Xōchiyāōyōtl

I'm reading Jonathan Phillips' The Fourth Crusade. Currently I'm at the year AD 1200; they've called a tournament to Écry.

Écry is, basically, Thomas Cole's "The Past". It was a vital part of the duchy of Campagne... at the time; it is wholly a ruin now. Up to AD 1200 even Thomas Cole doesn't quite do to Écry justice; Phillips makes clear that a twelfth-century tournament was very, very different from the cooped-up gladiatorial-style arena matches seen in Cole (and in A Game Of Thrones). Those reflect a later era.

Over the twelfth century, the tournament was a mock battle. Knights and general men-at-arms formed into armies, and planned a big fight over the entire countryside. The only "rule" was that you had to give quarter to the opponent; the aim was to capture the enemy (but deaths did happen). Spectators observed the whole event from castle walls or on the roofs of barns. They remind me of nothing so much as the Flower Wars between the āltepētl poleis of the central Mexican Nahua.

The tournament phenomenon was cis-Hajnal; taking place over Belgium, Champagne, and along the Rhine. The quasi-French English aristocracy, I assume, also got in on it. By contrast the Cathar-ridden Occitan province in what's now the south of France didn't do 'em. Neither did the Basques or the Irish. The Italians didn't understand them either, and the Popes tried to ban them - several times. These bans made for absolutely no effect among the Franks.

Maybe the tournament had to be a Hajnal thing. A winning team required work across baronial boundaries. Good luck with that in twelfth-century Sicily.