[Bryn-gwlad] Period question.

[Tim McDaniel]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008, Eric W. Brown <Brown.EricW at jobcorps.org> wrote:
> I was reading documents from corpora, and they we discussing the SCA
> as a group that reenacted, etc etc, a period including the 17th
> century.

I would very much like a citation of anything in the governing
documents that includes the 17th Century.  Everything I've seen says
pre-17th C.  The Corporate By-Laws in
<http://sca.org/docs/govdocs.pdf> say

     The SCA shall be dedicated primarily to the promotion of research
     and re-creation in the field of pre-17th century Western culture,
     as stated in greater detail in Article II of the SCA Articles of
     Incorporation.

Those articles, in the same file, say

     (a) Research and education in the field of pre-17th-Century
     Western Culture.

     (b) Generally, to engage in research; publish material of
     relevance and interest to the field of pre-17th-Century Western
     Culture; to present activities and events which re-create the
     environment of said era, such as, but not limited to, tournaments,
     jousts, fairs, dances, classes, et cetera; to acquire authentic or
     reproduced replicas of chattels representative of said era; and to
     collect a library.

"A Brief Introduction ...", in the same file, says

     These activities recreate aspects of the life and culture of the
     landed nobility in Europe prior to 1600 CE. ...  For Society
     members, most of the world, and all of the centuries prior to the
     17th, ...

> I thought when I joined that the period ended at midnight, December
> 31st, 1599.

The question of what "last day of the century / millenium" got aired
thoroughly about 7-8 years ago.  Some people hold by the "roll the
odometer" thesis, which would make the cutoff December 31, 1599; I
hold by the "100 years is a century regardless" thesis, which puts the
cutoff at December 31, 1600.  Not a big difference from our distance.

> 1625 was often bandied about as a more logical breaking point than
> 1600...1699?

I've not heard suggestions of 1625 or 1699.  I can't see 1699 as being
anywhere in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, except in Scotland, which
the Renaissance reached in about 1935.

> Are names from 1600-1699 passing now? What abou heradrly (is there a
> difference?)

No difference at present.  In the earliest days, the SCA College of
Arms based itself on English medieval practices, which they defined as
ending in 1485.  1600 (+/- 1 as aforesaid) was established not long
after.  From the CoA Glossary of Terms at
<http://heraldry.sca.org/coagloss.html>:

     Gray Area.
         For the purposes of documenting names and armory, anything
         that can be documented as late as 1650 may be considered
         acceptable, even though the official cut-off date of the SCA's
         domain as defined in Corpora is 1600. The period from 1601 to
         1650 is known as the "gray area," and exists because it is
         logical to assume that something current in the period
         1601-1650 may also have been current in the last years of the
         16th Century, so long as there is no specific evidence to the
         contrary. Gray area documentation should only be used as a
         last resort. See also Documented, Domain of the Society,
         Period.

Danett Lincoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com