From: greg@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Hossein Ali Qomi (mka Gregory F. Rose))
Subject: Re: Awarding Awards or Ooh, Ah, Oh
Organization: The Rialto
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 21:49:42 GMT

Unto the good gentles of the Rialto, and especially unto Lord Godfrey, does
Hossein Ali Qomi send greetings and prayers for the blessings of Allah.

Lord Godfrey seems to have the impression that I was advocating that scribes
piss off because there were no period ways of rewarding them.  He is wrong.

Lord Godfrey writes:

>In that case, is the awarding of arms (and kingdom service awards, &c.)
>in full court with all the populace assembled, *really* a mediaeval
>practice?
>
>Knighthoods were often awarded in court.  Grants of land, and the titles
>that went with those grants, yes.  But an award of arms?  I haven't seen
>any references to such actually happening in a great court.  Kingdom
>service awards are definitely an SCA invention -- in later period,
>knighthoods were the reward for service.  Awards given for artistic
>excellence?  Likewise a mundanity.  Laurels and Pelicans?  HARDLY
>period. Yet out of all this vast sea of mundanity with which our courts
>are deluged, you would deny the scribes those TWO MEASLY SECONDS of
>recognition for hours' worth of work, merely because giving recognition
>to their contribution is too mundane for you.

I fear, my lord, that it is you who are fixated on an SCA invention.  Court
is where the king is.  I mean that literally.  The _palatium_ was wherever
the king was doing business.  All sealed and patent writs were done in
Court because Court was where the king's business was done.  I recall a
charter being issued by William the Conqueror which was dictated while the
king was defecating in a privy -- from a medieval perspective, that privy was
as much Court as the finery we do in the SCA.  I don't like a lot of the
mundane folderol we do in SCA courts.  I certainly don't advocate adding
more to it, such as scribal "ooh, ah" sessions.

>I hate making biblical allusions, but that's like telling someone he has
>a speck in his eye when there's a beam in your own.

I may be many things, but a pharisee isn't one of them.  From what follows
I think the problem more stems from my violation of the junction of Matthew,
chapter seven, verse six.

Lord Godfrey quotes me and proceeds:

>>  A just monarch rewards his right good servants with his best
>> rewards -- ranks, titles, largess.  It's the way medieval kings did it.
>
>Yeah.  So tell me, please:  if the mundanity of flashing a scroll in
>court is too heinous to consider, with what *period* ranks, titles, or
>largess can our kings reward our scribes?  Money?  Land?  Surely not.

I never said that I approved of the Society's rank structure.  It is
an abomination.  I just don't care to see the further proliferation of
abominations.

>I'd love to see even *one* period example of a scribe who was given a 
>rank or a title for his service.  Nobility was nobility, and the workers,
>even highly skilled artisans, were merely workers, and never the twain
>could meet.

What ranks or titles were scribes given for their services?  Abbot, bishop,
archbishop, chancellor.  Need I go on?  More than seventy percent of
abbots, bishops and archbishops appointed in Carolingian Francia were
drawn from the royal chancery's scribes.  More than eighty percent of the
abbots, bishops and archbishops appointed in Norman, Angevin, and Poitevin
England were drawn from among the royal chancery scribes.  Knowledge of
the written word was a powerful thing in the middle ages and good state
administrators were drawn from among the ranks of those who had mastered
the written word.  The best medieval scribes weren't artists or artisans,
they were statesmen.  The business of putting down the king's command in
writing wasn't the artsy-fartsy thing award scroll scribing is in the SCA --
it was the way nations were governed.  It was a principal reason why the
church was so critically important in the middle ages.

I think Lord Godfrey has confused the royal chancery with the monastic
scriptorium or the private studio.  Certainly both made books which
were beautiful works of art.  However, the SCA's category error of
thinking that a royal grant or award should look like a book of hours
isn't something I'd like to see perpetuated.  I would applaude any
scribe whose award document work looked like a medieval legal document or
whose art work looked like a medieval book page, but I don't think that
the two should be confused.

The notion of the scribing of legal documents as a work of artisanship is
a function of the pretentious bourgeoisie flocking with gold in hand to
private scribes to obtain fradulent "evidence" of noble heritage by
commissioning groundless achievements of arms.  It is a Renaissance
phenomenon, not a medieval one, although I grant that a good deal of the
attitude toward awards in the SCA has a lot more in common with the
mindset of Renaissance bourgeoisie than with anything medieval.

Hossein/Greg



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