The Bard. November A.S. 50 (2015)

Transcription

1 The Bard November A.S. 50 (2015)

2 In This Month's Issue... Of Things French in the Middle Ages... 3 A Viking A-Frame... 5 Documentation - a Quick and Painless Guide... 7 Five Miracles of Storytelling... 9 Three Month Kingdom Event Calendar Regular Shire Meetings Officers Cover Art Chronicler Office Disclaimer

3 Of Things French in the Middle Ages by Lady Isabelle de Foix Not everyone is aware of the fact that France has a German name. The Germanic people who overran the Roman province of Gaul in the fifth century were called the Franks. This name came from the Old Germanic word for "free". These people had never been under Roman rule, and were notorious for their hatred of Roman rule and civilization. There were originally at least two branches of the Frankish people. The branch that was to play the most important role in history were the Salian Franks. They originally came from an area that was east of the Rhine. In the fourth century, the Franks, wishing to get closer to the wealth of the Roman Empire, obtained from the Roman Emperor Julian the right to settle along the northern frontier of the Empire, in what is now Belgium. During the fifth century, while Roman power disintegrated, they moved southward into Gaul. It was probably during this period that one family began to dominate the Frankish political structure, and so became the Frankish royal family. This family, like other German dynasties, claimed descent from the gods, and they traced their ancestry to a German mythological character named Merovech Thus this family was known as the Merovingian dynasty. The first of this dynasty was Clovis, who converted to Christianity in 496. He allied himself with the Roman Catholic Church against heretics known as "Arians".The Visigoths, or "West Goths", another Germanic tribe who settled in southeast Gaul, were Arians, and Clovis had no trouble extending his realm at their expense (507). He also conquered the Burgundians, another Germanic tribe, who had settled in southeastern Gaul. He then chose Paris as his capital, and a new Christian kingdom took form in the West. Clovis chose Paris as his capital because, like the rest of northern Gaul, it had been heavily colonized by Salian Franks, and partially because of religious traditions. Paris had connections with several saints, most notably St. Dionysus, or, as the French called him, St. Denis. Medieval Parisians confused St. Denis with St. Dionysus of Corinth, who had been one of St. Paul's disciples. St. Denis had been the first bishop of Paris, where he had been martyred around 250 C.E. The area where he had been martyred was called Montmartre, the "mountain of the martyr". A shrine was erected here, and it became a popular destination for pilgrimages. So Paris became associated with St. Denis, and this gave the city prestige. The Merovingians were great conquerors; they proved to be inept rulers. They never ceased to be primitive Germanic chieftains; they never rose to the challenge of ruling as kings. They divided their property among their sons, and this led to fratricidal wars among Clovis' successors, since this custom made all of them claimants to the throne. At times during the sixth century, there were even two kings. The old Roman order in the realm collapsed to the point where the crown could not even collect taxes Meanwhile the Frankish and Gallo-Roman aristocracies, who began to coalesce into one aristocracy, developed an intense hatred of the crown. The Merovingians tried to win the allegiance of some of the nobles by giving them offices which carried grants of lands. These officials wasted no time making these offices and land their private property. The title of duc (duke) originally belonged to the military representatives of the Frankish crown; the title of conte (count) originally belonged to royal legal officials, The recipients of these offices transferred them to their heirs, and these families became the Frankish aristocracy after a few generations. In 751 the hapless Merovingians lost the throne to the dynasty called the Carolingians. This dynasty was named after its most famous member, Charles, who was crowned King of the Franks in 771 and Holy Roman Emperor in 800. This monarch was called Carolus Magnus (Charles the Great) in Latin, and became known as Charlemagne in French and English. Charlemagne was a great conqueror; he conquered territories as far east as the modern Czech Republic and Slovenia. He followed Frankish tradition by dividing his empire between his three sons, and in effect tore up his own empire upon his death in 814. By 911 the western part of this empire was an independent kingdom, and its king was known as "Rex Francorum", or "king of the Franks", and his kingdom included most of what is now France. By this time the word "Francia" had two different meanings. The first kings of the house of Capet ( ) only had direct control over a small area around Paris, where they had been dukes before they became kings. This area was known as the "Ile de France", or "island of France", because it is virtually surrounded by tributaries of the Seine River. Only the natives of France called themselves "French". Someone from Picardy, a district just north of the Ilede-France, was Picard, not French; the same was true of other regions where the nobility held lands. This continued to be the case throughout the Middle Ages. In 1405 Christine de Pisan claimed that a particularly obnoxious custom was "even worse in Picardy and Brittany than in France" Many of the dukes and the counts who held lands in these 3

4 regions had more power over them then the king did. Since the king claimed sovereignty over these lands, all of these lands, along with the Ile-de-France, was also called "Francia" in official documents. This kingdom was very diverse culturally and linguistically. The Callo-Roman population had spoken "Vulgar" or low Latin, the Latin of the people as opposed to the polished Latin of the Roman writers. Roman settlements had been much more dense in southern Gaul than the north, which was much more heavily colonized by the Franks. Consequently the Vulgar Latin of the north was heavily influenced by the Germanic tongue of the Franks, while the speech of the south was not These languages got their names for their word for "yes". In the north, the word for yes was oil, which became the modern French oui; thus this language was called the "langue d'oil". In the South, the word for yes was oc, and was called either the "langue d'oc" or "Occitan". It is also referred to as "Provencal" It is interesting to note that the scholars of the period considered both of these languages to be merely highly corrupted forms of Latin rather than separate languages Additionally, there were very different dialects of both the langue d'oil and the langue d'oc. The word question came to English with the Norman invaders, who spoke a dialect of the langue d'oil. The Parisians pronounced this word "kes-ti-on": the Normans pronounced it "kwes-ti-on", just as we still doparisian dialect prevailed as the language of the entire kingdom because of the prestige and influence of Paris as a royal capital; by the sixteenth century the other dialects had died out. The most famous users of the langue d'oc were the troubadours. The word "troubadour" is a modern French word derived from the Provencal word "trobar", which means "to invent".. While the poets of politically and socially turbulent northern France wrote of battles and blood-and-guts machismo in poems like the "Song of Roland" which was probably written around the beginning of the twelfth century, the polished and better-educated aristocrats of the more peaceful and affluent south either became troubadours themselves or patronized them. The first troubadour was Duke Guillaum of Aquitaine ( ), the grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The predominate theme in troubadour poetry was unrequited love for a noble lady. This love was unrequited because the ladies were married. This love took on a quasi-religious tone when their love became veneration, elevating the lady to near-divine status. The men who venerated these ladies became their servants This was revolutionary, because women in the Middle Ages generally had a low social status. There were even female troubadours. By contrast, there is only woman in the entire Song of Roland, and this was Roland's fiancee, Alde "the Beautiful" who died when she was told of Roland's death.. The north was a man's world, until poets of the north began to imitate the troubadours. These poets, called the "trouveres", also began to venerate noble ladies. The idea of courtly love spread into Germany, where the poets who sang of love for their noble ladies were called "minnesingers" ("love poets"). Thus began the notion of chivalry as a code of proper behavior for the upper classes. The troubadour movement ran its course and died out in the thirteenth century in southern France, but their contribution to medieval culture was immortal PRIMARY SOURCE Erasmus, "Praise of Folly", translation, Betty Radice, 1971, Penguin Books Limited, reprinted with introduction by A.H.T. Levi, 1993, Penguin Books Limited, London SECONDARY SOURCES Cantor, Norman, Civilation of the Middle Ages, HarperCollins, Bowen, James, A History of Western Education, volume II, St. Martin's Press, Chadwick, Owen, The Reformation, Penguin Books, McConica, James, (chapter on Erasmus) Renaissance Thinkers, Oxford University Press, Levi, A. H. T. Levi, introduction to "Praise of Folly", Penguin Books Limited, 1993 Huizanga, Johan, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, translated from the Dutch by F. Hopman, First Harper Torchbook edition, 1957; translation first published under the title "Erasmus of Rotterdam" by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924 Le Goff, Jaques, Medieval Civilization , translated by Julia Barrow, Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1988 Durant, Will, Age of Faith, Simon & Schuster, 1950 Durant, Will, The Reformation, Simon & Schuster, 1957 Encyclopedia Brittanica, Fifteenth Edition, 1990 Various Authors, The Age of Discovery, Time-Frame, Time-life Books Various Authors, The Renaissance: Maker of Modern Man, National Geographic Society, Copyright 1996, Patricia M. Hefner. Permission is given to use these articles in any educational publication as long as you credit me for the authorship of the article and send me a copy of the publication. 4

5 A Viking A-Frame By Lord Magnus Nikolassen

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7 Documentation - a Quick and Painless Guide by Ld. Daniel Raoul le Vascon This is intended to be a general over view of how to document an Art/Sci entry and as such it is offered as a guide to the process. Regardless of what your entry is the procedure I will outline will give you the basis for putting together documentation that will do your entry proud. For many people documentation is at best an after thought. Unfortunately that is putting the cart before the horse and needlessly complicates the documentation process. In a way you should try to think like a good forger, be it of art or antiques, because what in essence you are trying to do is create an entry which hopefully could pass for period. The first thing you should do is identify a period example of the item you are trying to create. To do that you must go to a source of documentation for the object. There has been a lot written about sources but essentially they are broken down into three categories; primary, secondary and tertiary. In truth I have heard a lot of opinions about what constitutes a primary source. In my opinion primary sources are written records, depictions or items created in the time period by someone who knew first hand the item in question. A secondary sources essentially the same as a primary source except that the creator did not have first hand knowledge and may or may not be from the correct time period or place. A tertiary source consists of unverified research which probably uses secondary sources, possibly primary sources but includes a lot of unsubstantiated conjecture. Avoid tertiary sources. As an example of a source, in the Norton Museum there is a period Flemish painting of St. Jerome. There are a number of items in the foreground and background of that painting. A ten-bead rosary, a pair of eyeglasses, a quill pen, an ink well and a small mortar and pestle. This painting is arguably a primary source for the recreation of those items. I recreated the ten-bead rosary. Even if the painting should prove to be a forgery it is at least a secondary source as the forger would have had to do his research to have it pass for real. An even better and less arguable primary source would be an actual 10-bead rosary from the period. While I did not find such an ideal object I did verify that such rosaries were depicted in a number of painting from the period. Thus you select an item to serve as your model. You then proceed to recreate the object in a manner as close to period as possible. You use period materials, or as close to them as you can manage. You use period techniques and period tools, or as close to them as you can manage. How do you know these things? You let your documentation guide you. Ideally it will tell you what techniques, tools and materials you should use. You then should proceed to put your documentation together. At a minimum I suggest that it should consist of the following. A title page, a short introduction, an explanation of the item recreated, an explanation of the materials used both in period and any substitutions you made, an explanation of the techniques and tools used both in period and any substitutions you made, an appendix of copies of critical reference passages and illustrations and finally a list of references. In your introduction state what it is you were trying to recreate and from what time and place it originates. Proceed to explain further what it is you are trying to recreate referencing your sources and appendix. In your explanation of the materials used tell what various materials were available in period and which materials you decided to use. Document this by referencing your appendix and references. Proceed to explain what tools and or techniques would have been used and which techniques you decided to use. Document this by referencing your appendix and references. Always explain what substitutions you made by reference to what was used or done in period and why you made the substitution that you did. Valid reasons for substitutions are cost, general unavailability of specific tools or materials, hazards to health or safety and legal and moral restrictions. To explain with and extreme example the original period object may have been made of lacquered wood, ivory, gold, and tortoise shell and served as a repository for a period cosmetic whose primary ingredients were white lead and saltpeter obtained from a white dog turd. The period red lacquer used contained mercury a health hazard, so you use a modern substitution. You have moral objections to the use of ivory and use bone. Gold is expensive so you gild instead. Harvesting tortoise shell from modern sea turtles is illegal so you substitute horn or even a modern tortoise shell plastic. If you decide to represent the cosmetic you use a modern substitute because white lead is a health hazard, saltpeter can ignite and you don t know where to get white dog turds. You are now at the Art/Sci competition. You lay out your creation artistically arranged on some backdrop, a piece of velvet perhaps. You wait for the judges with confidence because your creation is as close as you could make to what existed in period and you have the knowledge to explain it and the documentation to back it up Copyright 2000 by Daniel C. Phelps, 3359B Trafalgar Square, Tallahassee, Florida <phelpsd at gate.net>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and receives a copy. 7

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9 Five Miracles of Storytelling by True Thomas (THL Thomas Whitehart, SCA) The First Miracle: There is something special about a storyteller. Granted, any one can tell a story, but there are people who are born to find, keep, create, and tell stories. They come from all walks of life, and come to their gifts through a variety of ways. They are the little kids who put a big blob of black paint on the paper and tell their kindergarten teacher ".it's a cave.full of bats!" They might be truck drivers, or presidents. Storytellers are the canaries in the coal mine of the human experience, sensitive, perceptive, and crucial. We are unique, crazy, needed, and that's a miracle. The Second Miracle: Stories come to us. On the side of cereal boxes, in car pool lanes, from old books, and little kids. Stories will come to us from ancient days and the grout in the shower. They grab us by the ears, and crawl into our hearts and heads and demand to be told. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but tell them you will. If you put a stethoscope to a storytellers head, you will hear the whispers."tell me!". We find stories in so many places, and they become a part of us, and sometimes go out, and come back to us in new and incredible ways. And that's a miracle. The Third Miracle: You never know how a story will affect the universe. That person sleeping in the back of the audience, the little kids who just won't settle down, will come up after the story and tell you that it meant something to them. Years can go by, and someone will tell you - my daughter, my grandfather, loved that story you told, and it changed them. Made them sing the silly refrain, look for monsters under the bed, or rediscover parts of their heritage. Stories go out and change the world, and you with them. And that's a miracle. The Fourth Miracle: Stories have a life and power of their own. They are continually changing, shifting, moving. Stories can build a nation, or destroy a people. When stories die, untold, unrecorded, a little of what we are as the human race dies with them. To attempt hold a story, to own a story is to deny the power of the gift we are given. Cinderella was born around the world, Jack has seven league boots to cross any boundary. The right story in the right time and place can change the world, and the world can and will take that story, change that story, and hand it right back. Believe in the power and life of stories. And that's a miracle. The Fifth Miracle: The universe conspires to have stories told (AKA Storyteller Synchronicity). Your car will break down on the way to a garlic festival, and a garlic farmer will give you a ride to the event, just full of interesting stories. You'll mention a cat in a story, and one will walk behind you on that stage, just as you mention one. You'll tell a story with the wind coming roaring up, and nature complies. I've seen it, you've seen it. It raises the hairs on the back of your neck. You'll be desperate for a story, and a friend will hand you just the right book, that they found at a library sale, on the off chance you might not have it. People on planes, in the doctors office, are there to hear and more importantly give you stories. Little children and garage sales bring you stories. People out of the blue contact you and ask..can you tell stories about? And miracle of miracles, you can. The universe conspires to help you find and carry these stories to their next destination. Believe, and you'll see some amazing things. Ask any storyteller, and they'll tell you their 5th Miracle story. And that's a miracle. Believe! 9

10 Three Month Kingdom Event Calendar October 2-4, Warders of the Western Gate, Barony of Fontaine dans Sable October 3, Corazon de Leon IV, Shire of Villaleon October 7-12, Great Western War, Kingdom of Caid October 10, StagsCon, Baron of al-barran October 16-18, Blackwater Keep Demo & Fair, Shire of Blackwater Keep October 17, Aarquelle Defender 30, Shire of Aarquelle October 24, Newcomers Event, Barony of Unser Hafen October 24, Feast of Saint Edrik, Barony of the Citadel of the Southern Pass November 7, Dragonsspine Baronial Arts & Sciences, Barony of Dragonsspine November 7, Brewers Feast, Canton of Bofharrach November 14, Coronation, Barony of Fontaine dans Sable November 14, Known World Academy of the Rapier and Costuming Symposium, Kingdom of the Middle November 15, Fontaine Toy Box, Barony of Fontaine dans Sable December 5, Hunters Feast, Shire of Windkeep December 5, Gypsy Christmas, Barony of Dragonsspine December 12, Caer Galen Midwinter, Barony of Caer Galen Regular Shire Meetings Officers Archery on Saturday, 9 am behind Rio Grande Preparatory Institute (formerly San Andres High School) in Mesilla Fighter practice every Saturday at 2:00 pm, Corbett Center at NMSU or NMSU Intramural Field Light fighter practice every Saturday at noon and Tuesday at 7:00 pm, Corbett Center at NMSU A & S every Thursday 6:30-9 pm Populace meeting is held the first Thursday of the month, during A & S at 7:30 pm Seneschal: Lord Heinric von Drachenburg Chatelaine: Lady Cecelia Trethewy Exchequer: Lady Derbáil ingen Ronain Knight Marshal: Lord John Wryght Archery Marshal: Lord Bryce MacManus Rapier Marshal: M'lady Dragoslava Siege Marshal: Lord Sigfrid von Bremen Arts & Sciences: Lady Iðunn Hallsdottir Herald: Lord Warenus de Fulmere Chronicler: Lady Caitilin inghean ui Thaidhg Webminister: Lord Warenus de Fulmere Youth Officer: M'Lady Becca of Nahrun 10

11 Cover Art This month's cover is an image of women hunting, from an unknown illuminated manuscript. All photography is the property of those listed. All woodcut clipart comes from Medieval Woodcuts Clipart Collection Chronicler Office All submissions welcome and considered! Deadline submissions for The Bard will be the fourth Tuesday of every month. All ideas, pages, pictures, artwork, articles for The Bard are welcomed and encouraged. Deliver in person, Facebook, mobile, , or snail mail. preferred. Please include your name and/or title if you wish either to be known. Submissions can be sent to: Disclaimer This is the October 2015 issue of The Bard, a publication of the Shire of Nahrun Kabirun of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. (SCA, Inc.). The Bard is available at It is not a corporate publication of SCA, Inc., and does not delineate SCA, Inc. policies. Copyright 2015 Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. For information on reprinting photographs, articles, or artwork from this publication, please contact the Chronicler, who will assist you in contacting the original creator of the piece. Please respect the legal rights of our contributors. 11