Tourney, Joust, Mêlée - A Guest Blog by Jeri Westerson

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you've been following along at home for any amount of time, you know I love, love, love historical mysteries. And you also know I'm frequently amazed at the amount of research that goes into them; pouring over old photos and court records, reading up on clothing and food. My friend Jeri Westerson, however, doesn't stop there. She rubs medieval memorial plaques. She tracks down medieval relics. She takes pictures of medieval underwear (I promise, she's not a perv.) Honestly? I suspect she started writing her "medieval noir" mysteries so she could feed her habit. She says it's to reproduce the 14th century world of Crispin Guest, disgraced knight-turned-detective, but I think it's an excuse for her to put on her armor and hit the lists.

Two knights sit on horses and aim for each other with lances, trying to knock the other guy off the horse. This is what most people think a joust is. 

 

Not so fast.

There was far more to it than that, and more than Sir Walter Scott even knew in his Victorian potboiler, Ivanhoe.

Why does a mystery author give a joust the time of day? Because I write medieval mysteries, the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series, to be exact, with my disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth century London. 

 

But I digress. We were talking about tournaments. A tournament is not necessarily a joust, though a joust can happen at a tournament. Because a tournament is a competition of battling techniques, though it is likely it always involved some sort of horsemanship. The word tornoi from which we derive “tourney” and “tournament” alludes to a mounted charge with lances couched under the arm. It was a dangerous sport, but in the beginning even more so, if you can believe it. In the 12^th and 13^th centuries it was all about the mêlée or all out battle and these earlier games were going for the real thing with a field so wide it was set between the boundaries of two towns. If your village was unlucky enough to be in the way, well…let’s just say you got a front row seat. The lists were originally not the field set aside for jousting, but actually the place marked off to get out of the way of the battle. No one is sure where the word comes from. It might come from the lil, the designated spot in the French martial court where such games of skill were played, or from licium (band of material) or palicium (paling) the stuff surrounding the lists.

At any rate, William Marshall, the knight of knights from the 13^th century, wrote down many of the rules for being a knight and for the proper comportment at a tournament. He even explained how a young knight could make a lot of scratch from ransoms and prizes by “doing the circuit” of the tournaments.

Of course, it’s all fun and games until someone puts out an eye. Or loses a limb. Or gets killed. There were detractors. The Church wasn’t happy with this careless use of manpower. Sixty men alone met their end in a tournament near Cologne in 1240, not from battle, but suffocating from the heat and dust. In 1193, Pope Celestine III declared an edict against tournaments but, maneuvering around it, Richard the Lionheart granted licenses for tournaments anyway. The Church went further to discourage it by declaring a ban on sacramental burial for those who died during a tournament, but the clever knights got around that, too, by slipping a monk’s habit on the dying knight and proclaiming him a cleric. 

 

As armor got better, that is, moved into the era of plate armor rather than simply mail, it became possible to support tournaments with fewer casualties. But it was the joust that made tournaments more acceptable because this was a bout between only two combatants at a time. The word “joust” likely derives from the Latin juxtare—to come together. And indeed, they do.

Two men, mounted on chargers—big warhorses—run at each other between a barrier at full gallop, lowering lances aimed at the other. What could be better than that?

There were three points on the body the knight aimed for: the four nails on the shield, the helm, or the throat armor. Usually, it was a test of three broken lances. If you could withstand the hits without being unhorsed, you could call a draw, keep going, or continue on foot.

With time, more regulations were added and more order took over the rather rough and tumble that the tournaments used to be, making tournaments truly the sport of kings. By the fourteenth century when my books are set, a joust could be held for all occasions; royal weddings, coronations, and even for deciding judicial matters. In my upcoming book BLOOD LANCE, one of the threads of the story involves a dishonored knight accused of desertion. Meanwhile, Crispin witnesses a body hurtling from London Bridge into the Thames. Whispers claim it’s suicide but Crispin insists otherwise. Now he’s caught between rebellious actions in King Richard’s court, an old friend’s honor, and the true ownership of the legendary Spear of Longinus, culminating in a deadly joust on London Bridge.

  

Because such feats of arms always seem integral to my stories, I find myself doing a bit of hands on research. Yes, you can find me in armor now and again, doing my best to capture the feel of what my characters are going through, whipping a sword around, and harassing the populace. 

 

I was most definitely born in the wrong century.

(And yes, those pictures are of me, doing my best research for Crispin). 

 

BLOODLANCE will be released October 16, 2012 in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook. Find out more on Jeri’s website, including a book trailer and a video on Jeri’s swordcraft. You can read her not-to-be-missed blog, Getting Medieval, and follow her on Twitter as @jeriwesterson. She's not on Facebook, but Crispin Guest is! (His interests include solving crimes, hunting, and hawking.)

Jeri is offering a copy of BLOOD LANCE to one lucky commentor! So hop onto the back-blog and tell us what you'd have been doing back in the Middle Ages!