On Tournaments Lore Books

Description

On tournaments and jousting.

Text

On Tournaments
the pastime of knights

Tournaments, or tourneys, are a favourite entertainment of the court and sometimes are an amusement for the common people far and wide, who come to watch lords of most noble birth joust, as if in the world itself such combat was rare. However, in the tourney, unlike in true battle, causing injury is forbidden and thus weapons are blunted and arms modified as needed, but sometimes unfortunate deaths do occur. Mounted knights armed with lances may vie with one another in attempts to dismount their opponent, or knights on foot armed in diverse manner may try to strike their opponent to the ground, and the defeated must surrender his weapon, and can buy it back only in gold.

The melee is a special type of match, in which great teams of knights engage in combat that seems to resemble true battle, but the dealing of fatal blows is forbidden.

In the Kingdom of Bohemia, the tournament was widespread during the reign of King Wenceslas, when the hero Oger from the German lands did come to his court and bring with him this curious amusement, and alongside it great poverty to the whole land, for henceforth did lords travel in great numbers to compete in tourneys and spent great fortunes upon them and no money remained for other purposes. They took to adorning themselves and their steeds with coloured fabrics to pose before their opponents, and they did cross arms more in tournaments than in real combat. Today, elder men of noble birth do recall how the Czechs were once the greatest fighters in all of the Holy Roman Empire, but when the tournament arrived, their abilities they did squander, and today their displays on the true battlefield are of no merit. Forsooth, some fighters of particularly great renown are incapable of dealing a proper blow in real combat, so low have their combat skills sunk. Perhaps one day, knights will become true men again and turn away from colourful tourneys and head for the battlefield, for the merriment of the tournament is certainly even an affront to God Himself.