Medieval Tournament - Brussels, Belgium

A tournament, or tourney (from Old French torneiement, tornei[1]) is the name popularly given to chivalrous competitions or mock fights of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (12th to 16th centuries). It is one of various types of hastiludes.

Definition

Tournament from the Codex Manesse, depicting the mêlée

Of the several medieval definitions of the tournament given by Du Cange (Glossarium, s.v. "Tourneamentum"), the best is that of Roger of Hoveden, who described tournaments as "military exercises carried out, not in the spirit of hostility(nullo interveniente odio), but solely for practice and the display of prowess (pro solo exercitio, atque ostentatione virium)."

Origins

Military games were organized in Europe around 1000. Equestrian games of war are known from before the Romans: for example, chariot racing and the like were popular in Celtic Europe. Something like the medieval tourney was practiced by the Roman cavalry, from early on a critically important arm of the legions: two teams took turns chasing and fleeing each other, casting javelins in the attack and covering themselves with their shields in the retreat. These games, known as Hippica Gymnasia are known from ample archaeological and literary evidence to have been quite elaborate displays and were intended to impress their audiences. Special armour was made for them, including helms that fully covered the face against accidental injury, unlike the war helmets that left the face open for unimpeded vision and hearing. During the Early Middle Ages such cavalry games were still central to military training as is evidenced by Louis and Charles' military games at Worms in 843. At this event, recorded by Nithard, the initial chasing and fleeing was followed by a general melee of all combatants. But the tournament, properly so called, does not appear in Europe before the 11th century. Medieval people themselves devised myths about its origins. A chronicler of Tours in the late twelfth century records the death, in 1066, of an Angevin baron named Geoffroi de Preulli, who supposedly "devised (invenit) tournaments." Rüxner's sixteenth-century Thurnierbuch details the supposed tournament laws of Henry the Fowler (king of Germany, 919-936).

In fact the earliest use of the word 'tournament' comes from the peace legislation by Count Baldwin III of Hainaut for the town of Valenciennes, dated to 1114. It refers to the keepers of the peace in the town leaving it 'for the purpose of frequenting javelin sports, tournaments and such like.' The earliest reference to a recognisable tournament event is in the history of his church of St Martin of Tournai composed by Hermann of Tournai in the early 1140s, who refers to the accidental death of Henry III, Count of Leuven in his town in 1095 in a meeting between his knights and those of the castellan of Tournai. A pattern of regular tournament meetings across northern France is evident in sources for the life of Charles, Count of Flanders (1119-1127). The sources of the 1160s and 1170s portray the event in the developed form it maintained into the fourteenth century.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_tournament