7 - The Chivalric Transformation and the Origins of Tournament as seen through Norman Chroniclers

Summary

The period culminating in the eleventh century has bequeathed to us a range of narratives that describe the heroic deeds of noble young heroes who determinedly served their nation, lord, faith, or kindred. They fought for important and collective stakes of honor, interest, or both. If they died in battle, they were honored for their courage, and their death called for revenge. If they won, they gained valuable rewards: an enhanced status, an inheritance, a wife, a fief, glory. Such is the fate of the legendary Ingo described by Richer of Reims in his Histories; the same author also speaks of a more historical (albeit anonymous) warrior who obtained a reward for killing a German giant in single combat. Richer's book reveals some of the tales that were current within the noble households of tenth-century Frankish kings, a milieu to which Richer's own father, Ralph, belonged.

Richer's father could pride himself, in the second half of the tenth century, on having succeeded in some dangerous and decisive actions, even if they were rather covert and underhand. Yet evidence suggests that even at this time nobles seldom died in battle or during campaigns between French principalities. They deferred to the implicit norms of intracultural ‘war’ which directed them to avoid killing one another and to spare their noble enemies, with the expectation of gaining the success they desired through pleas, the mechanisms of social life, and by gaining the loyalty of their supporters.