TOURNAMENT, or TOURNEY, is from the French tournoi, formerly tournoinnent, for which the Latin writers of the middle ages use torneamentum, tornamentuna, or turneemcntum, and sometimes also tome, tome, tornatio, torneriurn, or torneta. The Byzantine annalists have transferred the word into ternementurn (Tfpvtperrov). There can be little doubt, though other etymologies have been suggested, that tournament means merely ei turning or wheeling about, from the common French verb tourner, to turn. This will agree with other tourns. We have in England the sherifFa turn or tours. Other bar barous Latin words of the same connection are tornare, to turn about in fight, and also to call out or challenge to combat (in which last senso there is also the old French lui tourner (or tenser), par gage do bataille); torneare, torniare, turneare (in French tournoier), tornia ntentare, and torneizare, to take part in a tournament ; lorneettor, a performer in a tournament. (Du Cange, Olossarinua ad Scriptures Mod. et Inf. Latinit,' vi. ; Carpentier, Glossarium Novinn,' iii.; 11. Spelman, ' Olossarium Archaiologicutn ;' Fr. Junii, Etymologieum Anglicanum,' ad vv. Tourneying and Tourney.) A tournament may be defined to have been a species of combat in which the parties engaged for the purpose of exercising and exhibiting their courage, prowess, and skill in anne, and not either out of enmity (as in ordinary warfare), or even (as in the modern duel) for the mere purpose of wiping off some dishonourable imputation (a purpose which was served rather by the ancient ordeal or wager of battle than by the tournament). It, is obvious, however, that although the primary and professed design of the tournament was nothing more than to furnish an exciting show, and to give valour and military talent an opportunity of acquiring distinction, other passions would be very apt to inter mingle in the heat of contest with the mere ambition of superiority, and sometimes even to disguise themselves under that pretext.
The origin of the tournament has been carried back at least to the Roman times. Virgil's description of the game of Troy (ludas Troja., /En. v. 545-602) Is, in some passages, not unlike what the name would lead us to suppose the tournament may have originally been. The tourna ment, like the other customs of chivalry, must be properly considered to have taken its rise after the establishment of the feudal system. Some writers attribute the invention of the tournament to the Emperor Henry, surnamed the Fowler, who died in 936; and another common account, given on the authority of the Chronicle of Tours, and the Chronicle of St. Martin of Tours, is that its inventor was Geoffrey of Preuilly, ancestor of the counts of Anjou, who died in 1066 ; but Du Cange, in his Dissertations ` De l'Origine et de 1'Usage des Tournois,' at the end of his edition of Joinville, quotes various notices of tournaments held before the age of either of these personages: among others, one thich took place at the celebrated interview between Louis of Germany and Charles the Bald of France, at Strasburg, in 841, as mentioned by the contemporary chronicler Nithard. Geoffrey
of Preuilly perhaps introduced the tournament into Western France. From the French it appears to have passed to the English and the Germans, and, in a later age, to the Italians and the Greeks. Tourna ments are said to have been first practised by the English in the time of Stephen ; but they were forbidden by Henry II., as they had already been by the church ; and it was not till the reign of Richard Coeur-de-Lion that they were properly established in this country. The flourishing era of the tournament, here as well as in France and elsewhere, was in the 13th and 14th centuries; but it continued in frequent use down to the middle of the 16th, and was not altogether abandoned till a considerably later date, although the few tournaments that were held in the latter part of that century were rather such mere shows or spectacles as have been sometimes exhibited under the same name even in our own day, than the real combats which were so called in an earlier age. The accident of Henry II. of France meeting his death at a tournament in 1559 almost at once occasioned the cessation of the practice everywhere as well as in France ; but the spirit by which it was formerly kept up had long before this been decaying under the influence of the various circumstances which, at least from the middle of the preceding century, had been operating a general change in the social condition of Europe. Among the physical causes in question the chief may be considered to have been the introduction of fire-arms into war; among the moral, the extension of the com mercial spirit, and the rise everywhere of a new literature, together bringing with them other habits, other tastes, another civilisation. The Church of however, it may be observed, which had set its face very stoutly against tournaments from about the middle of the 12th to the middle of the 13th century, prohibiting persons from engaging in them by some of its decrees on pain of excommunication, and denying Christian burial to such as lost their lives in these con tests, had long been reconciled to them, and for some ages had rather cherished and encouraged the practice than otherwise.