsulated not only an ideal of chivalric beauty and identity, but also the masculinity that informed and defined that identity. Although full plate armor was available by the late fourteenth century, the earliest surviving homogeneous armors date from the mid fifteenth century, with many more examples remaining from the sixteenth century. By way of example, the young King Henry VIII’s silvered and engraved armor, made in Flanders and decorated in England in 1515 and now preserved at the Royal Armouries (object number II.5), includes a waist measurement of 34.7 inches (88 centimeters) in diameter and a chest of 41.7 (106) (Richardson 2009). Allowing for the mail and padded textile undergarments, it may be inferred that the king’s body itself was slightly smaller, with perhaps a 34-inch (86.5-centimeter) waist and a 40-inch (101.5-centimeter) chest. As shown by Noel Fallows (2010: 175–6), the strength required to spend long periods of time in the high, wraparound jousting saddle led to a welldefined musculature in the buttocks, thighs, and legs, and it was here that a man’s beauty was believed to reside. This essential element of a man’s body shape is recorded in the greaves, metal plates protecting the lower legs, made to fit very closely. The girth or total circumference of the greaves of the silvered

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and engraved armor is 15.75 inches (40 centimeters) (Blair 1965: 52); hence his actual calves would have measured approximately 15.5 inches (39.4 centimeters) or very slightly more. In his prime at 24 years old, King Henry VIII displayed an impressive athletic frame, the product of a well-rounded sporting life, many hours of which were dedicated not only to armored combat both on horseback and on foot, but also to hunting, wrestling, tennis, and dancing. The measurement of Henry’s greaves compares favorably to other greaves of the time. For example, Wallace Collection A286 (Innsbruck c. 1512–14) and A21 (Gothic c. 1480) each measure 16.5 inches (41.9 centimeters), and the greaves of A49 (joust armor c. 1580) measure 16.125 inches (41 centimeters).6 Henry’s calf muscles were therefore not massive, but on the contrary, slim and well sculpted. Their overall long, graceful elegance along with his well proportioned waist and chest represented the body of a consummate jouster. He would certainly have cut a dash as a royal knight and flower of chivalry when he entered the lists in the most expensive and state-of-the-art armor available at the time. For European rulers, organized athletic competitions such as tournaments represented the political power of the nation and celebrated sovereignty by uniting cultural and martial arts as part of a grand strategy of medieval chivalry. On some occasions the leaders of the European chivalric conglomerate battled it out in the enclosure through their jousting ambassadors, who represented the status and manliness of their kings, respectively. In other cases, however, the ruling monarchs themselves, including the English, French, and Castilian kings, the Italian and Austrian dukes, the German electors, and Holy Roman Emperors, and many of the other highest-ranking members of the royal courts of Europe, all jousted personally with a view to consolidating and affirming their power symbolically, a tradition that continued throughout the medieval age and well into the Renaissance. Public representations of wealth and power were particularly necessary to princes like the Valois Dukes of Burgundy whose authority was fragile because their dynasty was relatively new and flanked by much more powerful dynasties in France and Germany. In particular, the third and fourth Dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, created the most splendid court in Europe, a model for contemporary rulers and their successors. The Burgundian court, which has been defined appropriately as “a veritable epicenter of knight-errantry” (Ruiz 2012: 241), is perhaps the best example in western Europe of the deliberate deployment of chivalric exercises to represent wealth and power. In particular, Philip the Good’s extensive Burgundian state resulted from power and territorial struggles; thus, he was skillful in using chivalric activity to represent Burgundy as a formidable state between France and Germany and to reinforce the court’s position as a center of power. The

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Burgundian model for representation and display consisted of moving pageant cars to transport jousters, the appearance of a Tree of Chivalry to display the challengers’ shields, and a romantic allegory that structured the tournament (Guttmann 1992). The court of Burgundy had developed its own form of the passage of arms that involved the use of the sword as well as lance in combat, and only those with four blood lines of nobility could take part. The passage of arms typically involved defending an obstacle that was under siege, at times an actual gateway or tower, but most frequently an artificially constructed object, such as a castle, which housed a cohort of supposedly beleaguered ladies. In this allegorical tale, the knight pledged to protect his lady through acts of valor, often delivering a speech as part of the display, which also included scenic devices, music, and dancing (see Barber 2020: 200–32). One of the best-documented Burgundian passages of arms is the Pass of Charlemagne’s Tree, held near Dijon in 1443, and presided over by Philip the Good. The passage of arms was to start on July 1st and continue for forty days, excluding Sundays and feast days, with thirteen of Philip’s knights defending a road. The knights presented an incredible display of chivalry for forty days, which reflected their martial abilities on horseback and on foot. Even more significant to Philip was the fact that these knights were based at his court, a fact that signaled the chivalric quality of Burgundy in producing a high class of nobles who had the stamina and skill to compete for such a lengthy and relatively uninterrupted period. Within the same time period, and underpinned by similar motivations, one of the most famous passages of arms organized by René d’Anjou is the Pass of the Shepherdess at the Castle at Tarascon, which began on June 3, 1449, and continued for three days with numerous jousts, masques, and plays. This passage of arms was a metafiction in the sense that it was loosely based on a poem by Louis de Beauvau.7 Acting out the parts of characters depicted in the poem, two shepherds defended shepherdess Isabelle de Lenoncourt, a noble lady of Lorraine, who was to distribute the prizes. She entered on the first day on horseback, escorted by one of the judges of the tournament and the king of arms, and followed by a flock of sheep, with two men who tended them. The two knights disguised as shepherds, one representing joy in love and the other sorrow in love, issued challenges on her behalf which corresponded to the shields hanging from the Tree of Chivalry. This passage of arms was the first in a series of lavish tournaments staged by René as a way to signal that he was armed and ready to defend his house in the same way that his knights were ready to defend the pass. Nowhere was the Burgundian tradition stronger and more closely emulated than in England in the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, at which time the political climate was not so different to that of Anjou and Burgundy.8 The Burgundian style of tournament was first seen in England at Smithfield in

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London, on June 12, 1467, when the negotiations for the marriage of Margaret of York, sister of King Edward IV, to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, were celebrated with feats of arms. A public holiday was proclaimed and commoners unable to crowd around the enclosure climbed trees to obtain a glimpse of the pageantry and combats. This tournament was intended to play a central function in the diplomatic relationship between England and the Low Countries. From a political standpoint its splendor was not only a way of emulating the Burgundian court, but also of emphasizing the validity of Edward IV and showcasing the status of the new house of York (Ross 1997: 257–78). The king’s brother-in-law, Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, was selected as the English champion, who stood in for the king. Edward had chosen not to compete, but instead to judge the fighting activity. The person selected to be Woodville’s opponent in this challenge was Antoine, the Bastard of Burgundy. He was publicly acknowledged as the natural son of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and like Woodville had a solid reputation for chivalric exploits. He was known to be an expert jouster and had just returned from crusade. The selection of Woodville and the Bastard can be attributed to the fact that they each embodied the knightly ideal of manhood that was essential in representing the courts of England and Burgundy. In so much as this was a diplomatic occasion for Anglo-Burgundian relations, there was also an aspect of competition that extended beyond the fighting activity into the glamor that surrounded the event. Thus, the Smithfield tournament provided both the English and the Burgundians an opportunity to prove they were each other’s equals not just in the localized martial contests, but in the broader international chivalric conglomerate (Anglo 1965). This relationship between England and Burgundy was solidified a year later in July, 1468, at the elaborate Pass of the Golden Tree held at Bruges to celebrate the nuptials of Charles the Bold of Burgundy and Margaret of York. It was an extravagantly staged affair, with a golden tree upon which challenging knights hung their shields, followed by a series of courtly ceremonies. In total, there were ten days of jousting and six grand banquets, thus marking a significant occasion of ducal power. The conspicuous wealth and opulent splendor of the Burgundian court was to make a lasting impression on its new allies, and would influence the English court into the early sixteenth century. Thus, by the late fifteenth century tournament activity was leveraged as a diplomatic tool to represent an image of a powerful sovereign and a prosperous state that could compete on the wider European stage.

CONCLUSION In the twenty-first century, photographs, drawings, and paintings of athletes playing less violent sports—essentially tennis, golf, and baseball—are likely to

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show them at moments of physical tension and achievement: acing an opponent, hitting an exceptionally long and true drive, catching a ball thought impossible to run down. In the Middle Ages, as the notion of sportsmanship evolved, in particular in the wake of the mêlée tournaments, the sports undertaken by the nobility were mainly individual contests, which involved going to battle against an adversary, in a contest that could be easily judged and which rewarded an overall champion. Such competitions were easily observable and lent themselves to written accounts as they were actually happening or shortly thereafter. In the case of the less violent sports, unlike the most common depictions of their modern counterparts, medieval depictions of similar sports place emphasis on the refinement and stateliness of the players, the bourgeoisie who could afford to buy purpose-made clubs and balls and had the leisure to play such games. They are largely shown as having slender bodies and wearing modestly elegant garments. They are portrayed not as actually hitting the ball but as contemplating doing it. There is no sign of visible exertion, no off-balance movements, no confrontation as in the chivalric and combat sports. The late medieval age, the timer from which these representations date, were marked by the rise of the urban and commercial bourgeoisie. As such, they bear witness to the sociological evolution of Western culture.

NOTES * This chapter was completed with additional material contributed by John McClelland and Noel Fallows. 1. The richest modern sources for medieval pictures of sporting activities are Barber and Barker (1989), Flannery and Leech (2004), and Fallows (2011). Young (1987) also reproduces many interesting images, though his subject is confined to England from the mid fifteenth century onwards. 2. The book is actually labelled by various titles, the only constant from one to the other being the word “tournoi.” The manuscript itself is untitled, but in the preliminary materials René refers to it variously as “ung petit traicté . . . de la forme et devis . . . [d’]ung tournoy” and a few lines later as simply “la forme et maniere comment ung tournoy doibt estre entrepris” (René d’Anjou [c. 1460] 1986: 6). The title Livre des tournois seems to be an identifier invented by librarians. 3. These accounts are published as an appendix in the same volume of Froissart (c. 1400) 1872: 14:407–19; also Muhlberger 2014a: 32–42, who translates them into English. The texts have been analyzed by Gaucher 1996 and Muhlberger 2014a. 4. In Old and Middle English “lymes” (limbs) could mean bodily organs as well as arms and legs. 5. In his Decameron, VI, 5, Boccaccio praises the painter Giotto for having instilled his work with an intellectual dimension. Giotto was the first to structure his paintings using geometrically-based perspective.

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6. Thanks are due to Dr. Tobias Capwell, Curator of Arms and Armor at the Wallace Collection, for providing these measurements. 7. The most accessible modern edition of the poem is that of Williams 1990. 8. For an overview of the Wars of the Roses, see especially Carpenter 2012, Lander 2007, and Grummit 2014.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Thomas C. Devaney is an associate professor of history at the University of Rochester, USA. His publications include Enemies in the Plaza: Urban Spectacle and the End of Spanish Frontier Culture, 1460–1492 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), as well as various articles and book chapters on late medieval and early modern urban and religious culture. Noel Fallows is the distinguished research professor of Spanish and associate provost at the University of Georgia, USA. His most recent books include Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia (Boydell, 2010) and the first translation into English from the original Catalan of Ramon Llull’s Book of the Order of Chivalry (Boydell, 2013). Grant A. Gearhart is an assistant professor of Spanish and director of the language resource center at Georgia Southern University, USA. He has published articles in Hispanic Journal, Journal of Popular Culture, Letras Hispanas, and Romance Notes. Michael Harney is a professor of Spanish at the University of Texas-Austin, USA. Recent publications include Race, Caste, and Indigeneity in Medieval Spanish Travel Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), The Epic of the Cid, Translation and Edition (Hackett Publishing Company, 2011), and Kinship and Marriage in Medieval Hispanic Chivalric Romance (Brepols, 2001). Emma Levitt is a visiting research fellow at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She has published articles in BBC History Magazine and History Today, and has a forthcoming chapter in Loyalty to the British Monarchs, c. 1400–1688 to be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

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Robert A. Mechikoff is a professor and the director of the graduate program in sport management at Concordia University, Chicago, USA. He is the author of A History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education: From Ancient Civilizations to the Modern World, now in its seventh edition. Ken Monschein is a visiting lecturer at UMass-Mount Ida, USA. His most recent publications include Flowers of Battle, Vol III: Florius de Arte Luctandi (Freelance Academy Press, 2018), The Knightly Art of Battle (Getty Publications, 2011), and Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise (Italica Press, 2009). Jonathan Tavares is the associate curator of arms and armor and European decorative arts before 1700 at the Art Institute of Chicago, USA. He has researched, published articles, and lectured on early modern arms and armor, design and print culture, and the history of collecting. Lisa W. Tom is an assistant professor of art history at the University of Rhode Island, USA. Her research focuses on early modern portraiture, courtly culture and identity politics, representations of war, and constructions of gender.

INDEX

Page numbers in bold refer to figures. accommodation, 153–62 age, 78–9, 174, 181 Alcocer, Francisco de, 6–7 Alexander III, Pope, 154 Almond, Richard, 42, 171 Amadis of Gaul, 21, 27, 151–2, 153, 220–1 Anglo, Sydney, 139, 222, 232 animal fighting, 32–3, 175 anti-tournament literature, 159–61 approaches, 1–3 archery, 12–3, 44, 72, 179, 184 Aristotle, 119, 192–3 armor, 21–2, 26–31, 28, 33, 51, 90–102, 91, 112, 125–6, 178, 181, 234, 235 articulation, 97–8 attachments, 100 bascinet, 91, 92, 94–5 the helm, 90–5, 94, 174 and identity, 205–6 lance-rests, 99, 101, 103–4, 105 leather, 91, 96–7 mail, 96 measurements, 235–6 padded garments, 96 plate, 97–100, 235–6 reinforcing plate, 93–4 rules, 114

shields, 100–2 technological developments, 96–100 artisanal masculinity, 209 Asbridge, Thomas, 213 axe play, 135, 137, 148 ball games, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 62, 72, 77–8, 78, 86, 87–9, 167, 187, 209–10, 222, 224, 225 Barber, Richard, 147–9, 150 Bardi, Giovanni, 12 Barker, Juliet, 114, 150, 156–7, 159, 169 Barthélemy, Dominique, 172 Barthes, Roland, 153 beating the bounds, 78 Bede, 74–5 Benedict, St, 185 Beowulf, 65–6 Bernard of Clairvaux, 160, 161, 161–2 Berners, Juliana, 167 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 228, 230 Boccassini, Daniel, 171 body, the, 190, 198, 200, 201–2, 205–6, 210 Boileau, Étienne, 86 Bonaventure, St, 198 Bord, Lucien-Jean, 171 Bourdieu, Pierre, 165, 166, 184 Braudy, Leo, 204 263

264

Breugel, Peter, the Elder, 182, 222 Bruges, Galbert de, 172 bullfighting, 32–3, 175 Burgundy, 236–7, 238 Buttin, François, 33 Caillois, Roger, 1–2, 3, 165 Calais, 79 calcio, 12 Calvete de Estrella, Juan Cristóbal, 138 cane games, 31–3, 32, 54–5, 206–7 Capwell, Tobias, 96 Cartagena, Alonso de, 54, 155, 156 Carter, John Marshall, 2–3, 190, 200 Castiglione, Baldesar, 38–9 Cátedra, Pedro, 22 Cennini, Cennino, 86, 92, 97, 109 Charlemagne, 42, 64 Charles the Bald, King, 4, 64 Charles VI, King of France, 51 Charny, Geoffroi de, 42, 115, 173, 203, 230–1 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 5, 6, 37, 52, 73, 182, 184, 185, 220, 228–30 cheating, 117, 120, 129–30 chess, 167, 168, 169, 185 children, 10, 15 children’s games, 182 Chilperic I, King of the Franks, 64 chivalric ethos, 43, 138–9, 142–3, 149, 160, 197–8, 200–10 chivalric romances, 143–53, 162–3, 220–1 chivalry, definition, 197 Chrétien de Troyes, 5, 51, 52, 66, 67, 147, 205, 213–4, 226 Christianity, 190, 192 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, 31 Chronica Adelfonsi, 69 Church, the, 197–8, 200–1 accommodation with, 153–62 civic engagement, 187 civic jousts, 178 civic pride, 178 civil disobedience, 39 class, 165–6, 169, 171–7, 173, 176 clergy, the, 74–5, 82–3n1, 162, 197–8, 199, 200, 210 exercise, 185–6 martial training, 170, 181 Clermont, Council of, 154

INDEX

clothing, 33 combat manuals, 8–9, 232–3 Combat of the Thirty, 142, 171 confidence, 111 conflict, 142–53, 144, 146, 148 in chivalric romance, 143–53, 162–3 conflict resolution, 143–53, 162–3 Constantinople, the Hippodrome, 63–4 contemporary medievalism, 186–7 Coutinho, Álvaro Gonçalves, 14 crests, 43, 91, 92, 93, 94 critical approaches, 1–3 Crombie, Laura, 179 crossbow contests, 12–3 Crouch, David, 114–5, 156–7, 159 Cummins, John, 171 d’Anjou, René, 6, 46, 80, 81, 86, 97, 97–8, 100, 108, 116–7, 150, 171, 174, 215, 216–9, 217, 237 Dante, 73, 78 deeds of arms, 171 democratization, 16 Derby, 72 descriptive narratives, 222 dice, 42 difference, geographies of, 177–84 diplomacy, 238 display, 51 documentation, 15–8 problems of interpretation, 22–6 dogs, 89, 175 d’Orleans, Charles, 78–9 double life, concept of, 14 Doubleday, Abner, 5 Dressler, Rachel, 205 Duarte I, King of Portugal, 5, 24, 30–1, 37–8, 40, 57, 59, 86, 106, 109, 109–10, 110–1, 119–20, 228 Duby, Georges, 16, 44, 157 Dunning, Eric, 2, 141, 153, 184 Dupuis, Olivier, 179 Eads, Valerie, 169 Easter, 62, 71 Edward, the Black Prince, 118, 206 Edward I, King, 114, 159, 162 Edward III, King, 74, 98, 109, 184 Edward IV, King, 238 Elias, Norbert, 2, 141, 153, 184

INDEX

265

Enrique of Castile Prince, 124–5 evidentiary base, 3 exercise, 56–7, 185–6 Exeter, 75

Granada, 55 Gray, Sir Thomas, 142 Guillelmus Falconarius, 41 Guttmann, Allen, 2, 3, 4, 13, 29, 219

falconry and hawking, 41–2, 69–71, 70, 86, 89–90, 111, 175 Fallows, Noel, 21, 27, 117, 129, 169, 174, 235 female masculinity, 191 fencing competitions, 43–4, 179–80, 182, 233–4 fencing manuals, 22, 182 fertility rites, 77 ffoulkes, Charles, 222 Fight Books, 43 financial independence, 209 firearms, 89 Fitz Stephen, William, 9, 18, 36, 39, 56, 61, 71, 87, 134, 158–9, 209–10, 220 Flannery, Michael, 224 football, 9, 12, 74, 77, 143, 184, 231 Forgeng, Jeffrey, 106 France, 6, 9, 12 François I, King of France, 6 Frederick II, Emperor, 42, 86, 89–90, 111, 198 Frederick III, Emperor, 43, 70–1 Frescobaldi, Giovanni, 8 Froissart, Jean, 227, 228 Fulk, King of Jerusalem, 69

Hajnal, John, 169 Halberstam, John, 191 hawking and falconry, 41–2, 69–71, 70, 86, 89–90, 111, 175 Hawkwood, Sir John, 12 health, 56–7, 185–6, 198 Henderson, William, 77 Henry II, King, 157 Henry III, King, 45 Henry VIII, King, 6, 235–6 heraldry, 91, 92, 108–9 Herbert, William, 86 Hermann of Tournai, 172 Heywood, William, 13 Historical European Martial Arts, 186 Hodgson, Natasha, 193 holidays, 73–4 holy days, 62 honor, 44, 204, 209 horse trappings, 108–9 horsemanship, 31–3, 32, 54–5, 59, 86, 110, 180 horses, 106 Hoveden, Roger de, 172 Huizinga, Johan, 1–2, 3, 4, 81, 145–6, 165, 190 hunting, 39–42, 41, 51–2, 66, 68–71, 70, 86, 89–90, 162, 167, 175–7, 176, 177, 185, 202 hunting literature, 40 hurling, 184

gambling, 42 game drives, 40 game parks, 177 games, 182, 183, 184, 222, 224, 225 Garber, Rebecca, 169 gender, 166, 167, 168, 169, 187, 192–3 gender identity, 194 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 66, 219 Germany, 43, 114, 178, 179–80 Giles of Rome, 78 Gillmeister, Heiner, 56, 77 Gilmore, David, 194–5 Gleason, Angela, 85–6 Gloucester, Thomas, Duke of, 94 Göngu-Hrolfs Saga, 65 Good Wife’s Guide, 69–70 Gower, John, 9

Iberia, 54–5 identity, 166, 189–90, 194, 204, 210–1 and armor, 205–6 knights, 205–9, 211 laborers, 209–10 and tournaments, 202–8 Innocent II, Pope, 154 Innocent III, Pope, 154–5 innovations, 26–33 interpretation, problems of, 22–6 inventories, 86 Iranzo, Miguel Lucas de, 55 Italy, 72, 180–2

266

ball games, 12 literary works, 8 marksmanship contests, 12–3 rivalries, 12–3 tournaments, 7–8, 220 Jacques de Vitry, 160–1 Jaquet, Daniel, 43 jeu de paume, 75–7, 78–9, 177 Jews, 184–5 Joan of Arc, 193–4, 214 João I, King of Portugal, 40, 42 John of Gaunt, 13–4 John of Salisbury, 68, 160, 161 John XXII, Pope, 155 joust of peace, 94–5 joust of war, 94–5 jousting, 4–9, 7, 71–2, 86, 149, 173–4, 178, 207 cheating, 120, 129–30 danger, 6–7, 16–7, 30–1, 112, 207–8 documentation, 16–8, 17 Italy, 7–8 literary works, 8 merchant classes, 43 metarules, 121–2 origins, 25 Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, 17–8, 18–22, 25–6, 27–8, 31, 119, 122, 126–8, 129–30, 131, 150, 155–6, 204, 208–9, 231–2 prizes, 8, 124 representation, 227, 228, 234–5 rules, 5–6, 118–32, 133, 134 safety features, 29–31 scoring, 120, 130, 132, 133, 134, 139, 221–2, 223 spectators, 122, 134 technologies, 26–33, 28 terminology, 23–4 training, 109–11 Juan II, King of Castile, 82, 124–5 Kaeuper, Richard, 143 Kal, Paulus, 180 Karras, Ruth Mazo, 169, 194, 204, 219 Keen, Maurice, 169, 197, 204 Kinnamos, John, 72 knights, 15, 30, 33, 49, 138–9, 160, 234 and the clergy, 162

INDEX

education, 201–2 identity, 205–9, 211 occupation, 5 status, 203 training, 202 knights errant, 151 Knights Templar, 160, 161–2 La Sale, Antoine de, 6 la soule, 9 laborers, identity, 209–10 Lagny-sur-Marne, 44 Lalaing, Jacques de, 171 lances, 99, 101, 103–4, 105, 125, 131 Laon, Henry de, 106 Latini, Brunetto, 119 Leech, Richard, 224 legal knowledge, 145 Legnano, Giovanni di, 178 leisure time, nobility, 68–71 Lent, 71, 73 licenses, 158 Liechtenauer, Johannes, 179–80 Liechtenstein, Ulrich von, 14, 189, 234–5 life stages, 78–9 literary representation, 226–34, 233. see also Chaucer, Geoffrey; Song of Roland; Song of the Cid literary works, 8 Llull, Ramon, 53, 56, 161–2, 201 London, 36, 37, 51, 71–2, 73, 87, 134, 158–9, 178, 209–10, 220 longbowman, 44 Louis the German, King, 4, 64 Lucas de Iranzo, Miguel, 77–8 Luna, Álvaro de, 124–5 Luttrell, Sir Geoffrey, 91, 92, 108 Lydgate, John, 78 McClelland, John, 2–3, 66, 119 MacKay, Angus, 124 Macpherson, Ian, 124 male–female duels, 191–2, 191, 192, 233, 233 Manciolino, Antonio, 8–9, 182 manliness, 190, 195, 207, 234 manuscripts, categories, 215–7 Marche, Olivier de La, 227–8 Marie de France, 207 market economy, 166

INDEX

marksmanship contests, 12–3, 44, 72–3, 179 marriage, 77–8, 169 Marshal, William, 5, 14, 45, 61, 62, 67, 79, 86, 113, 142, 173, 203, 213, 226 martial sports, 4–9, 7, 178 in Italy, 180–2 in northern Europe, 178–80 marvelous abstraction, 2 Marx, Walther, 43 Mary of Hungary, 123–4 masculinity, 169, 190, 191, 194–6, 209, 214, 234 Maximilian I, Emperor, 14, 57 medieval age, 1 sport in, 3–9, 10, 11, 12–4 medievalist sports, 186–7 Mehl, Jean-Michel, 3, 113 men and sport, 194–6 status, 210–1 Menaguerra, Ponç de, 29–30, 33, 132, 134 Menestrier, Claude François, 6 merchant classes, 43 Meyer, Joachim, 179–80, 180 Mézières, Philippe de, 78 Mickel, Emanuel, 145 military training, 12, 56, 58, 59, 109–11, 172, 180–1, 194–6 militia Christi, 198 mind, 198 mind–body connection, 198, 200 mock battles, 4–5 monasteries, 75 Mondschein, Ken, 182 Montalvo, Rodríguez de, 21 Monte, Pietro, 24, 38–9, 57, 174, 185, 200 morality, 74 Morgan, Roger, 56 Moses Maimonides, 198 Mugg, Jean-Pierre, 171 Muhlberger, Steven, 169 Nadot, Sébastien, 25, 169 nationhood, 214 Nennius, 72 Neste, Évelyne van den, 43, 115, 178 Nithard, 4, 64

267

nobility, the, 169, 171, 171–4, 175, 190, 239 ball games, 177 exclusivity, 204 hunting, 39, 41, 173 leisure, 68–71 non-combat sports, 9, 10, 11, 12 Norse, the, 65–6 Norse mythology, 196 nostalgia, 14 Notker, 175 Oggins, Robin S., 42 Omalu, Bennet, 31 Os doze de Inglaterra (“The Twelve of England”), 13–4 pain, overcoming, 208–9 pallone, 12 Papacy, the, 155 parasitical creatures, 157 Paris, 73, 75–6, 177, 182 Paris, Matthew, 112, 178, 220 Parlement of the Thre Ages, 71 Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, 17–8, 18–22, 25–6, 27–8, 31, 119, 122, 126, 131, 150, 155–6, 204, 208, 231–2 Pass of the Knight of the Pine, 130–1 passages of arms, 118–32, 133, 134, 149–50 payment receipts, 86 pelota, 10, 15 Petrarch, 234 Philip, Count of Flanders, 44 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 40 Philip the Good of Burgundy, 82, 236–7 Phoebus, Gaston III, 40, 86, 89, 175, 176 physical capabilities, 200 physique, 201–2, 206, 234–5, 239 pictorial representation, 214–22, 216, 218, 221, 223, 224, 225 Pizan, Christine de, 78, 203–4, 230–1 play, 78, 145–6, 165 definition, 1–2, 4 pleasure, 35–6 poaching, 71 Poland, 68–9 political agendas, 114 political milestones, 65

268

political representation, 234–8 Poliziano, Angelo, 8 polo, 72, 77 Portugal, World Cup, 1966, 13–4 Premariacco, Fiore dei Liberi da, 57, 59 Preuilly, Geoffroy de, 5 prizes, 8, 15, 73, 124, 219–20 professionals, 12, 45 psychology, 59 Pulci, Luigi, 8 purpose, 35–59 recreation, 35–42, 37, 38, 41 sociopolitical maneuvering, 43–6, 47, 48, 49, 49, 50, 51–5 tournaments, 35 training and exercise, 37, 38–9, 56–7, 58, 59 Putnam, Robert, 187 Quesada, Fernando de, 55 quintain, the, 110 race, 166, 184–5 races, 73 regional variations, 63 religious holidays, 185 Renart, Jean, 226–7 representation, 213–39 literary, 226–34, 233 masculinity, 214 pictorial, 214–22, 216, 218, 221, 223, 224, 225 political, 234–8 question of, 213–4 see also Chaucer, Geoffrey; Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones; Song of Roland; Song of the Cid reputation, 44, 52 revenue potential, 45 rhetoric, and sport, 18–22 Richard I, King, 68, 157–8 Richard II, King, 51 Richardson, Amanda, 42 Richardson, Thom, 95, 98 risk, 67 rivalries, 13 Robin Hood ballads, 177, 184, 186 Robleda, 119–20 Rodríguez de Lena, Pero, 19–22, 25–6, 119–20, 204, 208–9, 222

INDEX

Rogers, Clifford, 184 role models, 151 role-playing, 152–3 Romance of Alexander, 36–7, 110 Rome, 195, 210 Round Tables, 162 royal power, 124–5 royalty, 53, 120, 190, 235–6 Rühl, Joachim, 45, 117, 120, 122, 222 rules, 5–6, 45, 67, 113–39, 141, 143, 149, 150, 159 armor, 114 biased, 120 enforcement, 114–5 foot combats, 134–5, 136, 137–8 mêlée tournaments, 113–5 mounted tourneys, 115–8 Rüxner, Georg, 45–6, 49, 114 saddle designs, 106–8, 107, 235–6 saints’ days, 73–4 San Gimignano, Folgóre di, 7–8 San Pedro, Diego de, 18 satire, 43 Saul, Nigel, 159 Scaino, Antonio, 12, 86 scientific thinking, 200 seasons, seasons, 62 seigneurial parks, 39 Settia, Aldo A., 181 sex and sexual exploits, 52–4 sexual innuendo, 52–3 Shakespeare, William, 9 shields, 100–2 Sicily, 41 Sidonius Apollinaris, 195, 211n2 sieges, 142 sin, 197 skating, 39, 88 social capital, 166, 187 social hierarchy, 91 social protest, 177 Society for Creative Anachronism, 186 sociopolitical maneuvering, 43–6, 47, 48, 49, 49, 50, 51–5 Song of Roland, 144–5, 145, 146–7, 148–9, 150–1, 153, 220 Song of the Cid, 66, 145, 147, 150, 153 space, 63

INDEX

Spain, Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, 17–8, 18–22, 25–6, 27–8, 31, 119, 122, 126–8, 129–30, 131, 150, 155–6, 204, 208–9, 231–2 spectacle, 64 spectators, 16, 80, 122, 134, 217, 219 Spivey, Nigel, 213 sport and chivalric ethos, 197–8, 200–10 definition, 2, 3–4, 141 in medieval age, 3–9, 10, 11, 12–4 and men, 194–6 and women, 190–4 sporting aesthetic, 33 sporting contests, 12–3 sports commentary, 134 sports culture, 14, 28, 33 sports equipment, 85–90, 88, 91, 94, 101 ball games, 87–9 earliest extant, 85 evidence, 85–6 expenditures, 86 hunting, 89–90 survivals, 85 technological developments, 87 tennis, 89 training, 109–11 see also armor sportsmanship, 149, 151, 239 stone-throwing, 181 Strasbourg, Oaths of, 64 Strassburg, Gottfried von, 51–2 Sumption, Jonathan, 214 Sussman, Herbert, 190, 195, 205–6 swimming, 65, 184, 190, 224 swordplay, 8–9, 23, 43–4, 137, 169, 170, 179–80, 182, 199, 233–4 Szabó, Thomas, 7–8 technological developments, 87 armor, 96–100 horse armor, 108 lances, 103–4 saddle designs, 106–8, 107 tournaments, 103–9 technologies, 26–33, 28 tennis, 9, 42, 57, 75–7, 76, 89, 119, 167, 177, 230–1 tensions, 74 terminology, 22–4

269

theatrical performances, 81 Thomas Aquinas, St, 198 Thorndike, Lynn, 186 tilts, 105–6 time, conceptions of, 62–3 time limits, 25–6 Tiptoft, John, 120 Tlusty, B. Ann, 179 Tournament Books, 45–6, 49, 114 tournament culture, 149, 152–3, 159 tournaments, 4–9, 7, 23, 71–2, 86, 111–2, 123, 143, 146, 147–9, 239 accommodation with the Church, 154 bans, 154–7, 172 and class, 171–4, 173 contemporary, 186, 187 danger, 6–7, 16–7, 30–1, 112, 179–80 designated spaces, 158 display, 6, 51, 81 documentation, 15–8, 17 field, 67 foot combats, 134–5, 136, 137–8 and identity, 202–8 invention, 171–2 licensing system, 68, 158 mêlée rules, 113–5 merchant classes, 43 mounted tourney rules, 115–8 numbers involved, 44 organization, 67–8 origins, 25, 80 parasitical creatures, 157 Pass of Honor of Suero de Quiñones, 17–8, 18–22, 25–6, 27–8, 31, 119, 122, 126–8, 129–30, 131, 150, 155–6, 204, 208–9, 231–2 passages of arms, 149 passages of arms rules, 118–32, 133, 134 phases, 46, 47, 48, 49, 49, 50 popularity, 161 prizes, 15, 219–20 purpose, 35, 44–6, 47, 48, 49, 49, 50, 51–4 representation, 213–4, 215–22, 216, 218, 221, 223, 226–30, 234–8 revenue potential, 45 rules, 5–6, 45, 67, 113–39, 149, 150, 159 scale, 46

270

sites, 68 sociopolitical maneuvering, 44–6, 47, 48, 49, 49, 50, 51–4 spectators, 16, 80, 217, 219 technological developments, 87, 103–9 technologies, 26–33, 28 terminology, 23–4 tilts, 105–6 training, 109–11 treatises regarding, 86 and urbanization, 79–82, 81 weapons, 46 women participants, 169 towns, 178 trade regulations, 86 training, 109–11, 172 trial by combat, 144–9, 144, 191–2, 191, 192, 232–3 truces, 142 Ubaldi, Baldo di, 178 unsportsmanlike behavior, 126–7 urbanization, 79–82 Valladolid, 81–2 Van Dalen, Deobold B., 197 Vegetius, 201 Verona, 73 Vigarello, Georges, 2, 3 Vikings, 195–6

INDEX

viragos, 193 Vives, Juan Luis, 12 Walpurgis, 169, 170 war and warfare, 1, 95, 142 playing, 36–7, 37 weddings, 74, 77 Wellington, Duke of, 35 Western Roman Empire, dissolution of, 63 William I, the Conqueror, King, 68 William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, 52–3 Windsor Park tournament, 1278, 91 Winner and Waster, 206 women, 73, 122–4, 167, 168, 169, 210 ball games, 167 fragility, 192 and hunting, 42, 167 male–female duels, 191–2, 191, 192, 233, 233 martial training, 169, 170 representation, 219 and sport, 190–4 swordplay, 169, 170 tournament participation, 169 World Cup, 1966, 13–4 wrestling, 24, 36–9, 38, 57, 73, 111, 143, 198, 200, 220, 231 Zeigler, Earle F., 201

271

272

273

274