From: mittle@watson.ibm.com (Josh Mittleman)
Subject: Recognizing Scirbes in court (was Re: Awarding Awards)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 19:14:49 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Greetings from Arval! Hossein wrote:

> I find it hard to imagine Henry II of England handing out writs to his
> sheriffs and holding each up to be admired by his court, saying "Br.
> Louis did this one."  It's a completely unmedieval practice.  Scribes
> should be recognized by the Crown in ways appropriate to the Crown's
> responsibility and dignity: by awards, grants, and patents publicly given
> in recognition of their service to the realm, or, failing that, by direct
> words of thanks and gifts of largess from the Crown to the scribes.  A
> modern "ooh, ah" session is so little thanks as to be demeaning to the
> artisan. 

There are several practical objections to your argument.  First, I would
point out that there is a large range of possibilities between no public
announcement of the artists' names and 'a modern "ooh, ah" session'.  You
do not help your already-strong argument by exaggerating the problems you
having identified.

One practical problem is parity.  If Gustav the Armorer makes and donates a
pair of spurs to be given in court to a newly-belted knight, he is
invariably praised publically for his generosity.  If Antonia the Vintner
gives the Crown six cases of her own cherry wine to use as gifts, her
magnanimity will certainly be recognized in court.  It seems only fair that
when Peter the Scribe donates the product of a hundred hours of his labor,
never to be seen again, the Crown should acknowledge his gift just as it
acknowledges other gifts of craftsmanship.  Perhaps you would answer that
none of these gifts should be acknowledged by announcing the craftsmen's
names in open court; I'll address that possibility later.

A second practical problem is that the Crown needs lots of active scribes
willing to donate their time, money, and skills.  Very few kingdoms have
enough scribes to meet the demand of producing award scrolls; some have
turned to the expedient of photocopied scroll-blanks.  If you will grant
that announcing the scribes' names is a significant inducement to do the
work (and my experience is that it is so), then the choice is not whether
to introduce an inauthentic practice to court, but rather _which_
inauthentic practice to introduce.  I recognize that our award scrolls are
fundamentally inauthentic in concept, but if we are going to use them, we
do have to make the choice between authentic-looking artwork and
authentic-sounding ceremony.

And so I think the question really comes down to the purpose of SCA court.
Should it be a re-creative endeavor in itself, or should it be a stage upon
which many re-creative endeavors are displayed?  No court at which typical
SCA business is conducted could honestly be classified in the first
category.  Parts of some courts are good re-creation, but never the entire
court.  As with everything else in the SCA, there is no single, right
approach.  We should recognize what we are doing well and what we doing
badly, and choose how we wish to focus our efforts and what we are willing
to trade off to achieve other goals.  If announcing scribes' names in court
encourages more people to do more beautiful and authentic scribal work, it
seems to me a very small price to pay.

===========================================================================
Arval Benicoeur                                       mittle@watson.ibm.com
From: Riki.Beth.Stein@f906.n142.z1.fidonet.org (Riki Beth Stein)
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