Note 345 — Chapter X

See the grand Torneo when Roderic is crowned, Parte I. c. 27; the tournament of twenty thousand knights in Cap. 40; that in Cap. 49, etc.;—all just as such things are given in the books of chivalry, and eminently absurd here, because the events of the Chronicle are laid in the beginning of the eighth century, and tournaments were unknown till above two centuries later. (A. P. Budik, Ursprung, Ausbildung, Abnahme, und Verfall des Turniers, Wien, 1837, 8vo.) He places the first tournament in 936. Clemencin thinks they were not known in Spain till after 1131. Note to Don Quixote, Tom. IV. p. 315.