[Ansteorra] SCA slang

[Theron Bretz]

>     I agree with everyone on this. It is wonderful to try to recreate as
> accurately as possible. But, four hundred years ago +, people didn't
really
> understand science and physics and many times explained away normal
phenomena
> with magic and witchcraft. When I hear terms such as magic time pieces, it
> makes some sense to me.

FYI,

The mechanical clock was introduced to Europe in the 11th century.  A clock
with a face on it was called a watch in period (the earliest clocks simply
tolled the hours).  When they got small enough to put on your wrist in the
20th century, they were dubbed 'wristwatches'.

Medieval people (not necessarily the villeins in the fields, but certainly
those of the middle and upper classes, the ones we choose to portray) were a
good deal smarter than you credit them.  Medieval European hydrologists were
probably the best ever produced (they used water to power things in much the
same way the Victorians later used steam).  Did idiots build Notre Dame or
Chartres?  Did people with no concept of engineering other than "magic"
build 2000+ foot long bridges that still stand today?  Of course not.  Take
a gander at Gies and Gies, _Cathedral, Waterwheel, and Forge_, it's very
accessible and gives a tremendous look at how sophisticated our medieval
forebears truly were.

The problem is that our Victorian forebears were so ardent about seeing the
medieval period as Dark Age that much of their accomplishments were wrongly
attributed to the Romans (great adaptors, lousy innovators), or the
Renaissance (accomplished folks in their own right, but they built on what
was already present).  The problem is that the knowledge of medieval man is
largely apparent only through his works.  Engineers didn't have manuals
because they had an uninterrupted line for transmission of information
through their guilds and apprenticing methods.  When written works do
appear, they are masterful.  Look at Agricola's De Re Metallica (Basel,
1550), still considered an important work in the field of mining and it's
452 years old.

Certainly, in some areas, there was ignorance (medicine and the life
sciences in general), but these people had practical knowledge that could
tell you the what, if not the why of their work.

Was their superstition in the middle ages?  Certainly, but by and large, it
was either a case of the same level of superstitions we see today, or (in
the case of witch trials and the Inquisition) educated people preying on
provicial superstition to achieve their own ends.  In either case, to use
medieval belief to justify calling a wrist watch "a magic time-piece", or
cars "dragons", is pure sophistry.

Luciano Malatesta