Urban Jousts in the Later Middle Ages: The White Bear of Bruges C1)

By 1484 the patriciate of Lille had apparently become uneasy with their jousting feast, the Épinette, traditionally sponsored during Lent(2). They sought the advice of certain friars and doctors learned in theology, who, although generously considering arguments in the jousts' defence, could find little in the end to recommend them. The jousts simply encouraged the vices of vanity, luxury and lechery, as well as the ugly spectacle of socially-climbing bourgeois toadying up to nobles who attended the event. In addition the taxes levied to support the feast impoverished the poor. By implication, the jousts in Bruges were similarly condemned, for the friars noted that the feast of the Epinette was closely intertwined with Bruges's own reciprocal feast of the White Bear. Indeed, so concerned were the magistrates of Bruges by the criticisms of "notable preachers", that they inquired of Duke Maximilian whether he intended to abolish the jousting events (3).

Maximilian's penchant for chivalric sports made abolition unlikely. But during the late 1480s the jousts at Lille and Bruges were to disappear, and a brief glance at the table for the city's expenditure on jousts in Bruges seems to bear out the force of criticisms against them. Expenditure over the fifteenth century spirals ever higher until it virtually collapses altogether after 1487. Moreover, these are figures which might even lend substance to Huizinga's famous view on the decadence of chivalric games at the end of

Andrew Brown University of Edinburgh

(1) I would like to thank the Carnegie Trust for their generous financial assistance in allowing me to complete the archival research for this paper. (2) For the following see Archives Departementales du Nord (henceforward ADN) Lille, B7662. In 1471 Charles the Bold (nous qui de tout nostre euer desirons reformer en mieulx ce qui peut servir au salut des aimes de nos sujetz) had already required the Epinette to be moved from Lent. The preachers in 1484 also implied that criticisms of the jousts had been voiced for the previous 40 years. See also L. Detrez, La Fin des tournois à Lille (1470), Lille, 1938. See also L. de Rosny, L 'Epervier dor, Paris, 1839; C. Fouret, «La Violence en fête: La Course de L'Épinette à Lille à la fin du Moyen Age», Revue du Nord, 63 (1981), p. 377-390. (3) ADN, B7662 (7). Since this piece was written, an important work has appeared which supersedes previous work done on the Épinette: E. Van Neste, Tournois, joutes, pas d'armes dans les villes de Flandre à la fin du Moyen Age (1300-1486), Paris, 1996. This book does not make use of the principal source used here (the Bruges town accounts), and its general view, that the urban joust became an adjunct of Burgundian state centralisation and an unwelcome burden to citizens, is at variance to the argument pursued here.