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 Renй 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--Renй 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.