[Ansteorra] History

[Chris Zakes]

At 12:00 PM 5/7/2008, you wrote:
>willowdewisp at juno.com wrote:
>
>>The fighting was more real because the fighters thought it as 
>>studying an Marshal Art not a Sport. The fighters fought to show 
>>their skill to also to entertain the populace.
>>Because the fighting was interesting people watched.
>
>I'm sorry, Your Grace, but I must disagree.  The fighting in the SCA 
>is and always has been a sport, just as most of our martial arts are 
>today.  You see, we have rules to prevent injury, and the moment you 
>have such rules you have a sport.  Medieval fighting was about 
>trying to kill your opponent.  You bashed him with your shield; you 
>kicked him; you tripped him; if he was a bit off-balance, you 
>charged and slammed into him to knock him down.  Even during 
>tournaments, people were seriously injured and killed on a regular 
>basis.  That just will not do today, nor would it have been accepted 
>20 or even 40 years ago.  Which means that the fighting then was 
>just as much a sport as is the fighting today.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to quibble a bit with your disagreement. 
<G> While early tournament combat tended to be little better than 
what happened on the battlefield, by the fifteenth and sisteenth 
centuries, there *were* a fair number of rules about what you could 
and could not do in tournament combat. For example, when jousting, 
aiming at the horse, or the opponent's legs was frowned upon and if a 
fighter dropped something, it was immediately claimed by the heralds 
(who, in addition to their announcing duties seemed to have had a 
role pretty similar to SCA marshals) and the dropped weapon or armor 
had to be ransomed back. Or consider this book: 
http://www.princeton.edu/~ezb/rene/renehome.html and 
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=COMP-1&I=1&M=imageseule 
from 1460, which includes rules on what armor and weapons could be 
used, how the list field was to be set up, etc.

Later-period jousting was scored on how well the combatants rode, how 
good their targetting was and how much of their lance was broken. 
It's true that deaths still happened, but the fighters weren't 
actively trying to kill each other; those deaths were accidents, like 
deaths in modern car racing. Perhaps the ultimate in "sport" jousting 
was the German style that had specially-constructed armor that would 
fly into pieces if hit in the right spot. 
http://www.karlofgermany.com/master25.htm

         -Tivar Moondragon