[Ansteorra] Events in the Last Five years

Chris Zakes dontivar at gmail.com
Mon Jan 21 05:29:49 PST 2008


At 10:13 PM 1/20/2008, you wrote:
>Though I consider persona play magical and wonderful to watch, most of what
>I do is service which is not really period. I do first aid which no one
>wants to be medieval. I do cooking - and though we want to cook period
>things, we want to do the cooking with modern sanitation and techniques.
>I've been a Seneschal a couple of times and it primarily relates to modern
>thinking about people and law. I take pictures (and I apologize for the
>modern intrusion it causes, but I believe it is a valuable service). I
>Marshal and that is a modern affectation. I guess only Heraldry (of the
>things I do) is more or less a period thing subject to persona play.

I will quibble with this a bit. While medieval folks wouldn't have 
had marshals at wars (or A&S competitions either, for that matter 
<G>) they certainly had people doing the same things our marshals do 
at tournaments and melees. (My reading suggests that they were called 
"heralds" but they were doing the job of the marshals, too.)

Consider the following images from King Renee's "Book of the 
Tournament" from the 1480s

http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Mandragore which 
appears to have various armor requirements.
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=COMP-1&I=17&M=imageseule 
showing ways to make tournament swords.
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=COMP-1&I=23&M=imageseule 
showing the field layout.
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=COMP-1&I=31&M=imageseule 
just before the grand melee starts. Note the marshal in the middle of 
the field.

         -Tivar Moondragon




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