[Ansteorra] Courtesy challenge

[Chris Zakes]

At 10:22 PM 10/13/2006, you wrote:

(snip)

>As for the Dream as it used to be, but I believe the "Machiavellian
>attitudes, back-stabbing politics, and endless  grasping for personal gain"
>have been a part of the Current Middle Ages far longer than the more than
>quarter century I've been aware of, and the two decades I've been a member
>of the Society.
>
>Marc/Diarmaid


I haven't been around *quite* that long, but as I understand it, 
somewhere around AS 2 people in the SCA started bemoaning the lack of 
courtesy and how things aren't as nice as they were back in "the good 
old days." I suspect it has a lot more to do with people at their 
first few events mostly seeing the flash and glitter of the SCA, and 
not seeing the "dirty laundry" until later.

FWIW, bemoaning the "good old days" *is* a period activity.

"What is become of the gentility and inbred courtesy of ancient noble 
gentlemen? Where is the magnanimity of the honorable knights of 
foregoing times, whose virtues as they are recorded in histories 
herein we read of them, so ought to have been left to their posterity 
that in them we might see the image (now forgotten) of ancient true 
nobility? But since all things fall to decay, it is no marvel though 
virtue (I speak with all due reverence and favor) be not found but in 
few: for surely there be many in whom nothing remaineth but the bare 
title of nobility, in that they be gentlemen born: who in their 
manners wholly degenerate from their ancestors, and make no account 
either of honor or dishonor, giving themselves to such pleasures as 
their unbridled appetite leadeth them unto."

         -Vincentio Saviolo "Of Honor and Honorable Quarrels" 1595

I rather doubt he was the first person to express such sentiments.

         -Tivar Moondragon