Scroll Text
Greg Rose
greg at bronze.lcs.mit.edu
Sun Jul 16 22:36:01 PDT 1995
My Lady,
I'm afraid that your question may presuppose that there is much
relationship between SCA scrolls and medieval legal documents. If
that is the case, there are _very_ few historical parallels. Medieval
charters are usually grants of lands or fiscal rights (immunities,
right of ban, etc.) rather than recognitions of "rank." It is _very_
late in period that one sees Letters Patent establishing or creating
rank; examples may be seen in the public papers of the Tudor monarchs
(consultation with the PRO indices will give specific citations).
Knighthood itself wasn't all that important a station and I frankly
don't recall seeing a document granting that station prior to the
15th century, and that was a Holy Roman Imperial charter granting the
legal privileges associated with knighthood to an Imperial lay clerk
(I posted a text of it to the Rialto a few years ago, I'll try to dig
it out). I work rather a lot with medieval charters (primarily
pre-1200, but I have done research in the diplomatic of later
charters, particularly English and Imperial) and I'd be astounded
if you found something like an SCA Knighthood scroll in period
(although, as I said, in the 15th century there is at least one
example of a grant of legal rights pertaining to a knight to a
lay clerk).
If you mean scroll exemplars from other Laurel Kingdoms,
I have one from the West (indeed, the original knighting liturgy
text) which might interest you; see me your email address and I
will forward it.
Hossein Ali Qomi
(Greg Rose)
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