Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Heraldic questions...
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 18:22:00 -0700

* Original: FROM: Floyd Bullock
* Original: TO:   Josh Mittleman
* Original: AREA: Dragons Mist Herald's Point

* Forwarded by Suze Hammond
* Forwarded Using QuickBBS 2.76 (Gamma-3)
* Forwarded at 02:58 on 17-Dec-92 

 -=> Quoting Josh Mittleman to All <=-

 JM> * Original: FROM: Josh Mittleman
 JM> * Original: TO:   All
 JM> * Original: AREA: The Rialto
 JM> 
 JM> * Forwarded by Suze Hammond
 JM> * Forwarded Using QuickBBS 2.76 (Gamma-3)
 JM> * Forwarded at 18:53 on 05-Dec-92 
 JM> 
 JM> From: mittle@watson.ibm.com (Josh Mittleman)
 JM> Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

 JM> Greetings from Arval!  Carolus wrote:
 
 JM> 1) The rules exclude much of period armory.  To that extent, the
 JM> College is actively hindering the medieval recreations of the Society. 
 JM> I proposed changing the rules to allow any period heraldic style.
  
     This would seam to be a great idea at frist glance, but as was stated 
     earlyer, you can find lot's of examples of truly awful heraldry in 
     period. If we were to allow ALL of this to pass we would not only be 
     registering things that are "not in the spirit of good heraldry", but 
     (given the examples of the SCA submissions that have been returned in 
     the past) we would stand the chance of grossly amplifing all of the 
     "worst" aspects of period heraldry (instead of trying to only 
     recreate the best parts of the middle ages). 
     
 JM> 2) Our system requires every member to learn about period heraldry. 
 JM> That isn't a bad thing, but it is the only place in the Society where
 JM> members are required to study a given subject.  Personally, I think
 JM> that anyone who is going to use heraldry (or a name, for that matter)
 JM> should learn enough to know that he is using it properly, but it has
 JM> not been the SCA's way to require learning.
  
      This is also not entirely true. There arew some placese were the 
      heralds enjoy doing ALL of the research FOR the submitter, and therefore

      the submittor that "dosen't want to know anything about heraldry 
      except what his device looks like", need not learn anything about 
      heraldry. Also the statment that We are the "only" place in the SCA 
      that requires one to learn a given subject, to my feeling is also 
      untrue (what about the fighters, & marshalls not to mention all of the 
      guilds in the SCA). 
      
 JM> 4) Our system requires an enormous amount of work.  The College burns
 JM> up hundred if not thousands of man-hours each month, generates
 JM> paperwork by the hundredweight, and even though individual submissions
 JM> cost relatively little, all that money taken together could be put to
 JM> far better uses in the Society.  We've burned out far too many of our
 JM> best officers in the endless stream of heraldic work.
 
     Yes this office does require a lot of time & paper, but you must 
     remember that this is a volenter orginization, and those people would 
     not be spending all of that time if they didn't enjoy it! 
     
 JM> The most embarassing part is that it isn't clear that the College of
 JM> Arms is doing a job anyone wants.  Registration of a name or device
 JM> provides three things: a certificate of authenticity, a certificate of
 JM> uniqueness, and the warm-fuzzy feeling of Being Official.  You may have
 JM> guessed that I don't count the last of these as especially important,
 JM> so let me focus on the first two.
  
     Well if no one "wants" the services that we provid, how come the demand
     for our services keep increasing? I would say that people LIKE "that 
     warm-fuzzy feeling of being official" so why not make them happy! 
     
 JM> Protection of uniqueness is a service to the populace, whether we are
 JM> preventing conflict within the SCA, or between the SCA and history,
 JM> fiction, legend, or modern times.  Does the populace want that
 JM> service?  I dunno.  Nobody knows, because nobody has made any
 JM> systematic effort to find out.  
 
     As I stated above obviously a good persentage of the populace likes 
     the idea of registering name & armory! Thow it might be a good idea 
     to find out what the populace WOULD like us to protect aginst. 

 JM> On the other hand,
 JM> perhaps the corporation should get out of the protection racket
 JM> altogether and let the kingdoms handle to question individually as they
 JM> see fit (which could include SCA-wide protection if a kingdom wants it,
 JM> or a procedure for resolving conflict when it is discovered).
  
     I think this would be asking for trouble! in period poeple didn't move 
     around that much, now they DO. With all of the inter Kingdom moving these

     days I belive thing could get very nasty!

 
 JM> enforcement could be left entirely to custom and peer pressure like
 JM> every other encouragement to authenticity.  It could be left to each
 JM> kingdom to decide how much emphasis to put on correctness of names and
 JM> armory. 
  
     What happens to the person living in one kingdom that is very lacked 
     about rules (and therefore he bears "Argent on a crown Or, a penticale 
     inverted Sable, fimbrated Gules", and has had this device for years 
     and a lot of stuff with this device on it), and moves to a kingdom that 
     is very uptight about the rules (and therefor tells superduke so & so   

     that he can't use his arms in that kingdom). Wuoldn't it have been 
     better to have had ONE standard set of rules, and frustrated him a 
     little at first instead of out right pissing him off later (and telling 
     him he can not now use any of the thing's that he has spent hunderuds 
     of dollars on and no telling how many hours!)

 JM> Carolus, you asked if all this is really a problem?  I think it most
 JM> definitely is: It is no coincidence that virtually everybody in the
 JM> SCA bitches about the College of Arms.  Some of that bitching is a
 JM> simple consequence of the job that's being done: The College of Arms is
 JM> the only office in the SCA that has the duty to regularly say "No, you
 JM> can't do that" to individual members.  It isn't even clear that the
 JM> College should continue to have that job, and in any case, this
 JM> certainly doesn't explain all the complaints.  When so many people are
 JM> dissatisfied, then something is wrong.  First and foremost, the College
 JM> of Arms exists to serve the populace of the Society.  If they aren't
 JM> happy with the service, then it must change.
 
     You can not please all of the people all of the time, and untill someone

     finds a way to do it we should try to make the system we have better 
     instead of scraping the whole system and trying to start over from
scratch!    
 

                                        Food for Thought

                                        Torric inn Bjorn
                                        "Per pale Argent and Or, in pale a 
                                        castle Sable, and a brown bear's
                                        head erased Proper"






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