Medieval tournaments may have looked like chaotic contests, but by the fifteenth century they were governed by increasingly detailed rules. One of the best examples is the Tournament Regulations of Bamberg of 1478, which laid out who could compete, what weapons could be used, and even how participants were expected to behave.

In that year, a German tournament society known as the Fürspanger created a new code for its “national” tournament, the first of its kind. It governed who could enter this mêlée, what their equipment would be, and how to behave during the matches. Various officials were to be appointed for an event, including four officers who were to watch over the tiltyard, a trumpeter to signal the beginning and end of the tournament, and “30 citizens with long staves [to] be in the tiltyard to protect the participants and ensure that those fallen from their horses not be trampled to death.”

Who Could Compete? A jouster with a boy riding his lance – from The Tournament Book of Marx Walther – Bayerische Staatsbibliothek MS Cgm 1930 fol. 20v

To be able to compete in a tournament, one had to be of sufficiently noble birth, and could not be a heretic, adulterer, or merchant, nor those “who intended to seduce women or virgins by word or deed, who boasted about it, or who had actually done so by force.”

When the tournament began, everyone had to be present by the eighth hour in the morning for registration, and be ready to ride by 10. Swords were to be inspected, and had to be blunt so that they could not cut or stab. Competitors could carry one club, but it could not have nails in it, except for “one point on the top the size of a thumb.”

The riders were allowed to have squires to assist them, with the number depending on their rank: princes could have four squires, earls and lords three squires, knights two squires, and other noblemen just a single squire. These assistants could help their master move around the tournament, but they could not push away opponents with weapons or grasp the bridles of their horses. Meanwhile, the squires also got some protection:

Nobody is allowed to hurt any squire with his sword or club, to injure him, or push him down and trample on him.

Dress Codes and Penalties Tournament from the Codex Manesse, depicting the mêlée

There were even regulations against being too fashionably dressed. For example, “Nobody was allowed to wear any pieces of gold or woven velvet to adorn himself.” Even the women watching the event could not “have more than four skirts.”

Those who failed to obey the rules could “lose his horse and outfit and shall be disgraced by all the participants and by the ladies.” The regulations concluded with a plea “about not … carrying on feuds during a tournament.”

There is one last rule to note: “To make sure that all the participants pay their fee before leaving.”

To learn more, check out the article, “German Tournament Regulations of the 15th Century,”  by Joachim K. Rühl, in Journal of Sport History, Vol. 17:2 (1990). You can read it on JSTOR.

15th century German manuscript depicting a tournament – Germanisches Nationalmuseum Hs998 fol. 227r