The Tournament and its Role in the Court Culture of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519)

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real, some not) held since its advent in German-speaking courts, and it places the tournament 
in a prominent position in the German cultural mind-set. The printed work is enhanced by a 
series of handsome woodcuts depicting these tournaments, and, taken together, the text and 
the images create a glimpse into how the tournament was viewed at the time, not just as a 
military exercise, but as a historical legacy.  
The most common type of Turnierbücher, however, were those produced for an 
individual in order to chronicle their singular accomplishments at tournaments which, unlike 
many of those recorded in the work of Rüxner, actually took place. These Turnierbücher are the 
ones which provide the closest thing to a snapshot of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German 
tournaments. Although they vary greatly in their content, artistic quality, and portrayal of the 
tournament, they offer insight into the tournament which no narrative source alone can. Their 
individual quality is largely dependent on the person for which the book was produced. In 
general, the Turnierbücher tend to be large manuscripts, which would often have been on display 
in the subject’s home for his guests to admire. One knight, Gasper Lamberger (see below), and 
his descendents collected signatures of famous guests in his Turnierbuch, for example. They 
follow a similar formula as well: each consists of a series of images depicting a frozen moment 
of combat, almost always from the joust. Accompanying text is normally minimal, but 
individual competitors are frequently, but not always, labelled. Many Turnierbücher were 
produced during or shortly after Maximilian’s reign, and six especially have been of particular 
use for this thesis.  
The first of these is the Turnierbuch produced for Elector Johann of Saxony (1468-
1532).
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 Johann was part of a long-standing noble German family, being the son of Elector 
                                                 
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 The prince-electors (Kurfürsten) were members of the electoral college of the Holy Roman 
Empire and were responsible for electing the king of the Romans as well as the Holy Roman emperor. 

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Ernst of Saxony (who was present in 1486 at Maximilian’s coronation as king of the Romans) 
and Elisabeth, daughter of Duke Albrecht III of Bavaria, as well as the brother to Friedrich III 
of Saxony, who also took part in Maximilian’s tournaments. Known as der Beständige (‘the 
constant’), Johann became elector following the death of his childless brother, Friedrich.
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 He 
served Maximilian in several campaigns in the 1490s. A keen tournament participant, Johann’s 
accomplishment as a competitor in the joust are commemorated in a Turnierbuch, produced in 
the late sixteenth century (c. 1585). Johann’s Turnierbuch is the first chronologically in a series 
produced by the electors of Saxony, which collectively cover the period 1487-1566. In the 
work, Johann is depicted taking part in an impressive 125 jousts from 1487 until 1527. In each 
image, the viewer is presented with a snapshot of an individual joust between Johann and his 
opponent, each of whom are labelled and who also include Maximilian. The date and location 
of each encounter is also normally provided.
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Another Turnierbuch produced for an associate of Maximilian was that of Gasper 
Lamberger (c. 1463-c. 1515).
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 Lamberger was from modern Slovenia, but he spent most of his 
life outside of his homeland, travelling with Maximilian’s court and serving as a military 
commander in his armies. Lamberger’s Turnierbuch was created c. 1504-1507 and includes 
eighty-seven images of jousts which took place between 1480 and 1504. It is similar in style to 
that of Johann of Saxony, although the quality and detail of the drawings are perhaps not quite 
as fine. Each page shows Lamberger competing in a joust against an opponent, who is also 
                                                 
During Maximilian’s lifetime there were four secular electorates: the kingdom of Bohemia, the county 
palatine of the Rhine, the duchy of Saxony, and the margraviate of Brandenburg.  
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 He often appears across sources as Hans von Saxon. 
52
 Der Sächsischen Kurfürsten Turnierbücher, ed. by Erich Haenel (Frankfurt: Verlag von Heinrich 
Keller, 1910). 
53
 Lamberger’s name also appears as Caspar von Lamberg or Gašper Lamberger.  

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named. These tend to be other famous knights of the time and, also like Johann’s Turnierbuch, 
include Maximilian himself as a competitor.
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One man who was not a titled noble, but who moved in courtly society and produced 
his own Turnierbuch, was Ludwig VI von Eyb (1450-1521). Von Eyb ‘the Younger’, as he was 
known, to differentiate him from his father, Ludwig von Eyb ‘the Elder’, was a court official 
and military leader. He served as Hofmeister to several high-ranking nobles of the Holy Roman 
Empire and, at the end of his life, he was able to retire to his own castle of Hartenstein. He 
was knighted in 1476, was well educated, and was a member of the tournament society the 
Order of the Unicorn. His Turnierbuch, produced c. 1525, contains images of ten separate 
tournaments. It is drastically different in style, however, from Johann of Saxony or Gasper 
Lamberger’s in its content and quality. Its focus is solely on mounted group combat, rather 
than the individual joust preferred by the above knights. There is also less detail and realism to 
be found in the images. It reflects more the competitions held by tournament societies of this 
period, but its depictions of tournament settings and the style of combat illustrated make it a 
useful resource.
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There is also the Turnierbuch of Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria (1493-1550), produced c. 
1544 and depicting tournaments in which the duke part from 1510 to 1518. Wilhelm was the 
son of Maximilian’s sister Kunigunde and was thus Maximilian’s nephew. Although he was too 
young to have competed against Maximilian in tournaments, his Turnierbuch follows closely in 
                                                 
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 The Tournament Book of Gašper Lamberger / Das Turnierbuch des Caspar von Lamberg, ed. by Dušan 
Kos, ed., Codex A 2290, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, (Ljubljana: 
Viharnik, d.o.o., 1997). 
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 Munich, BSB, Cgm 961, Das Turnierbuch des Ludwig von Eyb. In addition to producing his 
Turnierbuch, von Eyb was a writer whose biography of German military leader Wilwolt von Schaumburg 
has also been of use to this thesis: Ludwig von Eyb, Die Geschichten und Taten Wilwolts von Schaumburg, ed. 
by Adelbert von Keller (Stuttgart: Literarischen Vereins, 1859). 

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