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  • Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia by Noel Fallows
  • Frank A. Domínguez
Fallows, Noel. Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010. Pp. xix, 541.

Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia is a study of the joust and armor in Spain from the time that the lance rest on the saddle is adopted in the late-fourteenth century to the late-sixteenth century, when the tournament goes out of fashion. The work is divided into two parts: the study proper (Part I: “Introductory Study”, 1-309) and a partial edition and translation of selected texts and a glossary (Part II: “Texts, Translations, and Glossaries”, 311-508). It ends with a “Bibliography” (512-533) and an “Index” (535-541).

In Part I, Fallows introduces the topic of the book, defines the terms, traces the evolution of the fifteenth-century joust from the earlier indiscriminate mêlée tournament and the tourney. He also reviews the Castilian documentation surrounding the beginnings of knighthood and summarizes the critical work done on the subject of jousting (1-27). Fallows argues that scholars who have studied the matter have not included important Iberian examples, and that their investigations have been inadequate to describe or visualize jousting properly, because it “must be seen in order to be properly understood” (27). His book addresses both issues by republishing the most important contemporary Spanish writers on the subject and by including over 178 illustrations on chivalric events and armor. This last is the real purpose of Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia: to provide a more ample context for the Castilian jousting texts discussed by looking at examples of the armor current at the time they were written.

Chapters on individual knights, armory, score-keeping, jousting’s application to war, and its evolution into a spectacle follow. The first (1: “The Three Jousters”, 28-68) reviews the careers and works of Ponç de Menaguerra (c1460-c1500), Juan Quijada de Reayo (active 1500s?-1540s?), and Luis Zapata de Chaves (1526-1595), the three main writers represented. All of these three knights won fame because of their experiences on the list, and all three wrote about the subject. [End Page 169]

Menaguerra was born in the late fifteenth century and published Lo cavaller in 1493. His life coincides with the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. The two other writers, Quijada de Reayo and Zapata, lived during the reign of Charles V. Quijada wrote the Doctrina del arte de la cavallería for the third duke of Alburquerque, and Zapata wrote “Del justador” as a chapter of his Miscellánea. The texts, therefore, span the period that extends from the late-fifteenth to the late-sixteenth century.

The second and third chapters review the most significant Spanish accounts of the joust. In chapter two (2: “Arms and Armour of the Joust I: The Fifteenth Century”, 69-121), after agreeing with Alvaro Soler de Campos that the history of Castilian armor can be divided into fifty-year (or even smaller) increments, Fallows indicates that jousters increasingly competed with people from different countries in places that were often far away from their nation of origin, and armorers existed in a symbiotic relationship with them. Therefore, jousting is a peripatetic phenomenon, and perhaps the first truly international event in Europe.

Fallows then reviews the phenomenon of jousting in chronological order, beginning with an examination of the Passo Honroso de Suero de Quiñones (1434), whose participants probably donned Italianate field-armor, followed by Lo cavaller (1493). In the case of the Passo, Fallows uses two fairly complete examples of armor (and other partial survivals) to reconstruct what a tournament must have looked like early in the fifteenth century; similarly, Lo cavaller is discussed in the context of the armor of Philip I (etc.) to point out the changes that had taken place in the time that had elapsed since the writing of the Passo.

The following chapter (3: “Arms and Armour of the Joust II: The Sixteenth Century”, 122-167) speaks of the preeminence of Italian and German armory in the sixteenth century by examining the Doctrina del Arte de la Caballería (1548) and Del justador (1589...

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