Nigel Bryant (translator)
The Tournaments at La Hem and Chauvency
(The Boydell Press, 2020), 128 pp. £60.00/$80.00.
This volume presents English prose translations of two separate works of Old French verse, each recalling a late thirteenth-century tournament. There are sound reasons for combining these texts in this way. Not only did the tournaments take place within seven years of one another, they were held in the same geographical region and, most importantly, were attended by some of the same individuals. The result is an engrossing, highly-detailed picture of a particular aristocratic culture, capturing its tastes, values and even its sense of humour.
The Romance of La Hem, composed by the otherwise unknown Sarrasin, records a ‘festival of jousting’ held at Hem-Monacu, east of Amiens, in October 1278. [1] It was organised by two local noblemen, Aubert de Longueval and Huart de Bazentin. Sarrasin tells us that Bazentin paid him to compose the poem, making it akin to an ‘official record’ of the event (p. 59). This would explain why almost every joust is run successfully: no horses swerve, nobody misses, nobody is hurt. Sarrasin claims that it was ‘only right to record the good and draw a veil over the bad’ (p. 45), indicating that he took some licence in his description of the actual jousting.
Jousting was only part (perhaps not even the most important part) of the event. The competition was accompanied by elaborate theatrics, emulating the form and style of an Arthurian romance, with Longueval’s sister presiding as Guinevere and some of the competitors taking on the role of Arthurian characters. The text does not distinguish between the theatrical framing device and the competition itself, which can make it difficult to tell exactly what is being described. Who or what was the lion that accompanied Robert II of Artois (d. 1302) in his role as ‘the Knight of the Lion’ (p. 18)? What was the ‘chapel […] gliding through the air’ in which Frederick III, duke of Lorraine (d. 1302), made his entrance (p. 37)? Similarly, it is unclear how much of the dialogue that Sarrasin reports, particularly the ironic exchanges between ‘Sir Kay’ and the female spectators, was scripted in advance, improvised on the spot or embellished afterwards by the poet. In many ways, the theatricality of the La Hem jousts prefigures the elaborate pas d’armes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The overall effect is to blend literary ideals with identifiable historical people and places.
This was no mere escapism, however. La Hem also has an explicit political agenda. The poem opens with Longueval and Bazentin lamenting that King Philip III of France had outlawed tournaments in his domain, which accounts for the decline of ‘Honour and Prowess […] Largess and Courtesy’ (p. 3) in the kingdom. Sarrasin presents a number of justifications for tournaments, ranging from the idealistic to the surprisingly practical. Not only does jousting encourage knightly virtue and would lead to men taking the cross, prohibiting tournaments also stops foreigners spending money in France and deprives French tradesmen of work. The royal distaste for tournaments clearly did not extend very far, as the king’s cousin, Robert, count of Artois, and his own brother Robert, count of Clermont (d. 1317), both jousted at La Hem (p. 15, 26). [2] A number of the competitors were notable crusaders or would go on to hold positions in the royal household. La Hem was not just recreation: it was an important political and social statement.
It was probably due to this prohibition on tournaments that the subject of the second poem in this volume, The Tournament at Chauvency, was held just outside the French royal jurisdiction at Chauvency-le-Chateau, on the border between modern Belgium and Luxembourg. The author, Jacques Bretel, does not name his patron or identify who organised the event but senior noblemen from Luxembourg, Hainaut, Flanders, Burgundy and further afield are all mentioned. The event was held over four days in October 1285, with two days of jousting and concluded with a grand mêlée between two teams armed with swords and clubs.
The Chauvency tournament did not have the kind of theatrics that accompanied the La Hem jousts, but there is an immediacy to Bretel’s descriptions that elevates his poem above Sarrasin’s comparatively staid and repetitive account. While Bryant is probably over-stating the case when he calls Chauvency ‘as close as one could hope to get to time travel’ (p. xxii), there is no denying that it captures the spectacle and drama that gave tournaments their enduring appeal. There is a wealth of detail in Bretel’s account, from descriptions of arms and heraldry, to the conversations in the stands, to his striking dislike for the noisy heralds who acclaimed the competitors as they entered the lists then dashed forward to steal any gear they might drop in the collision.
Bretel focuses particularly on the erotic themes of the tournament, whether that be the admiring comments from female spectators, the competitors singing love songs as they enter the lists, or the surprisingly saucy entertainments laid on during the evenings. There is also an unmistakable element of misogyny, acting as a counterpoint to the romantic elements, as the heralds berate the women in the stands after especially violent collisions: ‘God’s shame on you, women! It’s for you these knights make their eyes reel and fly from their brains!’ (p. 69).
The translations themselves are clear and readable, although some of the colloquialisms strike a false note (for instance, a spectator declares jousting to be ‘proper dangerous’ (p. 27). Bryant should be particularly commended for his work on Chauvency, where the author gives some of his characters comedic regional accents, which must have been very difficult to translate.
The volume has a short introduction, outlining the main themes of each text and a one page summary of their manuscript history. There are two maps, showing the location of each tournament and key places mentioned in each poem. Footnotes provide very brief biographical details about identifiable competitors, alongside notes on difficult translations. These footnotes are the volume’s only major shortcoming: the biographical notes are too brief. Some of the competitors are unknown outside of the poem, but others were important figures in their day and more detail would have helped to put the events in their proper context. We are given almost no information about the men who organised the jousts at La Hem, Longueval and Bazentin, their family history or their subsequent careers. Bryant is primarily a translator, so this kind of research may have been outside the scope of his project, but collaboration with a historian would have added even more value to an accomplished volume.
As it stands, The Tournaments at Le Hem and Chauvency succeeds in making these fascinating texts accessible to Anglophone students and scholars. It should be included in any course on medieval romance, chivalry and knighthood or the tournament, especially as it is now available in paperback.
James Titterton
University of Leeds
[email protected]
[1] The term ‘tournament’ is never actually used in La Hem. Bryant suggests this is because it consisted of jousting only, with no mêlée or tornoi proper.
[2] Robert of Artois clearly considered jousting a serious matter. At the time of the La Hem jousts, he was excommunicated from the Church for participating in tournaments, and was excommunicated again in 1279 for breaching an oath he had sworn not to tourney. Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages (Boydell, 1989), p. 39.
