西欧中世纪骑士比武的兴衰

The Tournament in the Medieval Western Europe

骑士比武于11世纪前后在西欧流行开来,其深层原因是权力下移加剧封建割据以及新的财产继承制度迫使青年骑士在比武场上谋求出路。因此,早期的骑士比武呈现出混乱、粗暴等封建林立时代的典型特征,骑士贵族则以公开的暴力作为确定和维持等级关系的基本交际纽带。在13世纪,以马上单挑的流行和比武规则的明晰化为契机,骑士比武开始变成一种"文明"的游戏。这一演变产生了两个影响深远的结果:一是骑士的私人暴力被纳入民族国家建构的轨道上来;二是骑士阶层由封建时代的私人武装变成了新兴民族国家的公共武装。骑士比武由此丧失了原有的活力,新兴的统一王权更将它变成了宣扬神授权力的盛装表演。盛极一时的骑士比武最终在17世纪走向衰落。

The tournament,as a type of game for cavalrymen,rose and came into prosperity in the 11^(th) century Western Europe. Researches revealed that it was linked with the growth of feudal separatism in the process of decentralization and with the new inheritance system which forced 'young'knights to seek their own destinies in the game. Correspondingly,the early tournament,where the nobility used overt violence to ensure and maintain the social hierarchy,showed the typical features of the primitive feudalism-chaotic and ferocious. From the 13^(th) century,with the popularization of the joust and the clarification of the rules,the tournament began to gentrify. It produced two far-reaching consequences:the private violence of the knights was incorporated into the construction of the nation-states,and the nobles transformed from private forces into servants of nation-states. The tournament thus lost its vitality,and the newly established unified states turned it into a parade of absolute power. The once prosperous tournament finally declined in the 17^(th) century.