Knighthood, Chivalry & Tournament
Glossary of Terms

I

Île de France: The 14th century name for the region in France that contained Paris, so-called because of the borders of the region, the River Seine, Oise and Marne.

Indenture: A formal contract by which a high-ranking feudal lord, a prince or king, defined and retained the terms under which his liegemen would serve in a given campaign. Prior to the 14th century these agreements were basically verbal, but by the time of Edward III the contracts were often very specific. Contrast these documents with commissions of array, where the Crown levied a demand for troops on shires and boroughs.

Indulgence: Granting forgiveness from sins, a profitable church service.

Infantry: A dismounted fighting man. During the bulk of the Middle Ages, the role of infantry was considered to be the role of the common man, a distinction is retains to a degree even in modern warfare. Generally, medieval infantry was more lightly armoured than the heavy cavalry that formed the heart of a medieval army. During the 14th century, the English experimented with the use of infantry and artillery to great effect, defeating the cavalry-heavy armies of France and Spain and the massed spearmen of the Scots. Gradually, knights began to fight on foot as often as they fought mounted, but by this time the use of gunpowder changed the role of the knight and gave him the tactical role of officer rather than cavalryman.

Inns of Court: Four legal societies in London that control admission to the English bar. The inns derived their name from their 13th century founding, where the various masters of the law would gather and teach their apprentice lawyers, operating as a guild.

Inquisition: {}

Interdict: Religious censure, often used in the Middle Ages as a tool by the senior clergy to force a secular lord’s hand. Under the interdict, no religious services can be conducted, so no marriages, burials, or baptisms could be performed. Given the importance of religion to the people of the Middle Ages, the interdict was a powerful weapon, to a degree balancing the physical force available to the secular lords.

Invocation: The ceremony used to start a tournament or pas d’armes. There is little evidence for this being done in the Middle Ages, yet there is little evidence of any sort for what went on at these tourneys and festivals with regard to ceremony. The most accurate source we have is one that describes an ‘ideal’ tournament of the 15th century by King René d’Anjou, The Book on the Form and the Devising of a Tournament; and there is no evidence to say that this is how tournaments were done--René himself says that this is an ideal rather than the reality. The sole references seem to be buried in Geoffrey de Charnay’s Demands; see Barber and Barker for more detailed information. It is clear that knights often swore an oath at the start of a tournament. Charnay asks, ‘If a knight fails to swear such an oath, should he be excluded?’

Modern tournament companies have taken this tradition from the SCA as a mechanism to set the tone and expectation for a day’s fighting, generally imploring the combatants to observe the rules, to value the striving more than hollow victory, and to set out what is expected of the combatant and gallery during the day’s fighting.

Item: The term usually used to specify a particular legal clause, commonly employed in tournament rules and declarations. See also various examples of pas d’armes challenges to see how it is used, such as the 15th century Pas d’Armes in Chronique: The Journal of Chivalry #16.