How to Win at Tournaments: the Technique of Chivalric Combat

SummaryAlthough it has generally been maintained that chivalric combat depended solely on strength and endurance, there is ample evidence that skill, dexterity, speed and control were also required. This paper attempts to reconstruct the techniques used in foot combats, tourneying on horseback and jousting (especially tilting)—in England, France, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula—on the basis of narratives and technical treatises, concerning sword and lance play, written between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries.</jats:p

Vegetius'S ‘De Re Militari’: The Triumph of Mediocrity

Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vegetius was regarded as the most authoritative writer on Roman military institutions in particular and upon war in general. His appeal was both historical and practical; his anti-mercenary fervour impressed Italian humanists in the fifteenth century,- his aphoristic wisdom was incorporated by Machiavelli into his own work and was, in turn, further disseminated by the many military writers who fell wider Machiavelli's spell. Nevertheless, Vegetius's reputation was increasingly under threat. The accumulation and publication of materials relating to modern warfare and to technologies unknown to the ancients was developing apace, and even writers who believed that classical military institutions remained relevant to modern warfare now had at their disposal a range of ancient authors largely unknown in the Middle Ages. Scholars were becoming simultaneously more aware of Vegetius's shortcomings and more sophisticated in their handling of historical sources. Yet, despite this, Vegetius enjoyed hisgreatest (though short-lived) triumph early in the seventeenth century when he was translated, paraphrased and illustrated by Johann von Wallhausen as an indispensable source forall practical military men.1</jats:p