Here in southern California, there are several people involved in the "sport" of jousting with very little emphasis on the history side. Even recreating the spectacle of a joust is secondary to "gettin' the chicks" like a rock star. Nearly all of the shows end up looking like WWF wrestling on horses, and the "tournaments" I've seen are a joke where history is concerned.

Since there are now a few on this forum who seem to have a good amount of experience in the more historical side of jousting/tilting, I'm curious as to why you're in it.

All of the above makes me ask the question of the jousters out there:

I hardly have any business posting to this thread as I do not joust yet, but am working toward it. That said however, what would make a sane man past 35 work toward this goal? I think my answer can shed some light (at least into my state of mental health if nothing else)

My desire, first and foremost is to investigate the training of a man-at-arms. I want to take the bits we have translated out of Duarte, and the bits that are promised to be translated out of Pietro de Monte, and then apply them practicaly to training man and mount to the task. As a historian, I believe that this sort of investigation can give insight into aspects of mounted combat we can hardly consider when simply reading about the topic in a book.

For myself, I hope to gain insight into the man-at-arms, his job, and what his experiences might have been like, by duplicating them to the best of my poor ability, and then take that insight and re-examine what I have studied about the topic. Maybe I can make some useful contribution to the store of knowledge of the academic world.

From the selfish side of my motivation, I look forward to experienceing these actions - to be able to say that I have done this, and to have the pleasure of the experience itself. Something to look back fondly on in old-age, I guess. I think that by pursuing this goal, I can make my life experience richer, and perhaps by sharing enrich others. Also, I think it is in small part a self test of my own courage and skill. As I have started so late in life, at best I could hope to be an 'indifferent' man-at-arms (as Commines always pointed out discussing troops, 'there were X number of lances, some good, some bad, and some indifferent). Better to strive for that though, than to have never tried at all. Life is meant to be lived - it is not a spectators sport.

In that statement is the only aspect of 'sport' that motivates me. I look forward to hearing from those who currently do participate in the 'sport'.

[ 11-12-2001: Message edited by: chef de chambre ]

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First off, I don't joust regularly. Most of the stuff I do is c11th, and that doesn't work for jousting - no rigid armour, no face protection, no tilt rail....don't even think about it.

The small amount of jousting I've done was because I had the chance to, and it looked like fun...which it was.

There isn't really a "sport" element in jousting over here - while we do the "presentation of prizes" bit sometimes, our jousting isn't competitive in the same way that some of the american groups seem to be. Think of it being done in the same way as a display combat - even if you don't choreograph it, you'll still try to show the various modes and strengths of each weapon etc.

As far as the history goes....well, I've read up on the history of the joust and tournament, though I'm far from an expert, and the more I read, the less I think we are actually giving a decent simulation of a medieval joust...if only because the public wouldn't believe it if a jousting team turned up dressed as the mayor and aldermen of london, for example.

I intend no offense to anyone when I say that, and I do think jousting shows are worth doing - anything we can show the public is better than nothing - but we simply do not have the resources to create the sort of spectacle I read about when I look at (say) Barber & Barker's book.

As far as using it as a research tool, well, it has certainly taught me some things, but actually, I've learned more trying to recreate mounted combat against infantry than with the jousting, largely because the jousting I've done could follow period manuals more closely than the more fluid combat scenarios.

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Tourney are a small c14th group, they do some mounted but mostly foot combat.

There is good jousting in the UK - I'd probably pick the stuff they sometimes do at the Royal Armouries to take on anything, anywhere - but sadly, most UK jousting is not of a particularly high standard, simply because very few of the people on the UK circuit have come to it from re-enactment.

It isn't simply a matter of having your own horses - god knows, you're right that having your own string of horses makes life easier -but also a difference of approach. Some of the stuntmen on the UK circuit - Gerald Naprous, for instance - have plenty of good-quality horseflesh, but the show he runs has all the historical accuracy of one of those "medieval banquets" pubs hold at christmas. We are talking polyester caparisons and scantily-clad "damsels" here.

However, to be fair to him, he's never claimed what he does has any form of historical accuracy, and seen in its own terms (ie pure entertainment with no educational content), it's a pretty good performance.

For myself, I have always portrayed a knight or a man-at-arms in my re-enactment and trying to portray either without a horse has never made any sense to me. So as soon as I was able to afford it, I started to take riding lessons and in more recent years have brought and trained my own horses. Along with a couple of re-enactment friends (Peter Lyon and Philip Pedersen) we started to re-learn the relevant skills using Duarte, Fiore, etc. as our references.

We are also lucky in this part of the world in that keeping horses is relatively inexpensive. We also have 24/7 access to our horses on our own land so we can train as a group every week. At the moment we run a team of 3 fully trained horses and also have 3 other younger horses in various stages of training - something that we probably could not do if we lived elsewhere.

We have always placed a reasonable emphasis on doing public displays (mainly to help raise funds for the club, for charities, etc.) and have always done tournament type displays as opposed to battle re-enactment for a variety of reasons. So when we first started adding the equestrian element to our displays about 5 years ago, the clash between two armoured "knights" became the highlight of our displays and our displays took on more and more of a full medieval tournament focus.

When we made contact with the Aussies we decided that we could add more drama to our displays if we included the competitive element between Australia and New Zealand (which on the sport fields has always been fierce!). So we ran our first "International"
in early 1999 and our second one earlier this year. We plan to run our next one in January 2002 where we have a team of 5 coming from England and we hope to have some US jousters there as well.

As Jeff says it is also imperative to joust with people that you trust and in requiring that people we joust with to meet the same standards of training and equipment as we do goes a long way to helping to establish this trust.

We also regard jousting as a martial art and not a sport that you can do without any preparation a couple of times a year. So we train for several hours each week at the rings, quintain, etc. as well as against each other. It is this training regimen that also helps us to build up trust in each other.

We also don't compete for cash or for other rewards like the "chicks" - instead we compete for the sheer fun of it as well as for the honour. All of our prizes are also high-quality items of re-enactment kit rather than cash.

So that's a roundabout way to answering Jeff's original question - I joust first and foremost to experience more the historical aspect of what it may have been like to be a "knight" but part of this historical aspect is the experience of serious competition between two armoured riders so I joust for this aspect as well.

Neither are mutually exclusive of each other and the jousting groups that joust for "sport" only at the expensive of also trying to do things as historically accurately as possible are not only short changing themselves but their audience as well.

[ 11-12-2001: Message edited by: Callum Forbes ]

[ 11-12-2001: Message edited by: Callum Forbes ]

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URL=http://www.jousting.co.nz

quote:

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Originally posted by Callum Forbes:
The recent article in the LA Times on jousting (which I think you allude to Jeff) is not what jousting is about. For us at least anyway. Jousting in New Zealand evolved from the re-enactment community and not from the entertainment industry.

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Why, yes Callum, you're right.

I was training my new gelding Sunday afternoon over at my friend's arena across the road, when her grammy brought one of their friends over to meet me because I "do medieval stuff". They'd told him a lot about me and he mentioned that he had read the article in the LA Times about the "jousters". I ranted a bit about how they were only in it for the "chicks" and the 'extreme sport' aspect of the activity; that they didn't have a clue about history. I told him something about our group "The Red Company-1471" and Bill and my endeavors in mounted combat and that we had practiced jousting a few times. I ended up asking him if he was interested in the "sport" of jousting or if he was interested in the "history" of it. He said he was more interested in the atmosphere and the historical side of it, which was a refreshing change from what I normally hear.

I'm glad that the jousters in Australia and NZ come from reenactment and that at least some in England do too. Unfortunately here there are so few true reenactors of the Middle Ages, and even fewer who do horse stuff, that most jousters come to it from being hired on with one of the several Ren faire troups; New Riders of the Golden Age, Freelancers, MSR, Hanlon-Lees, AJA, Heroes & Villains, Imperial Knights, Lancelot Prod., et al. These groups put on a passable entertaining show, but seem to care little about staging an historically accurate joust or tournament. It's such a shame that with only slightly more effort, they could be nearly completely historically accurate.

Some of these groups make great claims that they don't use breakaway lances and that they perform "full contact" jousting. The problem is that they make compromises in other areas, such as inordinately heavy shields to absorb the impact, they don't use lance rests to transfer the impact to the cuirass so they end up taping their wrists like boxers, they use closet dowel which shatters in ragged shards endangering the eyes of horse and rider, not using a shield at all (which was done on the battlefield, not on the tourney field) but they do it because they're 'studs', etc, etc, I could go on and on.

The other thing that just astounds and baffles me is the cash prizes. Talk about giving your opponent a reason to kill you....

Basically, I have not yet seen a decent joust here in the states. Those who do it regularly see it as something that could turn into the next EXTREME sport, but don't have the sense to realize that if that happens, they won't be the ones on the tele. The promoters will hire "american gladiator" types; professionals who don't even know how to spell 'history', and are only in it for the fame and $$, and will turn jousting into Rollerball.

Sorry to rant.

I appreciate the insights, and would love to get together with you gentlemen to ride, cross swords and maybe even lances.

You have basically stated my view of the US joust scene and I agree with all of your points. I have worked with the AJA in the past and hope to do so again next year. And as you say with a little bit of effort they and most other US joust groups could achieve a reasonable level of authenticity without compromising their "full-contact" jousting.

However when it comes to authenticity we have to agree to differ with most of our US and UK jousting counterparts as I don't think that jousters from a renfaire or other entertainment background see any need for paying more than lip-service to the historical dimension no matter how hard you try.

It will be great if you and any other US re-enactors with an interest in jousting pursued it. As Rod says taking and giving a good hit in a joust pass is quite an exhilarating experience and jousting is an actively that you can pursue so long as you can still ride a horse.So either down here or in the States I hope to meet you in the lists someday.

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URL=http://www.jousting.co.nz

These resources are very relevant to jousting as these provide practical advice of aspects such as horsemanship, jousting technique and the mental aspects of why many people fail at the joust.

They are also particularly relevant to us as the problems they had back in the early 15th century and the problems that we face today are essentially the same.

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URL=http://www.jousting.co.nz

On the "EXTREME SPORT" aspect your assessment is correct. The WCJA stuff is a fun side note.