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THE DUEL
Jennie C. Meade, Rare Books Librarian
Online Presentation: Nicole Evans, Electronic Resources Librarian
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Real Life in Ireland! (1821). Engraving depicting an Irish duel from this work on Irish social life and customs; the Irish Code Duello (1777) was the major duelling code for English-speaking countries. |
Duel. The word conjures vivid images of elegant swordsmen in contest, or armor-clad knights astride destriers defending a lady’s honor. Or perhaps a rendezvous at first light, pistols at the ready. Romantic and uncomplicated to the contemporary eye, the reality of duelling was neither so romantic nor so simple. It operated under a complex set of rules and customs, legal and social, which determined why, how, and between whom duels were to be fought. Duelling for hundreds of years was a deep-rooted practice in European and American culture, one which finally died with changing times, yet lives on today in sport and pageantry to remind us of days when combat mano a mano resolved individual disputes. [1]
The word “duel” originated in the Latin duellum, an archaic form of bellum, which referred in medieval Latin to judicial single combat. Accounts differ as to whether duelling existed in ancient Greece and Rome, but certainly it was a fixture in the barbarian Germanic tribes, later spreading throughout Europe and America. A useful working definition of the duel is “a prearranged combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons according to an accepted code of procedure...to settle a private quarrel.” [2] Thus the duel is distinguished from a brawl (which is not prearranged or fought according to rules), a war (a prolonged affair with many combatants), and from a tournament (which although it usually operated by the same rules, and could be deadly, was a game or test of skill which decided no private dispute). The customary duelling weapon was the sword, superseded in the 19th century by the pistol.
The duel evolved from its origins as a legal method of resolving disputes into an extrajudicial avenue for settling private matters which could not be regulated by law: matters of honor and insult. Coincident with the formulation of codes which provided procedural guidance in conducting a duel were attempts by church and state to curtail the practice. The fascination of duelling may have its roots in the curious dichotomy of a prevalent and culturally accepted yet illegal pursuit, governed by a “code.” Its persistence as a fixture in so many cultures speaks of its universal appeal as the expression of a visceral human response which managed to survive, in assorted manifestations, for many centuries. But the notion of duelling as an atavistic reaction alone falls short of the mark, since it looks past the reality that duels were fought chiefly by one segment of society, its aristocrats. It is this social ingredient which defines the duel as an institution, and has fixed its status as a legal conundrum.
