ES - The Middle Ages as They Were, or As They Should Have Been?

[Todd Marsh]

I found this article on the web.  I hope you find it as interesting as 
I did.

Llywelyn


The Middle Ages as They Were, or As They Should Have Been?
Recreation and Re-Creation in the Society for Creative Anachronism
by Steven Muhlberger, Nipissing University

(Delivered at the conference "The Middle Ages in Contemporary Popular 
Culture" at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, March 1996.)

The most successful popular medievalist organization of our time is 
the Society for Creative Anachronism. The number of people who have 
come into contact with the S.C.A. over the past thirty years must be 
in the hundreds of thousands, and that very fact, I believe, is having 
a slow, underground effect on popular views of the Middle Ages, at 
least in North America. (1)

The S.C.A. has always been interested in both recreation and 
re-creation. People participate in the S.C.A. for fun, not because 
they are paid re-enactors or have a compulsion to pay homage to their 
ancestral culture. Yet from an early date, the S.C.A. has been also 
been concerned with re-creation, the revival of the customs, ideals, 
and artifacts of the Middle Ages. Few long-term members of the S.C.A. 
are indifferent to the re-creation of the Middle Ages. They tend to 
see a concern with the real Middle Ages, its values and material 
culture, as the one of the things that marks their hobby off from 
others, and makes it a more serious hobby than most.

But what does re-creation mean? What aspects of medieval culture are 
most deserving of revival? Which is more important, literal 
re-creation of medieval life, or a select re-enactment of the best of 
medieval life -- in an old S.C.A. phrase, "The Middle Ages as They 
Should Have Been"? These are questions that have divided the S.C.A. 
from a very early date. An examination of the internal debates of the 
S.C.A. about what the organization actually does and what it should be 
doing is of interest to anyone who thinks about what it means to 
revive past custom, past ways of life, and the realistic limits of 
such revivals.

The best place to start is with the very first tournament of what 
became the Society for Creative Anachronism, which took place on May 
1, 1966. It was a party held in a backyard in Berkeley, California, 
and no more than thirty people attended. The invitation that was sent 
out beforehand made no direct reference to the Middle Ages. It was 
addressed to "lovers of chivalry," and the main attraction is 
described as an "international tournament" of knights seeking to 
uphold the honor of their ladies. Guests were encouraged to dress in 
the manner of any age "in which swords were used." This was a costume 
party put together by some imaginative young people, and it got an 
eclectic response. One participant, recalling the occasion in 1995, 
said that attendees included "Queen Lucy of Narnia...and a hobbit, and 
several generic fantasy duelists, and a pair of Roman gladiators."(2) 
The First Tournament of the S.C.A. was recreation almost entirely, 
with re-creation not terrifically evident.

However, among the attendees were several people who had a serious 
interest in the Middle Ages; they had been largely responsible for 
organizing the party. They and others who had enjoyed themselves so 
much on May Day, 1966, were soon planning other tourneys, and evolving 
a philosophy and a permanent set of institutions to give a shape to 
their efforts.

Much of the early philosophy of the S.C.A. came out of the small 
circle of tournament fighters whose martial efforts were the 
centerpiece of all the early S.C.A. gatherings. They debated rather 
heatedly what they were trying to accomplish. Were they inventing a 
new sport, or more ambitiously a martial art, governed by a set of 
hard and fast rules, and supervised by judges? In other words, 
something like competitive fencing or judo? Or was tournament fighting 
a chivalric exercise, in which the fighters fought on their honor, and 
in the best tradition of the medieval tournament? It is extremely 
significant for the development of the S.C.A. that the advocates of 
"chivalric combat" won the debate with the "martial artists." S.C.A. 
armored combat, so central to the activities of the organization, was 
not to be simply a re-creation of the mechanics of fighting in armor 
with sword, and shield, and other mock weapons modeled on medieval 
exemplars; it was to have an ethical content.

By the time the S.C.A. held its second Twelfth-Night feast in January, 
1968, the organization had both the outline of a social structure and 
a name. The social structure was based on tournament combat. The 
winners of tournaments were to be Kings for a term, with the ladies 
they fought for as their Queens. The most accomplished and honorable 
fighters of the realm were honored as knights; those fearsome figures 
who had won two crowns were called Dukes. All this was inspired by the 
Middle Ages but the result did not reflect the Middle Ages as they 
ever existed. Rather it was a Society designed in Berkeley, in A.D. 
1967, to support certain chivalric virtues considered typical of the 
Middle Ages. If the S.C.A. was no longer imitating "any age when 
swords were used," but more specifically the Western European Middle 
Ages, eclecticism was still important. Indeed, it was reflected in the 
name, Society for Creative Anachronism, which was devised by Marion 
Zimmer Bradley, a member from the start. "Creative Anachronism" 
signified the freedom of the organization to adopt and reject old 
customs and practices as it saw fit.

So far it may seem that the idea of "the Middle Ages as They Should 
Have Been" had been having things all its own way. There is a lot of 
truth to that. The S.C.A.-specific customs inaugurated at that 
Twelfth-Night, 1968, are dearer to most members than anything taken 
directly from the Middle Ages. The S.C.A.'s attitude is in contrast to 
that of other historical re-enactment groups, with their focus on a 
short span of years and the staging of specific historical events, 
such as the Battle of Hastings or Gettysburg. But as early as 1968, 
one could also see an increase in the value the Society gave to actual 
research into the Middle Ages and authentic re-enactment of certain 
medieval arts.

One important turning point was the invention of the Order of the 
Laurel, which took place at the same time as the formalization of the 
Order of Knighthood. This was created to recognize those who excelled 
in non-martial arts, "without whom our Society would not be half so 
pleasant." The first two Masters of the Laurel were a Master Musician 
and a Master Artificer and Armorer, and they were raised to the 
nobility for adding to the medieval appearance and sound of the new 
society, for giving some cultural substance to the modern game, and 
for having the specialized knowledge necessary to do so.

By 1969, some members felt the new organization needed a legal 
existence, and incorporated the S.C.A. in California. In the Articles 
of Incorporation, the S.C.A. claimed to be an organization dedicated 
to research into pre-seventeenth century culture. The honesty of this 
claim has sometimes been questioned -- since the S.C.A. was 
simultaneously applying for a favorable tax status on educational 
grounds -- but I see no reason to doubt it. True, the incorporators 
had no desire to abandon the eclectic, modern game that had evolved. 
They did, however, think that the S.C.A. could be more than just a 
game, that the re-enactment of selected aspects of medieval life would 
indeed lead to a real understanding of medieval life. It would be 
hands-on learning that would supplement and be supplemented by book 
learning.

That hope has been amply borne out over the last thirty years. I have 
observed the S.C.A. for most of that time, and repeatedly I have seen 
people transformed from partygoers into skilled artisans and serious, 
if amateur, scholars of the Middle Ages. At the same time, even 
members who are not artisans, who accumulate gear through buying or 
barter, have continually gotten more discriminating in their tastes. 
At the biggest S.C.A. gathering, the annual Pennsic War, over two 
hundred merchants compete for the re-creationists' dollar, selling 
everything from pavilions to 15th-century style eyeglasses. More 
remarkable than the size of the market these people serve is its 
sophistication. In August of 1995, I noted that it was becoming 
commonplace for S.C.A. merchants to offer, with their goods, 
documentation of authenticity of design and materials. The merchants 
are not only proud of their efforts at re-creation, but believe that 
authenticity is a selling point.

Thus, the S.C.A. has made a great deal of progress in re-creating the 
material aspects of the Middle Ages, and its membership has, true to 
the hopes of its incorporators, gained a great deal of hands-on 
knowledge not easily gained through more usual educational channels. 
Former members who return after an absence of ten years or more are 
usually flabbergasted by this development. Yet, at the same time, 
criticism of the S.C.A.'s medieval re-creation by its own members has, 
if anything, grown.

Quite often, as people learn about the Middle Ages through their 
participation in the S.C.A., they become very dissatisfied with their 
own efforts and the uses to which they are put in the organization. It 
is a standard custom, for instance, when ranks and awards are made to 
outstanding members, for the awards to be accompanied by illuminated 
scrolls. Because such awards are very important in the Society, and 
lots of scrolls are needed, calligraphy and illumination are much 
cultivated and highly respected arts. Many members of the Order of the 
Laurel, the artistic nobility of the S.C.A., are calligraphers and 
illuminators. But I heard in 1995 a noted calligrapher complaining 
that the customary scrolls are inauthentic, because they are usually 
modeled on pages from Bibles and Books of Hours. She argued, quite 
accurately, that medieval documents conferring rank and office were 
usually not illuminated, but consisted of text only. She floated the 
idea that her kingdom should adopt this more authentic style. She 
quickly found, to her disappointment, that all her friends and 
neighbors preferred the more beautiful if less authentic documents 
that have become customary in the S.C.A. (3)

What makes this particular conflict between one member's sense of 
authenticity and the traditions of the S.C.A. poignant are two facts: 
first, the critic had discovered calligraphy and illumination through 
the S.C.A., and been motivated to master them because of their 
importance in the Society's rituals; second, she was not an 
individualistic partisan of "art for art's sake," but the person who 
was in charge of organizing production of scrolls for her kingdom. In 
other words, this is a case of a dedicated member finding herself torn 
between a desire for more literal re-creation, and traditions and 
rituals that she loved and supported, but which she now found wanting, 
because they no longer matched her knowledge or esthetic understanding 
of the medieval period.

The same conflict is played out endlessly within the S.C.A. Some 
members become dissatisfied enough to leave, to pursue what they 
consider a higher quality historical re-creation with the help of a 
select group of their friends. (For an electronic pamphlet describing 
one such group, The Traynd Bands of London, see 
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsingman/Bands.Advert.html; the vast 
majority of its early members, perhaps the totality, were past or 
present members of the S.C.A.) Whether they escape the central dilemma 
of re-creation versus recreation by doing so is doubtful. The 
experience of the SCA seems to show that the problem is irresolvable. 
The success of the S.C.A. as re-creation, which is considerable, is a 
function of its success as recreation, or perhaps, as a working 
society with its own rules, customs, carrots, and sticks, few of which 
can be considered to be accurate reflections of any medieval reality. 
It is social interaction in the present that motivates SCA members to 
attain higher levels of skill and authenticity in their chosen areas 
of re-creation. And in turn, this process of self-education changes 
the way members regard the S.C.A. itself, and motivates some to try to 
alter its customs.

The S.C.A. may stand for any number of attempts to bring a piece of 
the past alive in the present. Such attempts must both reflect the 
admired past, and make social sense in the ongoing present. How past 
and present reach a fruitful compromise in the behavior of actual 
human beings is a matter of constant negotiation. Both present and 
past make demands on the Society for Creative Anachronism; and it is 
in the nature of the enterprise that, as long as it remains vital, 
neither recreation nor re-creation will ever win out entirely.



Notes

1. One example of this underground effect was the appearance, in an 
episode of Star Trek:: The Next Generation, of a medieval knight 
wearing a white belt. Real medieval knights did not wear white belts, 
but knights in the S.C.A. do.

2. Flieg Hollander, in a posting to the Listserv mailing list 
"S.C.A.-reform," March 9, 1995.

3. This discussion took place on an e-mail list, "Calontir," dedicated 
to issues concerning the S.C.A. kingdom of that name, which includes 
the states of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska.



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