How Was a Joust Scored? A Sport With a Rulebook and a Body Count

A joust is a contest between two riders with lances, run along a course with each attempting to strike the other, and it is one event within the wider practice of the tournament rather than the whole of it. Earlier tournaments were mass engagements between groups across open country, closer to a battle with ransom rather than death as the object, and the individual joust became dominant later as the event moved into enclosed lists before spectators. By the fifteenth century it was a formalised competition with specialised equipment, written rules, appointed judges and a scoring system, held to mark royal occasions and to display the standing of whoever paid for it.

Surviving score sheets and rule texts show a specific system:

• •Breaking a lance on the opponent scored, with the score depending on where it struck
• •A strike on the helm scored highest in most conventions
• •Unhorsing the opponent generally ended the contest in the striker's favour
• •Striking the barrier between the riders lost points
• •Striking a horse, or an opponent who had lost his helm, was heavily penalised
• •Scores were recorded by marking a sheet ruled into sections, several of which survive

Specialised jousting armour diverged from battlefield equipment in ways that show exactly what the risks were. It was far heavier and asymmetric, with enormous reinforcement on the left side where the blow arrives and much less on the right. Helms were bolted rigidly to the breastplate, which prevents the neck taking the impact and makes the head almost immobile, so a rider could see only briefly when leaning forward. Lances were made to break, with a hollow section and a scored point, since a broken lance dissipates the energy and scores a point while an unbroken one transmits everything to the rider. Coronels replaced sharp points with blunt crowns that spread the impact. The barrier separating the riders, introduced in the fifteenth century, prevented collisions between horses.

The tournament served purposes well beyond the contest and understanding them explains the expense. It was training, since fighting from horseback with a lance is a skill requiring practice against a moving opponent, and the earlier mass form resembled battle closely. It was display, since staging one demonstrated the wealth and standing of whoever paid, and the spectacle, the heraldry and the ceremony were the point rather than decoration. It was a marriage market and a political occasion, assembling the nobility of a region for days. It was a route to reputation and income, since successful participants won prizes, ransoms and patronage, and several careers were built on it. And it generated its own literature, with accounts of tournaments forming a substantial part of what survives of medieval secular writing.

The risk was substantial, managed and not eliminated, and the evidence is specific. Deaths of prominent participants are recorded, including a king of France killed in 1559 when a lance splintered and a fragment entered his eye through the visor, which prompted a decline in royal participation. Injuries were common and skeletal evidence from the period shows characteristic damage. Rules and equipment developed continuously in response, with each innovation addressing an identified mode of injury, which is the same pattern modern sports show. The activity was defended as training for war and criticised throughout on the grounds that it killed people for entertainment, with church authorities prohibiting it repeatedly and without effect.

The contest was formalised with judges, written rules and score sheets, with points depending on where a lance struck and the highest for a blow to the helm. Lances were made to break deliberately, since a broken one dissipates the energy and scores while an unbroken one transmits it. Armour was heavily asymmetric, reinforcing the side the blow arrives on.