Fig. 130.—“Here is shown how the king-at-arms, having on his shoulder the gold cloth with the two leaders painted on parchment, and in the four corners the arms of the said judges, proclaims the tournament, and how the heralds offer the arms of the said judges to whoever will take them.”—Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Tournaments of King René,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century in the National Library at Paris.
As a rule, tournaments were proclaimed, that is to say published, à cor et à cri (Figs. 130 and 131), either when a promotion of knights, or a royal marriage, or a solemn entry of a sovereign into a town took place; and the character of these chivalrous festivals changed according to the time and place at and in which they occurred. The arms used on these occasions varied in a similar manner. In France, the tournament lance was made of the lightest and straightest wood, either fir, aspen, or sycamore, pointed with steel, and with a pennant floating from the end; whilst in Germany and in Scotland they were made of the heaviest and toughest wood, with a long iron pear-shaped point. The tournament must not be confounded with the tilt or joust (from the Latin juxta), which was a single hand-to-hand combat, nor with the passage of arms, in which several combatants, both on foot and on horseback, were engaged, and imitated the attack and defence of some military position, some pass, or some narrow mountainous defile. Tilts usually formed part of a tournament, and marked its close; but there were also more complicated tilts, open to all comers, which lasted for several days, and were termed joutes plénières. As the ladies were the life and soul of these tilts, the knights always terminated the proceedings by a special passage of arms which was termed the lance des dames; they were always ready to pay this homage to the charms of the fair sex, and frequently fought for them with sword, axe, and dagger.
Fig. 131.—Here is portrayed a herald holding the banners of the four referees.—Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Tournaments of King René” (Fifteenth Century).
Fig. 132.—The Banners and Helmets are ranged round a cloister, and are then distributed by the judges, in the presence of the ladies and those taking part in the tournament.—Miniature from the “Tournois du Roi René,” MS. of the Fifteenth Century, in the National Library, Paris.
The preparations for a tournament afforded an animated and interesting picture. The lists, which at first were of a round shape like the amphitheatres of antiquity, were later constructed in a square, and later still in an oblong form; they were gilded, painted with emblems and heraldic devices, and ornamented with rich hangings and historical tapestries. While the lists were being prepared, the knights who were to take part in the tournament, as well as those who were to be only its spectators, had their armorial banners hung up from the windows of the houses in which they were putting up, and affixed their coats of arms to the outer walls of the neighbouring castles, monasteries, and cloisters. When this was done, the nobles and the ladies went round and inspected them (Fig. 132); a herald or a pursuivant-at-arms named their owners, and if a lady recognised any knight against whom she had any ground of complaint, she touched his banner or his shield, in order to bring him under the notice of the camp judges, and if, after an inquiry, he was found guilty, he was forbidden to appear in the tournament.
Coats of arms, which were striking characteristics of chivalry, and which were adopted by the nobility as one of its most striking attributes, had no doubt a contemporaneous origin with the institution whose emblem it became. It is supposed to have been in the eleventh century, at the time of the First Crusade, that the necessity of distinguishing between the multitude of nobles and knights who flocked to the Holy Land led to the invention of the different heraldic colours and devices. Each Crusader chose and kept his own particular emblem; these emblems became the external marks of nobility, and were to be seen everywhere—on the war tents, on the banners, on the liveries, on the clothes, and on every object belonging to a noble family. Hence the language of heraldry, that figurative and hieroglyphic jargon, incomprehensible to everybody at that period except to professional heralds-at-arms.
Fig. 133.—The Champion of the Tournament, from the Collection entitled “Vita Imperatoris Maximiliani,” engraved by Burgmayer from drawings by Albert Dürer (Fifteenth Century).