Tournament (medieval)

This article is about the tournaments of the Middle Ages. For the general article on tournaments, see tournament. See also jousting.

Nobility

The tournament was, from the first, held to be a sport for men of noble birth, and on the Continent, where nobility was more exactly defined than in England, the lists were jealously closed to all combatants but those of the privileged class. In the German lands, questions as to the purity of the strain of a candidate for admission to a noble chapter are often settled by appeal to the fact that this or that ancestor had taken part in a tournament. Konrad Grunenberg's famous heraldic manuscript shows us the Helmschau that came before the German tournament of the 15th century--the squires carrying each his master's crested helm, and a little scutcheon of arms hanging from it, to the hall where the king of arms stands among the ladies and, wand in hand, judges each blazon. In England several of those few rolls of arms which have come down to us from the middle ages record the shields displayed at certain tournaments.

Related Topics:
German - Noble chapter - Blazon - Rolls of arms

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