Tournaments were usually held on the invitation of some prince, which was proclaimed by his heralds throughout his own dominions, and at all the foreign courts or other placed whence it was expected or desired that parties might come to take part in the martial competition. A detail of the forms and ceremonies that were observed in fixing the Hats (or boundaries within which the fighting was to take place), in offering and accepting the challenges, in declaring the issue of each encounter, and in assigning and bestowing the prizes (which last office was often performed by female hands), cannot be attempted here. All these particulars, together with the usual lawe or regulations of the combat, and the mode of fighting (which was commonly with lances and swords, and in the first instance always on horseback, although parties who were dismounted frequently continued the contest on foot), may be most conveniently learned from the many accounts of tournaments in Froissart and other old chroniclers, or even from such fictitious narratives as the Knight's Tale of Palomar and Arcite, in Chaucer (or Dryden's paraphrase of it), or that of the tournament at Ashby in Scott's ` Ivanhoe,' or from Scott in his ' Essay on Chivalry' Miscellaneous Prose The distinction between a tournament and a joust, or just, is not very clear. Du Cange makes the joust to be properly a single combat
or duel, whereas in a tournament a considerable number of combatants were commonly engaged on each side. But this distinction is certainly not generally observed in the use of the two words; and our English archnologiat, Spelman, who defines torn lore, " gladiis concutere, judos facere, hastitudium exercere," does not appear to have been aware of it.. The term jouste or joust has been derived, improbably enough, from the Latin furls, " near to," because, say the etymologists, the combatants here fought hand to hand. It is, no doubt, connected with the verb to juatle, or jostle (in French, jouster), though possibly the original word may be beat preserved in the Italian form giostra, which the Byzantine writers have imitated in their Tcuvarpa and rCousrpia. There was also the species of single combat termed a pea d'armes, or passage of arms : it was at a pea d'armes that Henry II. was killed. On this subject, besides the works quoted above, the reader may consult the' Traitd des Tournois, Joustes, Carrousels, et autree spectacles publics' (par Claude Francois Nenestrier), 4to, Lyon, 1609 ; and ' Mernoirea sur l'ancienne Chevalerie, con.sideree comma un Etabliasement politique et militaire,' par J. B. de la Curno de St. Palaye, 3 tom. 12mo, Paris, 1759-1781.