How to Win a Medieval Tournament

Step onto the dusty and dangerous fields of the medieval tournament with the only knightly teammates worth having: Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis *sound trumpets* They discover how chaotic and brutal melees evolved into a highly lucrative sport where losing knights instantly forfeited their battle horses and armour. Enter the wild world of medieval pageantry, from campy decorative helmets and spring-loaded shields designed to shatter, to peculiar tournament prizes - a live pig on a leash, anyone? MORE How To Win A Medieval Battle Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-win-a-medieval-battle/id1564113746?i=1000743985906 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Nm2c7qxHKqgCe6LeFCQBY King John: The Worst Medieval Monarch? Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/king-john-worst-medieval-monarch/id1564113746?i=1000679878596 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2O5vN33xBGeREbv250bwvC?si=6cc2a12580ac4d1a Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. Video producer is McKenna Fernandez. Edited by Matthew Wilson. Studio manager is Hanif Hussain, production manager is Beth Donaldson. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Watch Matt and Eleanor's film The Ascent to Power: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II now on History Hit TV. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:20Eleanor Janega?

  You sit across your saddle in the dust, the smell of sweat, horse, leather, and trampled earth rising around you as the trumpets sound and the crowd leans in to see who will hold his nerve. What does it really take to win a medieval tournament? I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and today on God Medieval, Matt Lewis and I are delving into the color, noise, and lavish pageantry of medieval tournaments. Beginning sometime around the 12th century, as brutish contests that helped prepare medieval soldiers for the carnage of war, they evolved over the next 400 years into something akin to medieval

• 2:00Eleanor Janega?

  sport with rigidly codified rules, courtly drama, and knightly protagonists keen to win fame, honor, prizes, and maybe even the hand of a maiden. Prepare yourselves for a ride through one of the greatest spectacles of the medieval world.

• 2:35Eleanor Janega?

  All right, Matt, we're going to start with a big question because frankly, it's a big subject. This is what people imagine, I think, when they are imagining the medieval period. So why do you think that is? Like, why do you think that the tournament specifically has such a hook on people? Like, what's so compelling about this?

• 2:53Matt Lewis?

  I think it's the splash of color amidst what often feels like quite a dull drudgery of an existence, particularly when we talk about the ordinary people. Here's a chance to talk about a party, some vivid color, and some music and some fun happening. It's the same reason why we're still so obsessed with sports today. You know, why is the Football World Cup a huge global event? Why do people pay hard-earned money every weekend to go and watch their teams being beaten into the ground? We still draw enjoyment from that today, and I think it's a link to our medieval forebears. They loved that as well.

• 3:32Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, really, we still like this stuff. There are still whole places where you can go watch tournaments. You know, certainly I've been to Renaissance fairs and places like that, or actually seen jousting happen with mine own eyes, and it's really exciting. It's a fun sport, right? It's a very particular one, but I think humans just like a bit of sport and we like a little bit of a party, don't we? Right?

• 3:54Matt Lewis?

  Absolutely. And we're going to get into the weeds of this, definitely, but if I gave you like one minute to describe it, what is a tournament?

• 4:01Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, that is a really difficult one because, I mean, when are we talking, right? But I guess that it is an athletic game where people compete to show off martial skills? Would that work, do you think?

• 4:15Matt Lewis?

  I think so. It's a form of practice. It's a spectacle of martial display.

• 4:19Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, well, all right, fancy. All right, okay, so what does it do then, right? Because it's not one of these things like, listen, we love a knight's tale, right? As we will bring up at least once per episode, right? But this is not something that you can just kind of come into if you are a guy on the side of the road. If you are a peasant, you go watch tournaments, but who is participating in them?

• 4:44Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, this is an elite sport. You have to have the money to be able to equip yourself to go and take part in a tournament. So for you and I, probably the peasants, we're paying our bit to go in and watch some rich people bash each other.

• 4:58Eleanor Janega?

  You know what? I would pay good money for that now. Come on, rich people, let's go.

• 5:03Matt Lewis?

  Things don't change. The medieval period is relatable.

• 5:06Eleanor Janega?

  Right? Okay, so we got rich people, they're showing off what they can do. But how do you win this? Like, what are the steps you need to do to win, right? I guess that's a big question.

• 5:17Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, and it slightly depends again when you're taking part in these things, but the kind of the rarefied joust that we tend to think of as a tournament is all about hitting your opponent in the right place. You'll score points based on where you strike them, on the helmet, on the shield. If you can get your lances to go tip to tip, you get extra points for that as well.

• 5:37Eleanor Janega?

  All right, all right.

• 5:38Matt Lewis?

  Nothing changes. And striking a horse is always an automatic disqualification, deeply unchevalric move to take out your opponent's horse. So there are very clear rules and there are very clear scoring systems so everybody can see what's going on.

• 5:52Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think that's what we really think about when we are thinking about medieval tournaments more generally. But I mean, the thing is, we don't really have a way of saying that that is what starts medieval tournaments off, right? Because military games are nothing new, like the pageantry, and I mean, probably the idealized rules that you see, especially in the later medieval tourney, that's a really big, specific thing. But I mean, Sparta has tournaments, Rome has tournaments, and really, if you ask medieval people, I think that they would probably tell you, oh, yeah, we're just doing sort of the same tradition. We're just doing it in our own way, right? So we're not able to say, here's the first tournament, right? Here's the first tournament. Because not

• 6:37Eleanor Janega?

  only is that almost impossible to date, we also have these really competing histories, I guess, about this, right? Because this is something that nobles love, and so they're always paying off chroniclers to be like, hey, say that I was the first one, okay? Tell everyone that my family's really into this, right?

• 6:55Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, there's the bragging rights that go with being the first to put something like this on. But yeah, war games have been around as long as war's been around. Militaries still have maneuvers and war games today because it's an important part of practicing how you're going to do things when you get onto a battlefield. So we have records of, supposed records at least, possible records of horse competitions taking place under Charles the Bold in 842, some games maybe held by Henry the Fowler in Magdeburg in 938, and all of these kind of instances are laying claim to being the first time that a tournament has happened. But it is likely that they're just bigging up their own story.

• 7:39Matt Lewis?

  They're desperately trying to say they were the first to do this thing that's been both happening for a long, long time and is developing throughout the medieval period too. The first potential real reference that we have to a tournament is something that takes place in 1062, albeit that this comes from a record of a man named Geoffrey of Malaterra, who is writing kind of 50 years after that. So he's at the beginning of the 12th century. But he essentially says when the Normans are off making war in Italy, when are the Normans not off making war somewhere?

• 8:06Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, be more specific. Come on, Geoffrey.

• 8:09Matt Lewis?

  When they're laying siege to an Italian city, they spend their spare time engaging in what we might recognize as a tournament. So they're taking part in war games as a way of practicing their skills. The earliest known use then of the word tournament to describe one of these, what becomes a gathering of these kinds of things, comes from the Count of Hanult in 1114 as part of a peace document that is trying to regulate the trouble that these things can cause because they become incredibly ruckus and can get out of hand very easily.

• 8:43Eleanor Janega?

  No, I think this is a really good point, right? Because, again, I think when we imagine tournaments, we're sort of like, oh, the horses and the jousting. But that's not really what early medieval tournaments look like, right? Because we have more particularly the melee, and that is the first time that the word tournament is ever really used, right? So what can you tell us about the melee?

• 9:11Matt Lewis?

  It's the best form of tournament that ever happened.

• 9:13Eleanor Janega?

  Bring it back. We must return with a V to the melee. I'm sorry. It's so good.

• 9:18Matt Lewis?

  But also probably the most dangerous, the most unruly. There are reasons, I think, why it becomes tightened up and becomes what it will eventually turn into. Early tournaments as melees were essentially sprawling fights that could go across towns, spill out into the countryside. They could spread over miles and miles. And they seem to have emerged because there is this growing tactic on the continent in particular of heavy cavalry charges and they require a lot of training and a lot of control of your horse, of your armour, of your lance. You need to be fairly sure what you're going to try and hit with that lance. So how do you practise all of this stuff?

• 10:02Matt Lewis?

  Well, let's all get together and have a massive fight. And melees were incredibly dangerous and I guess difficult, not designed as a spectator sport, because difficult to watch because they're spreading out all over the place. But they did have some pretty clear rules, didn't they?

• 10:18Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yeah, absolutely. So in the first place, we know that one of the things that happens is if you decide you're going to join the melee, you're putting your goods on the line, right? So this is a sport for rich people. Again, like I, not to put too fine a point on it, but one of the rules is you enter the melee, yeah? And if you lose, they get, whoever wins, gets your horse and armour, which, you know, a battle horse, that's like a mortgage now. It's a really, really big deal because they have to be trained, they have to be a particular stock. This is a really valuable thing. So it's sort of like, okay, we'll put your money where your mouth is. Because otherwise, these incredibly dangerous contests where people are

• 11:04Eleanor Janega?

  risking their lives. They are absolutely risking their lives, you know, that that is going to encourage the wrong sort. But so what you do is you do have teams, usually two, and you're going to go on to this open battlefield and you're gonna go for it, right? You know, I'm sure there might be a charges, but really you're going to kind of like stay on your horse as long as you can. Eventually you will dehorse and then it's kind of like flacking at each other, just straight up. You do have to yield when someone says yield, right? But I'm sure as you've noticed, this is just a dangerous proposition altogether. And it's for this reason that the church actually ends up condemning

• 11:49Eleanor Janega?

  tournaments because they're like, come on, guys, like you're not suppo- yeah, okay, we want you to be able to fight, right? But we want you to be able to fight enemies of Christ. And listen, this is not regulated, like there's no, the, the, you're, yeah, your reputation is on the line, but there is no ref, right? The ref isn't going to be like tweet, tweet, get off your horse, Sir Jeffrey, right? You know? And we do lose actual noble people in these things. So, um, in the 12th century, Henry the Second's son, Geoffrey, you know, one of his more sporty sons, they, they were all pretty sporty. He dies, he dies in the tournament, not great. Um, the Count of Brittany and Leopold, the Duke of Austria,

• 12:29Eleanor Janega?

  die in 1186 and 1194. And the church is looking at this and being like, guys. I mean, I think maybe Henry the Second was looking at it like, okay, great, we've, it's too many sons. But like, what might we have lost? Like, we end up saddled with John. What if, what if Geoffrey had actually survived? Right? We could have had this whole sliding doors moment here.

• 12:49Matt Lewis?

  And because the church is really concerned about the idea of Christians shedding other Christian blood, particularly at a time when they're trying to, to harness all of this aggression for a crusade. And like, why are you guys mowing around the countryside, beating each other up? When there's some perfectly good enemies of the church over there that you could go and fight instead. So this becomes like a distraction from what the church wants people to be doing. So they come up with this idea that you shouldn't be shedding other Christians' blood and we're just gonna be, have a real downer on tournament. How dare you have fun?

• 13:20Eleanor Janega?

  I think it's, it's one of these things where you would be, if you were one of the peasants, like, yeah, but I don't get to see the crusade. I do get to see these noble guys wrestling in my front garden. On the other hand, and that's pretty cool, right? It's like all of the excitement of war without any of the danger if you are one of the common people.

• 13:35Matt Lewis?

  Right. And this ultimately, there's the physical danger, definitely, but it's also like a high stakes poker game, isn't it? Because you're, you're risking all of your goods and money. As you said, it's effectively the mortgage on your house kind of level of money. But you could win all of that as well. And if you, if you capture enough knight stuff, you might ransom their things back to them. You don't necessarily want 27 war horses and five suits of armour that don't fit you, but you can sell it all back to them and you can get incredibly wealthy by doing this.

• 14:04Eleanor Janega?

  And this is one of these things when we see, for example, when Geoffrey is negotiating with his father all the time, one of the things that Henry the Second does that says, I'll give you more money, right? I'll give you more money so you can keep going to the tournaments because he's probably losing, right? And so you're going to need to pay out at particular points in time. And that's part of it, right? Is having the big purse. So yeah, princes are involved, especially if you're one of the spares. Wayo, uh, then they're like, yeah, have at it. Off you pop, right? Like I go out to the tournament because there's money to spend, but it also means that like people can get really down on you. So for example, one of my enemies, King John the Blind of Bohemia, who dies at the Battle of Cressy,

• 14:44Eleanor Janega?

  he's just going around Europe, going to tournaments constantly and using Bohemia as like a bank account in order to pay these things off. But I mean, that is the melee, right? This is the melee. It's this big free for all. But eventually it is true that we get to the individual joust more particularly. And when does that kind of kick in as the preferred form of tournament?

• 15:08Matt Lewis?

  And this is what we see in The Knight's Tale.

• 15:10Eleanor Janega?

  Yay.

• 15:13Matt Lewis?

  And it is around, you know, that film is set in the 14th century. And it is during the 14th century that these kind of one-on-one jousts begin to grow in favour. Because then you can control it, you can put it in a focused area. You think of building a football stadium to watch a football match, rather than football being something that is spread all the way through the town and you're desperately trying to follow it or you might see a little bit of it. So this is a way to make it much more organised, maybe a little bit safer, and also much more of a spectator sport that people can engage with as well. They start off, you know, two horses charging at each other with 12-foot lances. And the idea is to, to smash the lance on your opponent.

• 15:56Matt Lewis?

  They begin without the tilt in the middle, so that, that fence between them. And that proves to be a little bit chaotic because the horses might run into each other. Imagine banging knees with a fellow knight at 30 miles an hour on a warhorse. Not fun. So a little bit later in the, the 1400s, they begin to put these fences in the middle known as tilts to keep the two sides apart. And that really becomes what I think we would recognise as a joust today.

• 16:24Eleanor Janega?

  I like how also they get really funny with the points at this point in time. It's like, right, obviously it's big marks for unhorsing your opponent in the joust, right? But also my favourite one is that if you knock the crest off the other guy's helmet, then you get mad points for that. And like, that is really, really fun for me because that kind of coalesces around the increasingly elaborate armour that we see for tournaments. And I love the stupid elaborate armour. I don't care. I don't care that it isn't practical. I don't care that it's just for sport. I want to see a stupid helmet. And I want some guy to just like whip the top right off of it. That'd be great. That'd be great. That's also very dangerous. I don't think that we see a lot of that from jousters these days.

• 17:07Eleanor Janega?

  So I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna be honest, you know?

• 17:10Matt Lewis?

  But maybe we should bring that back. It sounds like fun.

• 17:12Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, honestly, yeah, bring back the stupid helmet.

• 17:14Matt Lewis?

  Weird little things to aim at on armour.

• 17:16Eleanor Janega?

  Wither the stupid helmet.

• 17:19Matt Lewis?

  And I guess we should also talk about the other thing that happens in the development of tournaments, which it kind of puts them halfway between the melee and the joust. And these are the, the pad arms that begin to emerge again around about the same time as those individual jousts are coming about.

• 17:33Eleanor Janega?

  Okay. So to be clear, the pad arms, this is a type of combat. And with this, knights basically get given a little job, right? So you need to defend a bridge or you need to defend a fort, something like that. And you need to do it for this length of time. So we're gonna, we're gonna turn the little hourglass over. Keep it up. Don't let anyone across the bridge, right? And we know that in 1434, there was a Passo En Rosso that is held at the Bridge of Orbigo. And we got 10 knights defending the bridge, right? And they did that, they broke 300 lances and it lasted for a month, right?

• 18:17Eleanor Janega?

  And so this is one of these really interesting instances because you can very clearly see what's going on here. It's like, well, I mean, literally, can you defend a bridge? We're defending a bridge for funsies, yes, but that is 100% what is going on now, right?

• 18:33Matt Lewis?

  Which is genuine war games practice still. This is the kind of thing that soldiers are required to do out in the field in real war. But it's also serving to make the tournament a bit more static again than the melee, something that has an anchor. So it's happening in one place and people can come and watch it, maybe not for the whole month. Maybe you catch the highlight reel.

• 18:51Eleanor Janega?

  But like, maybe if you're one of the local peasants, you can, once you're done with your chores for the day, you can sort of like go over there. You've got, you bring, bring a little hunk of bread and some ale and go, ooh. Ah, you know, I would be there. Absolutely great.

• 19:04Matt Lewis?

  And we get one of the most famous pad arms takes place in, in 1390, uh, at St Ingolbert. And this has three of the most famous knights of the time. This is in northern France. We've got Jean Bossicor, you know, Marshal Bossicor. If you don't know that name, maybe we should do an episode on him. He's incredible.

• 19:23Eleanor Janega?

  He's really cool, yeah.

• 19:25Matt Lewis?

  Renaud de Roya and the Lord of Sempe. And these three men are there required to defend

• 19:32Matt Lewis?

  a field against all comers. And those all comers include the future Henry the Fourth of England. You know, when he's in his knightly phase, touring around Europe before he's king. And they collectively managed to survive 137 jousts between the three of them.

• 19:49Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, genuinely the best to ever do it. We're still talking about this, right? And I think that this is such an interesting point because it shows you, if even now, we're like, ooh, that's crazy, you know? That shows the level of interest that people have, the fact that people were really paying attention to this and it's written down and it's still impressive, right? That's an incredible feat. And this is why these guys are famous, right?

• 20:14Matt Lewis?

  And I mean, it, it means each one of those has seen off more than 40 people each.

• 20:18Eleanor Janega?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. And like, this is a really important one because it's one of the only tournaments that we have a full description of. Uh, our good friend Jean Frossard, like one of, again, one of the best to ever do it, real, real good chronicler. He actually kind of like writes about this and he is specifically trying to keep it really realistic. He's not turning it into something poetic, which is the trouble with a lot of our other sources on tournaments, because there'd be a lot more about the maidens fair and getting the glove and, you know, kissing her hand or whatever, you know, which, which doesn't really play into it so much. It is a lot more like just a sports match, right?

• 21:00Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. But, and he also gives us, um, an interesting description of the three pavilions that are set up for each night, you know, looking glorious and they, they have shields hung outside so that the challengers, when they arrive can tap one of two shields, either a joust of peace, sounds anachronistic, it means blunted weapons, so we're not trying to kill each other. But you can also choose a joust of war, in which you're using sharpened lances and very much risking your life. I don't know why you would do that.

• 21:30Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I mean, probably less of that sort of thing for Henry the fourth, right? They're like, yeah, you, you don't get to do the joust of war, no.

• 21:37Matt Lewis?

  May, maybe you just be careful and you play with the, the blunted weapons.

• 21:42Matt Lewis?

  But again, it shows that people, some people were obviously willing to still endanger their lives in a situation where they didn't have to, for the prestige that you can get out of this.

• 21:49Eleanor Janega?

  Well, yeah, and we do get prestige from this because one of the things that happens is you come up and you do your little knock on the shield, adorable. And then they've got a resident scribe who's like, okay, and, and your name and your house and your challenger. And so we've got a list of everybody who tries and we don't get to have that very often, especially not in the melee days, because it's just like, I don't know, me and my gang, we don't necessarily know who's there. We definitely know in this instance.

• 22:17Matt Lewis?

  And this is part of the reason, I think this, this development and this emergence of the tournament as something much more static and a more of a spectacle increasingly makes it less attainable. So it becomes the preserve of the ever more wealthy and increasingly you see it's, it's your dukes and your kings that are actually putting on tournaments. And I mean, it probably reaches its peak just after the medieval period, when you think of the Field of Cloth of Gold with Henry the eighth and Francis the first.

• 22:44Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:44Matt Lewis?

  You know, it's just bling everywhere that nobody else can afford.

• 22:48Eleanor Janega?

  A hundred percent. And it's like, by the time you've got the Field of Cloth of Gold, it's like, oh, no one wants the down home tournament anymore. No one wants to just go see like some Spanish bridge get defended. I mean, I do. But I mean, the nobles don't want to do that, right?

• 23:01Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And so, eh, once we've picked the correct time period to be in, which is always the melee, obviously.

• 23:07Eleanor Janega?

  Duh, duh.

• 23:08Matt Lewis?

  Once we've picked the right time period, we, we need to go and find ourselves a tournament to take part in. So where, where are these happening?

• 23:13Eleanor Janega?

  Well, we do know a lot of them happen very specifically in Northern France, right? And we know this because of like Norman and French conquerors who are going over to Italy and they're going over to the Holy Land and people are noticing what's going on, right? So they're kind of talking about this tradition back home and they're like, these bloody Normans, like can't get rid of them. They're just constantly somewhere, you know, they're, they're always besieging something and they're talking about these tournaments back home. And so that kind of gets dissimulated as a result of the greater Norman diaspora. So if you wanted to find one most easily, babe, just go to Normandy, it'll be, they'll be fine, you'll find one, right?

• 23:57Matt Lewis?

  They're always doing that. But you, but we do see because of the, the spread of this, the popularity of them, the fact that they are enjoyable and an opportunity, not just to practice your fighting, but to get rich, they're spreading ever further east across Europe as well, aren't they?

• 24:11Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yeah, absolutely. And part of why that happens is very specifically because of the Crusades. So allegedly, like according to Robert the Monk, who's one of the chroniclers of the first crusade, it'd be give a French knight some downtime, right? The thing that he is going to do is he's going to run the courtain. And so as they're moving, everyone's like, huh, what's that? You know, and obviously it looks really cool. And so once it's kind of introduced into the vernacular, it's kind of like moving and moving and moving across Europe, right? And this is partially also due to like, French knights are just like this. Okay, French knights are always like, we are very fancy indeed, you know, a direct quote. Um, and so they want to show off their horsing skills.

• 24:56Eleanor Janega?

  As far as they are concerned, they have the martial culture and everyone should look around at what it is they're doing.

• 25:03Matt Lewis?

  And we've talked a little bit about kind of why tournaments become popular, but there is, I guess there's an element of, of why they're being held as well that grows out of the Crusades and an increased need to practice the warfare that's going on. You know, we get, um, a famous quote from Fegetius, who said this, this says, there's something appealing in going to war to a young man who's never experienced it before. And you get that famous quote as well from Roger of Howden, uh, who writes in the 11th century, he says, "A youth must have seen his blood flow, felt his teeth crack under his adversaries' blows and been thrown to the ground 20 times. Only then will he be able to face real war." So there is this sense that tournaments are preparing people, you know, that probably

• 25:47Matt Lewis?

  because the church is saying, stop fighting. And they're like, no, it's, it's legit. It's preparing us for the crusade. It's just practice.

• 25:53Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yeah. And that's certainly true, right? If your entire job, that's the nobility, where they're those who fight, that's what we say about them, is to have this martial prowess, well, what do you do when you're not fighting a war, right? And granted, I know the church's thing is like, you know, you should be fighting a war, get in a boat right now and get, get over to Jerusalem, but that's not feasible, right? And, you know, the Hundred Years' War isn't yet upon us, so we don't have endless battlefields to send people off to, and this keeps you sharp. And it gives you something more than just, I don't know, practice in your own courtyard, right? Practicing against other opponents who might have varying skills, going to other regions, right? When you show up at one of the tournaments in Poland, what are they doing there, right?

• 26:38Eleanor Janega?

  Do they have any particular skills that you're not seeing so much in, I don't know, England, right? That is going to keep you on your toes and it's going to keep those skills very sharp. But having said that, one of the other things it does is, uh, it's just a real fun party.

• 26:55Matt Lewis?

  And they take place alongside parties, you know, if you're getting married, chucking a tournament as well and everyone will love it.

• 27:00Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yeah. And we see this all the time. There's a really famous one that, uh, Philip the Good throws and he's, uh, from Burgundy and he marries Isabelle of Portugal. That's a get, right? You know, you're, you know, no, no shade to Burgundy, but you're not a king, are you? You've got yourself a genuine princess on the line. And so they're like, wait, it's tournament time, right? So there's this huge tournament in 1430 in order to celebrate their wedding. And we see this a lot with noble and royal weddings.

• 27:28Matt Lewis?

  And we're going to talk a little bit more about who might be eligible to take part in a tournament right after this.

• 27:43Matt Lewis?

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• 29:34Speaker 03

  If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast? It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy and important thing that's ever happened in human history. From the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the Alamo was lost and all the history in between. So make sure you check it out, Dan Snow's History Hit, for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:21Eleanor Janega?

  All right, so here we have this wonderful tournament. We'll pretend we're going to a wedding and we're hoping there's a melee, okay, obviously. But who's eligible? Who can show up at these tournaments?

• 30:35Matt Lewis?

  I mean, the main element that will decide whether you're eligible or not is whether you can afford to take part. Unfortunately, this isn't the kind of thing where you go and watch a local football team and you take your boots in the hope that you'll get called up and have to take part. You have to be able to afford a horse that can cope with something like the melee. You have to have enough armour and enough weapons. And on top of having all of that stuff, you've got to be willing to take the risk that you're going to lose all of that stuff and potentially either have to replace it or buy it all back. So even from the very beginning, this was the preserve of knights and the rich, the wealthy elites. You would see people like Henry II's oldest son, Henry the Young Prince, putting

• 31:17Matt Lewis?

  together tournament teams to go on a tour around Europe. And it's great if you've got a prince funding you because it matters a little bit less if you lose. But essentially, you've got to be able to afford to enter and afford to take the risk of losing.

• 31:31Eleanor Janega?

  I want to see a movie that is like the equivalent of putting together a team for a heist, but for a tournament.

• 31:38Matt Lewis?

  Like Ocean's Eleven?

• 31:39Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, Ocean's Eleven, but it's like, you know, Tournament's Eleven. It'd be great. It'd be good. You know, we've got to get someone who's really good with a mace, that sort of thing.

• 31:47Eleanor Janega?

  Interestingly, you know, you're going to have a bunch of rich people do this, but we do have these examples, right? Particularly in the Holy Roman Empire, where sometimes they'll be like, "Only worthy knights." And basically what they mean is like, "Are you very clearly like having an affair? No, you may not come in." Which is funny. It's ironic because like, on the one hand, you've got like courtly love culture, which is like, "Smooch your boss's wife. Write her a love poem." And then on the other hand, they're like, "If you are smooching your boss's wife, I'm afraid you cannot joust today." So make up your minds, actually.

• 32:22Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. But there is also an effort to allow ordinary people to at least get involved a little bit, that there's a bit of a party atmosphere going on. It's an opportunity to come and have a bit of bread and a bit of wine and watch some rich people bash each other. Who doesn't love that?

• 32:38Eleanor Janega?

  And, you know, we also see that other tournaments end up getting created by very specific guilds. So for example, it's a big thing in the Low Countries where, for example, crossbow guilds come up. And that's a way for wealthy patricians to be like, "We have tournaments too," right? So you're not a knight, you can't go to the melee, you can't ever really be jousting. But everybody likes tournaments so much that they start inventing tournaments for crossbows and things like that. And I think that that's pretty neat because it shows us how much ordinary people like tournaments, that they are willing to create their own and travel to go to them.

• 33:14Matt Lewis?

  And there is also the economy that goes on around a tournament too. If you're a tradesman, if you're a blacksmith, or an armourer, or a leather worker, or a saddle maker, or good at shoeing horses, there are all of these trades that need to happen. There is food that needs to be bought to keep all of this going. So tournaments are beneficial to the local economy too. And there is an opportunity for, even if you can't afford to qualify and take part in it, there's still an opportunity to make money at a tournament.

• 33:43Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it's funny because even though these are, in theory, preparing people for war, it does the opposite for the local community. If a tournament shows up, that's a really great thing for the local community because you get a fun show and a bunch of money is going to be coming in. Whereas if the nobles show up for war, the opposite is happening, right?

• 34:02Matt Lewis?

  Imagine their face going, "Oh, the tournament's intact."

• 34:04Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, no.

• 34:07Eleanor Janega?

  Right, but who officiates that, right? Because there are rules, there are points. Who do we get looking over this?

• 34:14Matt Lewis?

  This is largely the heralds, and this is why they emerge as such an important function in the medieval world. The name herald kind of comes from an old German word, herald, and a similar old French word too, that kind of means announcer, something like a messenger. And the heralds begin with responsibility for noting the qualifications of knights to enter, for keeping track of who is fighting against whom, who's winning. And this reaches the point as it becomes a bit more rarefied, like the one-on-one joust on a horse, keeping score, all of this kind of thing. And that's why heralds become so closely associated with heraldry. Knights are turning up with ways to distinguish themselves with their own personal badges and their own personal colours. And heralds are now

• 34:59Matt Lewis?

  keeping track of all of those kinds of things as they develop. And they become the ultimate arbiters of battlefield victories. You know, you haven't won until a herald says that you've won on a real battlefield. So they kind of grow out of the tournament circuit and take on this whole life and function of their own beyond it. But essentially, they're the umpires, they're sitting in their boxes, scoring.

• 35:23Eleanor Janega?

  I'm kind of obsessed with them. I love umpires of any sport. I'm like, how did it come to this? You know, how do you get into this particular one? You know, definitely keep on the good side of the heralds. I think that's going to be an important thing in order to win, right? Okay, so I've buttered up the herald. I have told him that I think he's really fun and cool, went and grabbed a couple of drinks with him, maybe slipped him some cash. What is step number two in getting ready for the tournament?

• 35:47Matt Lewis?

  I think now you need to have the right arms and armour. You've got to have the right kind of kit. You know, you've got to make sure you've got the right football boots, the right shin pads, and you're kitted out so that you can actually take part. And part of this, the earliest tournaments, they're probably just using their actual weapons of war. But it very quickly becomes clear just how dangerous that really is. And it's not fun if everybody's getting killed. And so as early as the 12th century, we start seeing rules for tournaments that introduce the idea of weapons of peace, that you should have blunted lances that are designed to shatter more easily, that you should only use blunted swords and daggers and things like that, so that you can land those blows,

• 36:31Matt Lewis?

  but you're not trying to kill your opponent anymore. And this makes it much more like a sporting affair.

• 36:37Eleanor Janega?

  And I mean, I suppose you're going to want to ensure that that happens. One, because people really aren't going to want to show up if they are actually going to be killed. Two, I mean, the church is saying that you're going to go to purgatory if you do die in a tournament. So that's not very fun. And so, yeah, we see these interesting developments like sockets, which I think is a really fun word. And it's like a kind of curved little ringy punch that you put at the end of your lance instead of a point. You know, we're going to, we're going to smooth off the sword, these sorts of things. And, you know, I definitely think this is a smart thing, right? We do see that, for example, Emperor Maximilian the First, he says, "Okay, we are going to have these really

• 37:20Eleanor Janega?

  good shields," right? And this is fun. This is a nice little bit of pageantry here. Spring-loaded shields. Okay, spring-loaded shields. So if you hit the shield with your lance, it goes "pah" and just flies. And then, "Oh, everyone loses their mind in the crowd. They're like throwing things." It's popping off, literally. And I just love this. I think it's such a nice detail. He's thinking about the crowd. Like, this is the equivalent of WrestleMania, right? I love it. I love it.

• 37:47Matt Lewis?

  It's making it much more of a spectacle for those watching rather than those taking part at that point. So these lances that are designed to splinter much more spectacularly and spring-loaded shields designed to fall apart. This is very clearly not the stuff you would be using on a battlefield. That'd be quite comical, maybe, for a battle to take place like that. But, but again, if you go to a joust today, when they actually manage to splinter a shield on their opponent's sword, it is something that makes you go, "Whoa."

• 38:14Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:15Matt Lewis?

  It looks very cool. And it's interesting that they're suddenly turning their mind to how this looks to the spectators, and they're wanting it to be a spectacle.

• 38:25Eleanor Janega?

  And, I mean, I think a big part of that too is, as we've already nodded to, we get this increasingly cool armour, right? Just incredibly cool armour that, you know, you have not just a little thing at the top of your helmet that people can hit, but it's going to be like your emblem, your sigil. So it's like a little lion, or it's a lady playing the harp, and that sort of a thing.

• 38:47Matt Lewis?

  I love how you make that, the most manly thing you could possibly, "A little lion."

• 38:50Eleanor Janega?

  A little lion, rah, girl. I love a camp lion. I live for a camp lion, right? So, but then you also have things like, for example, you know, they develop those big, on the left shoulders, those big plates. You see that a lot in museum pieces, right? But also the little frog mouth joining helmets. And, you know, as you say, that is not battlefield.

• 39:13Matt Lewis?

  No, no one is wearing that to go into a fight. That's very specifically designed for the joust, so that you can maintain your view of your opponent and where you're going to try and strike them for as long as you possibly can. But that at the last second, you can, well, depending how brave you are, the very last second, you can raise your head ever so slightly, and it closes that opportunity for the lance or any splinters or anything like that to get in to your face. So again, they're increasingly thinking about the safety of those taking part and designing the armour and their arms to ensure that there are less fatalities. I mean, they can never legislate against accidents. Things do happen. But this is now stuff that is specifically for tournaments, that's never

• 39:57Matt Lewis?

  going to be used on a battlefield, that's being designed just to make tournaments more fun and more of a spectacle.

• 40:03Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, I guess the last thing you need is a really good horse, like a courser or a destier, you know, these ones that are trained and battle-ready themselves. So it's not just the knights who know how to do this. Horses don't really like this, right? Horses don't really want to run at each other and let people hit each other with sticks. So you've got to train them to do it. So that does take some doing.

• 40:24Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And it's an important part of the function of a tournament, again, isn't it? To get your horse used to this idea in the midst of a baying crowd, to hurtle itself towards someone else who is charging at you as well. It's an unnatural thing to expect a horse to be able to do. And I guess it's perhaps interesting that the rise of these one-on-one jousts on horses almost seems to coincide with the decline of heavy cavalry on the battlefield. So It's almost less of a preparation for war at that point, and much more of a spectacle and proving how good you are at something that used to be important.

• 41:00Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, by the time we got spring-loaded shields, it's seeming to have a lot less to do with ash and core and a lot more to do with the crowd. That's all I'm saying. But also, I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I think this is a good thing for rich people to do, right?

• 41:12Matt Lewis?

  And I think also, one thing to bear in mind, if you want to win a medieval tournament, is probably to avoid some of the real celebrities of this who were unbelievably good. I mean, we've talked about people like Marshal Bossycorp, but there are plenty of examples of people who you do not want to come up against, like the Undertaker of the WWF.

• 41:31Eleanor Janega?

  Exactly. And I think that one of these guys, William the Marshal, he's got to be one of those household names of the tournament circuit. And he actually makes his fortune through fighting. So it's sort of the closest to a knight's tale you're actually going to get. He defeats over 100 men, and he does it in what? The melee. Real ones only. Real ones only, right? Maybe he starts, his first tournament is in 1167 at Le Mans, and he just does it for the fame. Like, he's in it to make a name for himself, and it works. You know, here I am, 900 years later, being like, what a G.

• 42:10Matt Lewis?

  And he's, you know, attached to this, the tournament team of Henry the Young King, Henry II's oldest son. So he's managed to get himself latched on to a prince, but he's actually really, really good at this, and he gets so much money, but also such a powerful reputation. I mean, obviously, we need to bear in mind that his family are commissioning his biography, which tells us that he's the greatest knight that ever lived.

• 42:32Eleanor Janega?

  Funny that.

• 42:33Matt Lewis?

  But he does have some stats to back that up. And, you know, he has forged for himself a reputation that's lasted 800 years on the tournament field.

• 42:42Eleanor Janega?

  It's not nothing. He's the LeBron James of the tournament world, and I absolutely love that for him. But, listen, I need you to just hold this thought. We're gonna take a quick break. When we get back, let's talk about the girlies. Where's the fair maidens at?

• 43:41Speaker 03

  If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast? It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy, and important thing that's ever happened in human history. From the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the Alamo was lost, and all the history in between. So make sure you check it out. Dan Snow's History Hit, for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 44:28Matt Lewis?

  Okay, so one of the main aims of a medieval tournament is often pitched in romantic fiction, perhaps, as catching the eye of some fair maiden who you want to fall in love with you. To what extent are knights taking part in tournaments to win the favor of ladies?

• 44:46Eleanor Janega?

  So it's always, you know, it's more complicated than that, the favorite thing of every historian to say. Because women are a really big and very active part of tournaments, because it is true that you are fighting for the favor of a lady as one of the knights who is participating. But usually, what this means is that there is a chosen lady, you know, whoever's putting it on, essentially, like their eligible daughter. That's gonna be like one of the big ones, right? And they are going to say, okay, like, you can win this ring, or this jewel, or, baby, ooh, a kiss, right? And then you get these things presented to you by someone who has been crowned the queen of beauty. So

• 45:29Eleanor Janega?

  there are often kind of like side things happening, like there is the side beauty pageant that is sort of going on, and then whoever wins that, that's going to be, you know, the one who's like bestowing her gifts on the eventual winner of the tournament.

• 45:44Matt Lewis?

  It's interesting as well to think that some knights are turning up, hoping, I'm gonna get a kiss from a beautiful lady, or I might get some jewelry that's worth an absolute fortune. And instead, at the end of it, you approach the beautiful fair maiden who's been crowned the queen of beauty, and she hangs you a pig on a leash.

• 45:59Eleanor Janega?

  It's true. But that's a good present. Ooh, a pig. That's good eating, right?

• 46:03Matt Lewis?

  You could as often get like a live animal as, as anything that we would think of as a prize of value.

• 46:09Eleanor Janega?

  And, I mean, I suppose that if you are on the tournament scene, you're moving around a lot, having a pig to come with you, and then that you can slaughter down, that's, that's good stuff. But, yeah, you could win a cow. You could win a goat. But sometimes also, the ladies will make like a real fancy embroidered version of the animal as well, which is kind of like expensive, and then you can sort of use it as a trophy. So that's also possible.

• 46:34Matt Lewis?

  I'd like to imagine like the generation game, of all the gifts going past that you could have won.

• 46:38Eleanor Janega?

  It's like someone is being given a speedboat, but they live in Tamworth.

• 46:41Matt Lewis?

  But this is really leaning into the chivalric elements of this, isn't it? We've got people like Geoffrey of Monmouth and Cretien de Troyes writing all of these Arthurian romances in which you've got kind of Guinevere and Lancelot and all of this romantic stuff going on. So the tournament kind of becomes tied into those Arthurian ideals of chivalry and knighthood.

• 47:03Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, absolutely. So what we're seeing here is a conscious emulation of literature on the parts of people who are putting on these tournaments. And that's because it's part of the pageantry, right? That's what people want from the nobility. And so the nobility are finally doing something for the common people. And yeah, they're giving them the whole dog and pony show. There you go. Yeah, there's a lady. She's the queen of beauty. She's gonna kiss the knight, and the crowd goes wild for it. It's great stuff, you know?

• 47:29Matt Lewis?

  And increasingly, if we want to win a medieval tournament, we're gonna require a bit of focus.

• 47:34Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, Lord, yeah.

• 47:35Matt Lewis?

  Because what we can't afford to do is get distracted by some of the stuff that is going on around the tournament that we've talked about a little bit.

• 47:40Eleanor Janega?

  And there's a lot of stuff going on around, right? And we definitely see, for example, one of the things the church condemns about having these big tournaments is what they call the detestable markets and fairs.

• 47:55Matt Lewis?

  Now, I want to know where those are. Can I go to a detestable market?

• 47:58Eleanor Janega?

  Someone, someone start the detestable market right now, please. I will come shop there. That sounds good, right? And basically, what this is, is you have food shops that are going to be selling you, you know, meat on a stick, as it, you know, has always been traditional at a fair. There will be ale places. There is going to be places to buy, like all sorts of sundry things, you know, buy a new pouch, you know, it's the equivalent of going, you know, yeah, if you go to a festival today, you'll have all of those shops up. And, you know, there are things that are being sold very particularly to knights. It's very exciting, right? Like, this is, the town is showing up, and they want the fair. They want the experience. They want to be able to eat something and drink something and have a nice time, right?

• 48:43Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And the danger is if you partake too much, you're not gonna be up to too much jousting the next day. And we do see, you know, Rene of Anjou, one of the most hilarious figures of the 15th century, who calls himself the king of Sicily, and variously the king of Jerusalem, and

• 48:57Eleanor Janega?

  Sure.

• 48:58Matt Lewis?

  can make none of these things, but he's still gonna call himself the king of everywhere. And he writes a treatise on how to prepare for a medieval tournament, how to put on a tournament. I'm not sure how much notice we could take, because he's not very good at anything else that he does.

• 49:10Eleanor Janega?

  No, I mean, honestly.

• 49:11Matt Lewis?

  But he's also really clear in this, that if you want to put on a good, successful tournament, your preparation has to begin months, if not up to a year, in advance because of all of the things that you've got to have in place to make it a successful event.

• 49:25Eleanor Janega?

  And I mean, I think that that is likely true, because it's not just, whatever, the melee, the jousting, anything like that. You have to put on a bunch of events around it as well. So there's going to be banquets, there are going to be dances, and there's something that is almost akin to what will become the mask in the early modern period, where lords and ladies will sort of dress up like characters from Arthuriana, for example, and they'll be like, you be Tristan, I'll be Isild, you know, and they will have a little play, and that sort of a thing. So you need to plan all of this stuff out. It requires a whole heap of money and a lot of time. That is true.

• 50:03Matt Lewis?

  And you're gonna want to send out advanced invitations, because you want the best people there. Presumably, you're gonna want your tournament to be the place to be seen. So you're gonna want to invite the most famous tournament knights around, and you want to make sure you're getting something in their calendar nice and early. Because if nobody turns up for your tournament, it's gonna be a bit of a damp squib.

• 50:20Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, listen, if Henry the Young King is available, you want Henry the Young King at your tournament, because it proves that you've got the future King of England here, or, you know, current King of England. We don't have time to get into that.

• 50:34Matt Lewis?

  So they're expensive, complicated to put on, a huge spectacle. But do we think we've got enough to maybe go and win a medieval tournament yet? I mean, apart from the personal bravery on my part.

• 50:45Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, well, obviously, I'm gonna go and win the melee right now. But, I mean, this is the thing, is that basically, every era has its own challenges, right? And you and I both love the melee. Everybody loves the melee. But it's like, the most accessible and the most dangerous at the same time, right? That is one where you can kind of get involved a little bit more, because it's a team sport, not an individual sport, because you need to sort of be an all-rounder, not specialized. That is one that I think is probably more open to more ordinary members of the nobility, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms, but lower nobility exist. They count.

• 51:24Matt Lewis?

  And then as time goes on, and the tournament develops, that begins to, to shift and swing a little bit. By the time you get into the individual joust and the padam, you're having to have so much money just to be able to take part, and be able, be willing to risk so much to be, to be able to take part as well, that it's becoming more and more exclusive in terms of who's able to take part, but also at the same time, more and more inclusive around who's able to watch it, because they're now becoming static affairs that you can have an audience for.

• 51:57Eleanor Janega?

  And I think then, by the time we tip over into the early modern period, you know, everything gets worse, as is standard for the early modern period. But, you know, by the time we're getting to the field of cloth and gold, yeah, the field of cloth and gold is this huge spectacle, but ordinary people are not invited to come look at the field of cloth and gold, because they'll probably try to take the cloth of gold in question. I mean, I would, right? So then you have this increased expense, which means, in order to win this stuff, you basically need to be a king, because that's the only people who are invited to take part, is just the highest ranking nobility and kings, and nobody gets to see it. So, once again, Henry VIII ruining everything for everyone.

• 52:36Matt Lewis?

  Mm-hmm. So you and I, as humble knights, we're gonna start a tournament team, we're gonna aim for the melee.

• 52:42Eleanor Janega?

  Yes.

• 52:42Matt Lewis?

  And we're gonna see how much damage we can do.

• 52:45Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely.

• 52:45Matt Lewis?

  Preferably to someone else and not ourselves.

• 52:47Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I'm so glad that everyone is here to see this next evolution of Gone Medieval.

• 52:52Matt Lewis?

  Please back our tournament team now.

• 52:55Eleanor Janega?

  Thank you for joining us today on Gone Medieval from History Hit. Please do not try any of the jousting techniques we've discussed at home, or at least not without your Smithy, Fletcher, and Lerner by your side. Matt and I will be back again next week, but if that's just not good enough, why not become a subscriber to History Hit? As a subscriber, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including mine and Matt's recent series, The Rise of the Plantagenets, plus ad-free podcasts, by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments or suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.