This is the first serious study of medieval tournaments throughout Europe. The romantic image of the tournament, derived largely from the literature of the middle ages, has perhaps been the reason why historians have tended to regard them as frivolous occasions, but recent research has encouraged a different view. Richard Barber and Juliet Barker illuminate the importance of tournaments, and reveal their place at the heart of medieval culture. They are seen as having played a vital role in the training of a medieval knight, and they stimulated new developments in arms and armour; they were used by ruling princes for political patronage and thus made an important contribution to national order and stability; and they were occasions of glamour and splendour, confirming the power of the ruling order, and providing a public spectacle of the order of a present-day major sporting fixture. Their uniquely attractive feature, the conbination of idealism with practical skills, gives an extraordinary insight into the medieval mind, and into the origins of many of the attitudes that colour life and behaviour in the western world today.