In the days of Philip the Good and Charles the Rash, the Court of Burgundy was the home of chivalry and pageantry. In the fifteenth century the tournament reached its height, and began to he hedged about with rules and ceremonial. Jousts and tourneys between mounted knights were held on all important occasions, an exciting and beautiful spectacle for the populace, a thrilling occupation for the nobly born.

These mock fights, or "combats," were held in all countries and at all times through. out the Middle Ages, but they reached perhaps the peak of their development in the middle years of the fifteenth century. The massed tourneys were less popular than jousts, or single combat with swords or axes. When Charles the Bold married Margaret, sister of the English King Edward IV, in 1468, the occasion was celebrated by the most gorgeous of tournaments, when the very trappings of the horses were of cloth of gold, and bells of pure gold tinkled on their bridles. Many lances were broken in the lists that day, but no serious casualties were reported; possibly all combatants were to anxious to preserve their beautiful raiment.

Feasting, too, was on a lavish scale; the wedding-supper lasting until three the next morning. More than a thousand casks of wine were needed yearly to assuage the thirst of the Duke's courtiers. Everything was of the most gorgeous; "from prayer book and sword down to children's toys and tooth-picks, everything was overlaid with gold and silver, or sparkled in a blaze of jewels." (Cartellieri: The Court of Burgundy," p. 54. )

In Burgundy we find the last brilliance at the Middle Ages fading before the splendour of the Renaissance. The love of pageantry and tournaments is common to both periods; there was a recrudescence of it on the occasion of the "Field of the Cloth of Gold" in 1520, when Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France held their famous meeting.

It is to Italy and the Italian courts that we must look to for the inspiration of the Renaissance; the brilliance and culture of Burgundy are rather the apotheosis of mediævalism.