THE TWO-PERSON CONTEST known as the “duel” (duellum, Zweikampf, duel, pugna) was customary in England, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain. It was used by the Slavs and the Normans from Sicily and the Crusaders introduced it in Palestine. Like other ordeals, it is definitely not a typical Germanic institution. It is, however, present throughout the history of the West with different nuances and special circumstances that may be evidence, usually camouflaged, of its use up to the early twenty-first century outside the judicial system. Indeed, in medieval and modern literature, there is plenty of evidence for judicial combat.

The duel has occupied a prominent place in historiography. It was considered a practice inherited from the Germanic peoples to regulate their conflicts, affirmed by Paul Fournier and placed in historical context by Jean Gaudemet. It is originally an ordeal, a “primitive and religious trial,” according to Jean-Philippe Levy, and it is mainly attributed to people of the feudal era. It is truly the symbol of the accusatory system: it begins with a complaint and the procedure compels the accused to prove his innocence; the two parties become adversaries subjected to the same obligation.

The duel, also called single combat, was a small-scale mirror of collective combat. There have been two types of duels, as Charles de Smedt wrote in 1894: firstly, the conventional public duel involving two heads of state or army chiefs or two champions chosen by agreement; and secondly, the conventional private duel, which takes place between two individuals without any intervention by public authority, in which conditions are freely agreed to and outside the law. The reasons leading to either type of duel are clearly different: in the public duel, the victory of a nation or an army is at stake, whereas a private duel may be fought over an insult, an enmity, or even as a demonstration of obvious superiority.

Historiographical Approaches

The riepto is closely related to the duel; it is a special procedure that appears in high medieval Spain and is rooted in a previous conflict, that is, the breakdown of peace or truce among members of the nobility.